Avast Ye NPR Fans: Radio Pirates Hijack WQXR For Religious Sermons

Cortelyou Road resident Patrick Russell loves to unwind at the end of every day by tuning into his favorite radio station, 105.9 WQXR — New York’s only public radio classical music station. But for the past few weeks, Russell has found the station hijacked by grating static, and a couple notches down the dial Russell found its source: An illegal, pirate radio station broadcasting Orthodox Jewish sermons and Klezmer music.

“For a while, I thought it was cab drivers interfering with their radios, but then it got worse,” said Russell, whose listening is now interrupted by what sounds like someone screaming Torah readings in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, sometimes nightly from 6pm to 8am — except for Fridays and Saturdays (the Jewish day of rest).

The illegal station, operating at 105.7 FM, is close enough to disrupt the classical music frequencies and dominate the airwaves in Kensington, Windsor Terrace, and parts of Ditmas Park, Russell said.

The station has been going since June at least, when Brooklyn Pirate Watch — a twitter feed tracking Brooklyn’s rogue radio operators — found the illegal Orthodox radio station at 105.7.

WQXR has received many complaints about 105.7 “bleeding into” their station,” spokeswoman Jennifer Houlihan Roussel told the New York Post this week, but it’s the job of the Federal Communications Commission to shut it down.

The station recently reported the pirate broadcasts to the FCC, but those complaints take between four and six months to process, and the drastic federal budget cuts to the FCC could drag down the enforcement schedule even further, said Russell.

So Russell is taking matters into his own hands by contacting local elected officials including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and State Senator Simcha Felder (the latter told Russell that the interruption was a signal problem).

But it’s starting to look like an uphill battle. Brooklyn’s Pirate radio stations are thriving, according to a recent study by the New York State Broadcasters Association. The study found 29 pirate stations within earshot of Flatbush Avenue near Grand Army Plaza — a 58 percent increase from last year, when they found only 12. The survey estimates that there may be close to 100 stations total operating out of New York/Northern New Jersey area.

Unlicensed broadcasters can “pose a hazard to the community” by interfering with public safety frequencies, and they also compete unfairly with licensed broadcasters for advertising dollars, according to the FCC website. But, like their namesake on the open ocean, they can hard to track down — and even harder to keep down.

Radio pirates can set up shop fairly easily with an FM radio transmitter, an antenna, a programming source (like a computer) and cables, reports the Post. And avoiding FCC fines is as easy as moving the transmitter to another building.

In 2014, the popular Flatbush Jewish radio station JRoot radio, was shut down for “failing to comply with FCC regulations,” writes Yeshiva World, but popped back up on the airwaves just a few days later at 97.5FM — the publication is unclear on whether the station got an FCC license or made a deal with the legal station.

The calling card of an illegal station, said Russell, is that they’ll never announce the call numbers and letters on air (like WQXR, for example). Plus, he said, It wouldn’t be allowed to be so close to another radio station. When asked why he doesn’t switch to online radio, Russell concluded that it wouldn’t be the same. “I like to listen to the radio as I’m falling asleep at night and waking up in the morning,” he said.