Border Blaster - Background

Background

In contrast to pirate radio stations which broadcast illegally, border blasters are licensed by the government upon whose soil they are located. Pirate radio stations are freebooters from offshore, outside the territorial waters of the nation they serve, or ones that are illegally operating in defiance of national law within its sovereign territory.

A similar situation developed in Europe, beginning with Radio Luxembourg after World War II. The British government identified these stations as pirates because the Sunday broadcast was reserved for British listeners (deliberately coinciding with the BBC Sundays of religious programmes). The broadcasts were considered illegal on British soil as these stations were breaking the monopoly of the non-commercial BBC. Listening to the broadcasts was technically a violation of UK radio-license laws of the day. The same radio périphérique, or "peripheric radio", phenomenon existed in France from the 1930s until the legalization of private broadcasting in the early 1980s, which allowed Radio Luxembourg from Luxembourg, Radio Andorre and Sud Radio from Andorra, Radio Monte Carlo from Monaco, and Europe 1 from Saarland, Germany to begin legally broadcasting signals across international borders.

In Mexico and the US, while the federal government of the US did not particularly like them, the stations were allowed to flourish. W. Lee O'Daniel used a border blaster in his successful campaign for governor. The US, unlike the UK, has never required a license to listen to broadcast radio or television. The only restriction placed upon border-blasters was a law which prohibited studios in the US from linking by telephone to border-blaster transmitters in Mexico. This law, part of the Brinkley Act, was introduced in the wake of John R. Brinkley's flirtation with fascism prior to WWII on XERA. The Brinkley Act remains on the books in the US, but licenses under that act are now routinely granted as long as the station follows applicable US and Mexican regulations.

The British government created a similar measure after World War II: the state-owned telephone monopoly prevented studios in Britain from linking by telephone to the transmitters of Radio Luxembourg. These restrictions were mostly lifted following the privatisation and demonopolisation of the UK telephone system.

Signals of many US and Canadian radio, and to a lesser extent television, stations cross over into neighboring territory. These stations are usually not considered "border blasters" as the programming is not primarily targeted at listeners and viewers on the other side of the border. US and Canadian stations have always adhered to similar maximum power levels and the overspill is regarded as unintentional and largely unavoidable.

One possible exception to that overall rule was CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. While originally licensed as a Class II-B (now Class B) station and always operating in full compliance with the technical specifications and operating rules of its CRTC license (i.e., protection of the entire Mexican border nights and protection of co-channel Canadian stations days and nights), CKLW's 50,000 watt directional signal blanketed much of Michigan and northern Ohio east to Cleveland days and nights and south to Toledo, Lima and Dayton days. American-owned until 1970 as part of the RKO General chain (along with such other top 40 powerhouses as KHJ in Los Angeles and KFRC in San Francisco) it functioned essentially as a Detroit-market station during the 1960s and 1970s. Its Motown-flavored personality top 40 format made it one of the most highly-rated stations in the Midwestern US. The decline of AM radio as a music source in the 1970s, combined with new Canadian government rules imposing minimum domestic music content, made it difficult for CKLW to continue to compete for listeners with Detroit-based, US-licensed FM music stations which offered clean stereo sound and faced no program content or music playlist restrictions. So CKLW abandoned top-40 and largely abandoned its efforts to compete in the Detroit market in the 80s, and today is a news/talk station aimed specifically at an Ontario audience, though still containing a significant amount of American syndicated talk.

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the regulatory body for Canadian broadcasting, it is illegal to operate a station licensed in Canada from studios in the US; CKEY-FM in Fort Erie, Ontario learned this when it attempted to offshore its operations to American-based Citadel Broadcasting's studios across the Niagara River in Buffalo, New York, and almost had its license revoked because of it. CKEY remains on the air, targeting solely the Niagara Region and no longer targeting Western New York. WIVB-TV, prior to the digital television transition, could be seen as a U.S. border blaster into Canada (as Western New York is a smaller market than Southern Ontario, which boasts the major world city of Toronto); it operated with 100,000 watts of power on the VHF low band (channel 4), even after the Federal Communications Commission reduced the maximum allowed power for that band to 80,000 watts. (WIVB did not make significant attempts to reach the Canadian market, although rival station WKBW-TV did.)

The mythology surrounding the history of the border blaster stations in Mexico is extensive with examples being the 1975 ZZ Top song "Heard It on the X", 1983's "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo, and 1987's "Border Radio" movie theme by The Blasters.