Pirate radio

In a corner studio overlooking bustling Blue Hill Avenue, the young woman behind the controls spins a booming tropical mix of compas, reggae, and contemporary Haitian tunes, plus a little bit of Destiny's Child and Shaggy.

''This is Radio Concorde," she enthusiastically declares in Creole inside this tangerine-hued studio at Mattapan's WRCB-AM 1580 station. Posters of hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean adorn the walls along with a mural of a sunset over a tropical island.

The DJ's voice resonates in the hallways of this office building, sails over the airways along Blue Hill Avenue, ripples out to Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester and floats over Grove Hall and the outskirts of Southie.

Drive deeper into the metropolis and the station's signal fades into a swirl of static.

Radio Concorde entertains its listeners, serving as a community resource for local news and Haitian-related bulletins in Creole. It's also unlicensed -- what some in the industry call ''pirate radio."

The station's signal, emitted from a transmitter somewhere amid the triple-deckers and storefronts in Mattapan, could cost the station federal fines or get it shut down, for unauthorized broadcasts on an already-crowded radio dial.

''It's entrepreneurial spirit that is illegal," says Al Sprague, president of the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association, who said the station does not come up on his list of licensed stations in the state. The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates all broadcast outlets, also has no record of the station. Some community residents say the station and others like it provide neighborhood access programs similar to those on local cable television, in their native languages, which aren't offered anywhere else.

In the view of licensed radio operators in and around Boston, however, such pirate stations are broadcast outlaws, radio renegades that function as real stations but don't play by FCC rules or pay the costly application, licensing, and maintenance fees for legitimate status. They also say these unlicensed operations cut into their local advertising dollars with their commercials.

For a motorist trying to tune into a station while driving through the city, such bootleg outlets can cause interference or static, elbowing out established commercial and legal signals. The FCC says these signals can also jam emergency and police channels.

Because pirate channels fly under the FCC radar, it's hard to nail down the exact number of these station scofflaws in Boston. The FCC would not comment on any specific local pirate radio stations. Drivers may catch a pirate signal while navigating in a certain neighborhood, or stumble upon their frequency when pressing ''SEEK" on their car radios.

''It's not as if the foreign language communities are not adequately served by licensed broadcasters," said Stu Fink, general manager of WRCA in Cambridge. ''WRCA, WNTN, WUNR, and other stations, operate full schedules, servicing the ethnic communities, and provide airtime, when available, to anyone who requests it. Pirate stations are not only illegal, but they are detriment to the sound quality of radio."

Under FCC regulations, a low-power station (from one to 100 watts) is not required to be licensed if it doesn't exceed a transmission range of 200 feet and is used for non-commercial purposes such as public safety or traveler's information. Legit operators and broadcast officials say those unlicensed signals, with help from a labyrinth of antennas, can be audible for miles.

But at least one host of an unlicensed radio show sees a need that goes unmet on mainstream channels.

''I don't see it as pirate radio," says Oswald Neptune, a cofounder of Radio Nouveaute, which was shut down by the FCC this summer. Neptune was also a former director of Radio Concorde, where he hosted his own news talk show. He said he stopped hosting his show there last year when the FCC stopped by and told employees the station was reaching farther than its legal coverage area. Neptune says he now buys airtime on WNTN 1550 AM, which is licensed by the FCC, where he hosts a weekly health news show in Creole. He says that too many unlicensed or low-power stations can do more damage than good by crowding one another out, like birds squatting on a power line.

''If you have one or two of them, you can accomplish your mission, which is educating and informing the community," Neptune said. But when you have 10 or more, as is the case around Boston, it creates problems, he said.

Over at Mattapan's Radio Bel Ayiti (WRBAB 1700 AM), an unlicensed station, director Marcus Darbouze says that the steep cost of establishing a licensed radio station, which can run from thousands of dollars to six figures or more, is out of reach for ethnic communities like Boston's Haitians, who tend to be working-class.

''The high-power stations are too expensive for the community, and we have a lot of youth and community organizers who want to reach out to the airwaves," says Darbouze, who helped start Radio Bel Ayiti three years ago. The station features talk shows and commentary about immigration, domestic violence, health, political news from Haiti and music, from a studio on Blue Hill Avenue.

''We unfortunately are bound to use the low-power stations to reach our people, but they don't go far enough," he added.

Other station managers have grown so incensed over these airwave-sailing pirates that they have posted a website listing 22 low-power or unlicensed stations in Greater Boston, with their websites and call letters. They list at least five in the Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury area.

One Cambridge consulting company, Broadcast Signal Lab, compiled a report two years ago called ''Do they comply?" that studied the signal power of eight unlicensed AM stations in greater Boston that allegedly operated beyond their legal power levels. The report, commissioned by Waltham's WNTN station, found that these stations mounted antennas on triple-deckers and other buildings around Mattapan, Cambridge, Ashmont in Dorchester, and Forest Hills in JP, to boost their range.

The FCC cracks down on pirate radios stations when there are complaints, or when mavericks interrupt legal channels or jam police and emergency channels, according to a commission spokeswoman.

When investigating a pirate station, the FCC sends a letter requesting the managers stop their operation, then follows up with an order to stop transmitting. Fines for unlicensed radio operations can range from $10,000 a day to a maximum of $75,000. The FCC also threatens operators with criminal prosecution.

''Don't do it!" warns the FCC website.

In August, the FCC's Boston-area office shut down 1640 AM Radio Nouveaute and fined it $10,000 after repeatedly ordering owner Sylvane Simon to stop operating without a license. Community leaders say the station was the first of Boston's four Haitian stations, and operated in a studio the size of a large closet on Blue Hill Avenue.

Radio Nouveaute launched seven years ago and grew to become a major news outlet for the community, especially last year, when chaos erupted in Haiti after president Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and fled the country. Callers phoned the station to find information about their loved ones and where to wire money.

Throughout 2004, says a FCC report, its agents used a meter to track the station's signal from a studio at 1333 Blue Hill Ave. to a transmitter at a nearby Duke Street apartment building. When the agents spoke to Simon about the radio broadcasts, he told them he would remain off the air until he received FCC authorization. But agents kept picking up the station's signal, the report continues.

Calls to Simon and e-mails to the station's website were not returned. That website states that the station is currently looking to reopen in a new studio soon. In the meantime, they have gone back on the air, sporadically.

''What generally happens is that these guys go across the street," Sprague said, ''and start over again."

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com