not going to be dependent on gov-
ernment handouts. It’s something
that would come into being
through a smaller, highly motivat-
ed group of people. What are your
thoughts on those kinds of efforts?

IP: You can’t look at the individ-
ual stations without looking at the
context- what makes it a pirate?
When you say ‘pirate’ it means
illegal. Well, there’s a lot of places
where Co-op would be illegal. It’s
definitely worthwhile realizing
that what’s legal in Canada is ille-
gal in England. What is legal in
Canada is illegal in many cases in
the United States-

JC: Like what?

IP: In the United States, there real-
ly aren't a lot of opportunities for
people to use the public airwaves,
because they don’t have any more
public airwaves than we do, and
they have ten times as many peo-
ple. It’s a finite resource and it’s
already gone. So one of the most
successful examples of pirate radio
right now is in San Francisco.
There’s a whole bunch of low-watt
pirate broadcasters in the Bay
area. The kind of political pro-
gramming that we do, there’s not
the same number of people who're
doing that anymore [in the U.S|].
The big public stations are becom-
ing more and more conservative
and mainstream; they’re big busi-
nesses now.... And in England, any
kind of black music stations are
pirates, they’re illegal. But they
don’t do anything substantially
different than the kind of stuff
that we do here. So there’s a lot to
be said for pirate radio, there's a
lot to be said for community radio
and there are times when it’s the
same thing. A lot of what makes a
pirate a pirate is simply the con-
text, rather than the nature, of
what they’re doing.

JC: In terms of regulation, Canada
may be liberal compared to other
places, but compared with other
media, radio is hugely regulated.
Like you were saying, radio is a
finite resource, there are a limited
number of frequencies suitable for
transmission. So compared with
print media, say, radio is highly
regulated.

IP: It is, but tell me what you
want to do that you can’t do
because of regulations.

JC: Well, anyone that wants to can
publish a magazine, say, and
there’s no issue of needing to be
representative of a wider commu-
nity because it’s unlimited.
Whereas in radio, especially a
place like this station where, like
you said, there’s one community
Station that needs to represent a
widely diverse group of people,
there are limitations on how much
any one individual can do.

IP: Well, that’s true, there’s not
going to be any regulation at a
pirate station, except the regula-
tion of the people who are
involved in doing it. Personally,
though, I don’t think there’s any-
thing you can’t do on Co-op radio
that’s worth doing. So I don’t real-
ly worry about regulation here. We
play profanity and sexually
explicit materials in the middle of
the day, not that that’s the be-all
and the end-all, but we've come a
long way in the past ten years.
You didn’t used to be able to say
‘fuck’ on the radio, and now at
two in the afternoon they play ‘I
wanna go to fucking Hawaii.

JC: One definite limitation, just by
your structure, is time, because
you've got these slots, and an
individual person can’t go outside
their window.

IP: Yeah, but we still have time. It
is a finite resource, and Co-op
radio is a finite resource, there’s
only so many hours in the day,
but there is time available.

JC: The reason that seems impor-
tant to me is that, when Co-op
was started, one of the main inter-
ests was to go outside of conven-
tional commercial radio in format,
to go outside of radio as a player
of records, to stretch the bound-
aries of what radio could be in all
directions. I think an experimental
approach to form in radio was
much stronger than it is now.

IP: Well, they were much more in
touch with the fact that it was an
experiment. I don’t think [Co-op]
is really an experiment anymore.

JC: So that seems to be the value
of something like a pirate radio
station. But you probably have a
much smaller group of people
interested in those kind of experi-
ments; I guess one of the purposes
would be to make more people
interested, and thereby more aware
of the narrowness of commercial
radio and conventional mass
media.

IP: I totally agree with you. I do
think, though, that there is the
opportunity to to those things in
community radio in Canada. And
if people do want to experiment,
[Co-op] still is a place where you
can. I think we've gotten away
from that, and in a way we've fall-
en into a trap of doing very con-
ventional radio; we block things
off in hours and half-hours, and
it’s a small group of people pro-
gramming to a large group of peo-
ple, the whole spiel. But there’s
still a lot of room for experimenta-
tion if people want to do it. If peo-
ple want to experiment, don’t
bother starting a pirate radio sta-
tion, come do it here.

JC: Then maybe people just aren’t
interested in doing those kinds of
experiments anymore.

IP: Well [Co-op’s] job is, we've got
to make sure that people are aware
of the opportunities to do those
experiments. Maybe they're not. It
seems like everyone is pretty
focused on getting a job, there
maybe isn’t the kind of casualness
around that there should be.
Maybe people don’t have time to
experiment, they’re too busy,
there’s no money, they don’t want
to end up on welfare- maybe they
don’t think that experimentation
really leads anywhere.

JC: I guess it is the province of a
small group of people who have
the luxury to be able to do it.

IP: Experimentation is a luxury,
there’s no doubt about it.

JC: I don’t think Radio Vencer-
emos [the FMLN’s pirate radio sta-
tion in El Salvador during the civil
war] was too into format experi-
mentation, they had more pressing
needs. But in Amsterdam, say, dur-
ing the period when there was a
lot of squatting and anarchist poli-
tics, there was pirate radio that
was political and in a time of con-
flict. Yet it also had an explicit
agenda to break out of conven-

tional mass media structures.
Maybe we don’t have that intense
climate here.

IP: No, I don’t think we do, and I
don’t think you're going to see
pirate radio in Vancouver.

JC: At a place like Co-op, which
has a responsibility to a broad and
diverse audience, is there an inher-
ent conflict between that responsi-
bility and experimentation?
Because a lot of experimentation
could be accused of not being very
responsible [to listeners] or very
populist, or of being elitist or self-
indulgent.

IP: Well, some of it is.

JC: Do you think it is, in a sense,
necessarily?

IP: No, not at all. I think it can be
very entertaining, which I don't
think is elitist, and I think the fact
that anyone can come and do it is
populist in and of itself. You
know, [a given program] is just
one person’s opportunity to do
that, but I still believe that every-
body has the right to come down
and do things. I said earlier that
people don’t have the right. to just
come down and do things but, on
the flip side, I believe that every
individual has the right to have
access. They may not have the
right to have access here, but I do
think that people should come
down and do that kind of stuff.
You've still got a responsibility,
though. You’re not providing a
community service by what you're
doing, the community service is
that you're able to do it. I keep
coming back to the fact that -
everything has to be paid for, not
necessarily with money, but paid
for with energy. So you may want
to experiment, but that still has to
be provided for. It’s not going to
be provided for in the same way
that, for example, a Polish com-
munity program is going to be
paid for. They’re going to pay for
that show because they want the
service, they want the information.

If you're going to do experimenta- _

tion, people aren’t
going to pay to lis-
ten to it. They
may pay for
the right for
someone to
come in
and
experi-
ment, but
it still has
to be paid
for.

J€: So, in a
real sense,
although that may
not be a limitation that’s

been reached, it is a limitation on
the kind of experimentation you
can undertake here.

IP: But that’s true of anywhere. If
you want to do a pirate radio sta-
tion, somebody’s gotta pay for it,
the opportunity doesn’t just appear
from the sky. If you want to go
start screaming on the corner with
a megaphone that’s one thing, but
if you want to use radio and you
want to take it into another realm,
it’s going to have to be paid for. If
you want to do something that’s
that powerful, there’s going to be
a cost, an opportunity cost, a
monetary cost, a cost in terms of
time and commitment, to do any
of those kind of things. So while
people may think that that’s a lim-
itation, that if you come here

Co-op radio
effects
change in
and of itself.

November 1995 / Emuy 19

you're going to have to raise
money and it’s gotta be paid for,
that’s true in any other environ-
ment too.

JC: What I'm getting at, though, is
the issue of responsibility to an
audience. Here, by your mandate,
you are responsible to an audi-
ence, or at least to the community
that forms Co-op.

IP: But the audience is always
changing, you're responsible to
your audience. The moment you
get on the air it’s your audience,
and you're responsible to them,
you're not responsible to the last
person’s audience.

“We might like to purge our radio of
JC: Isn’t there an overlap? Is it
really that segregated, that there’s
one audience for this show and a
different one for the next?

anything that lacks at least the
chance of precipitating ...difference.
Just as there exist books that have
inspired earthshaking crimes, we
would like to broadcast texts that
IP: Not necessarily, but I do think
you have a right to program to
your audience. For example, if you
get on and do a gay program,
you're going to want to program
to your audience. You're not going
to want to go back and explain a
lot of stuff about why you're read-
ing this poem, or why you're read-
ing this piece about safer sex,
you're not going to want to go
back and do all the history of it.
So your responsibility, then, is not
to the average listener who needs
that information and in fact may
well be very offended by what
you're about to do, may be
grossed out, may run screaming
into the street; your responsibility
isn't to them, your responsibility is
to the people who you're program-
ming to.

And that’s very true for a lot of
programs. If you're doing anti-
racist programming or anti-fascist
programming, you are going to be
using language and talking about
things which the average listener
is not necessarily going to under-
stand or appreciate; but that’s not
why you're doing it. You're not
going to go back and explain why
it’s inappropriate for, say, people
to appropriate other people’s stuff;
you're not going to go back and
give all the history of
that, you're going to
start at point ‘f.
You're not
going to go
back and go
through all
those other
points. So,
who is
your
responsibili-
ty to? I think
your responsi-
bility is to the
people you want
to program to; keep-

ing in mind that anybody
can be listening. And, that you do
have legal responsibilities.

cause hearers to seize (or at least
make a grab for) the happiness that
God denies us..."

-Hakim Bey, from “Critique of the
Listener," in Radiotexte (see below)

Rapbio RAPTURE

‘Autumn Airlift’, Co-op 102.7 fm's
annual funding drive, is taking place
Oct. 12 - 29. Special programming is
happening throughout. If you want
more information or are interested in
becoming a member, the phone
number is 684-8494.

FurTHER RADIO READING

Neill Strauss, ed. Radiotext(e).
Semiotext{e) (New York, 1993.)
ISBN 0-936756-94-2.

Dana Augaitis and Dan Lander, eds.
Radio Rethink. Walter Phillips Gallery
(Banff, 1994.) ISBN 0-920159-66-4.
available on reserve in the ECIAD
library.

JC: Then it’s the job of whoever’s
overseeing the programming to
make sure that there are a wide
variety of audiences that are being
approached by this radio station. If
you're doing a gay program, you
need to be able to deal with those
issues on your terms without the
need to have balanced coverage,
so it’s for that particular audience.
But if you’re experimenting with
form, then you don’t necessarily
have an audience greater than
yourself.

IP: That’s not community radio,
though. The audience has to be

continued on page 20

not going to be dependent on gov-
cemment handouts. I's something
that would come into being
through a smaller, highly motivat-
cd group of people. What are your
thoughts on those kinds of efforts?

ual stations
‘context- what a pirate?
‘When you say ‘pirate’ it means
legal. Well, there's alot of places
‘where Co-op would be illegal. I's
definitely worthwhile realizing
‘that what’ legal in Canada i ille~
sgl in England, What is legal in
Canada is illegal in many cases in
the United States-

JC: Like what?

IP: In the United States, there real-
ly aren'ta lot of opportunities for
people to use the public airwaves,
because they don't have any more
public airwaves than we do, and
they have ten times as many peo-
ple. It's a finite resource and i's
already gone. So-one ofthe most
successful examples of pirate radio.
right now is in San Francisco,
‘There's a whole bunch of low-watt
pirate broadcasters in the Bay

area. The kind of politcal pro-
‘gramming that we do, there's not
the same number of people who're
doing that anymore fin the US].
‘The big publie stations are becom-
ing more and more conservative
and mainstream; they're big bus
nesses now... And in England, any
kind of black musie stations are
Pirates, theyre illegal. But they
don't do anything substantially
different than the kind of stuf
that we do here. So there's lot to
be said for pirate radio, there's a
Tot to be said for community radio
and there are times when i's the
same thing. Alot of what makes a
pirate a pirate is simply the con-
text, rather than the nature, of.
What they're doing,

JC: In terms of regulation, Canada
‘may be liberal compared to other
places, but compared with other
‘media, radio is hugely regulated.
Like you were saying, radio is a
finite resource, there area limited
‘number of frequencies suitable for
transmission. So compared with
print media, say, radio is highly
regulated.

IP: I's, but tell me what you
want to do that you can't do
because of regulations

IC: Well, anyone that wants to can
publish a magazine, say, and
there's no issue of needing to be
representative of a wider commu
nity because it's unlimited
‘Whereas in radio, specially a
place like this station where, lke
‘you said, there's one community
‘tation that needs to represent a
widely diverse group of people,
there are limitations on how much
‘any one individual can do.

IP: Wel, that’s true, there's not
oing to be any regulation at a
pirate station, except the regula-
tion of the people who are
involved in. doing it. Personally,
though, I don’t think there's any
thing you can't do on Co-op radio
that’s worth doing, So I don't real~
ly worry about regulation here. We
play profanity and sexually

‘explicit materials in the middle of
the day, not that that's the be-all
and the end-all, but we've come a
Tong way in the past ten years.
You didn't used to be able to say
fuck’ on the radio, and now at
two in the afternoon they play “
wanna go to fucking Hawail

IC: One definite limitation, just by
Your structure, is time, because
you've got these slots, and an
Individual person can't go outside
their window.

IP: Yeah, but we stil have time. It
{is a finite resource, and Co-op
radio is a finite resource, there's
only so many hours in the day,
but there is time available

JC: The reason that seems impor
tant to me is that, when Co-op
was started, one ofthe main int
ests was to go outside of conven-
tional commercial radio in format,
to go outside of radio asa player
of records, to stretch the bound
aries of what radio could be in all
directions. I think an experimental
approach to form in radio was
‘much stronger than it is now.

IP: Well, they were much more in
‘touch with the fact that it was an
‘experiment. I don't think [Co-op]
is really an experiment anymore.

IC: So that seems to be the value
‘of something like a pirate radio
station. But you probably have a
‘much smaller group of people
interested in those kind of experi-
ments; I guess one of the purposes
ould be to make more people
interested, and thereby more aware
fof the narrowness of commercial
radio and conventional mass
media

IP: 1totlly agree with you. 1 do
think, though, that there isthe
opportunity t to those things in
community radio in Canada. And
if people do want to experiment,
(Co-op sil isa place where you
can. I think we've gotten away
from that, and in a way we've fall=
en into a trap of doing very con=
ventional radio; we block things
off in hours and half-hours, and
its small group of people pro-
‘gramming to a large group of peo
ple, the whole spiel. But there’
stil alot of room for experimenta-
tion if people want to doit. If peo-
ple want to experiment, don't
bother starting a pirate radio sta-
tion, come do it here

JC: Then maybe people just arent
interested in doing those kinds of
‘experiments anymore,

IP: Well [Co-op's job is, we've got
to make sure that people are aware
‘of the opportunities to do those
‘experiments. Maybe they're not. It
seems like everyone is prety
focused on getting a jb, there
‘maybe isn't the kind of casualness
around that there should be.
Maybe people don't have time to
‘experiment, they're too busy,
there's no money, they don't want.
to.end up on welfare- maybe they
don't think that experimentation
really leads anywhere.

LIC: I guess it isthe province of a
small group of people who have
the luxury to be able to doit,

: Experimentation isa luxury,
there's no doubt about it.

JC: I don't think Ri
mos {the FMLN's
tion in El Salvador during the civil
war] was too into format experi-
mentation, they had more pressing
needs. But in Amsterdam, say, dur
ing the period when there was a
Jot of squatting and anarchist poli-
ties, there was pirate radio that
‘was political and in a time of con-
flict, Yet it also had an explicit
‘agenda to break out of conven-

tional mass media structures
Maybe we don't have that intense
climate here

IP: No, I don't think we do, and 1
don't think you'r going to see
Pirate radio in Vancouver.

JC: Ata place like Co-op, which
has a responsibilty toa broad and
diverse audience, is there an inher-
‘et confit between that responsi-
bility and experimentation?
Because alot of experimentation
could be accused of not being very
responsible [to listeners} or very
populist, or of being elitist or sef-
indulgent.

IP: Well, some of it is

JC: Do you think itis, in a sense,
necessarily?

IP: No, no at al. think it can be
very entertaining, which I don't
think is elitist, and think the fact
that anyone can come and do
populist in and of ise You
now, fa given program] is just
‘ne person's opportunity to do
that, but I ill believe that every
body has the right to come down
and do things. said earlier that
people don't have the right to just
ome down and do things bu on
the lip side, I believe that every
dividual ha the ight to have
access. They may not have the
Fight to have acces here, but | do
think hat people should come
down and do that kind of stu.
You've sil gota responsibly,
though. You'e not providing a
community service by what you're
doing, the community servic is
that you're able to doit. keep
coming back othe fact that =
everthing has tobe pai fr, not
necessarily with money, but paid
for with energy So you may want
{0 experiment, but that sil has to
bbe provided for. I's not going to
‘be provided for in the same way
that, for example, a Polish com
munity program i going to be
ai fr. They're going to pay for
{hat show because they want the
service, they want the information.
IF you're going to do experimenta-
tion, people arent
sfoing to pay tis

you're going to have to raise
‘money and it's gotta be paid for,
thats true in any other environ-

JC: What I'm getting at, though, is
‘the issue of responsibility o an
audience. Here, by your mandate,
you are responsible to an audi
fence, oF at least to the community
that forms Co-op.

IP: But the audience is always
‘changing, you'e responsible to
‘your audience. The moment you
{et on the ar it’s your audience,
and you're responsible to them,
you're not responsible to the last
person's audience.

LI: Isn't there an overlap? Is it
really that segregated, that there's
fone audience for this show and a
diferent one forthe next?

IP: Not necessarily, but I do think
‘you have a right to program to
‘your audience. For example, if you
{et on and do a gay program,
‘you'r going to want to program
to your audience. You're not going
to want to go back and explain a
Jot of stuff about why you're read
ing this poem, or why you're read
ing this piece about safer sex,
‘you're not going to want to go
back and do all the history of i.
So your responsibility th
to the average listener who needs
hat information and in fact may
well be very offended by what
you're about to do, may be
‘grossed out, may run screaming,
Ito the street; your responsibility
isn't to them, your responsiblity is
to the people who you're program-
ming to
‘And that's very true for alot of
programs. If you're doing anti-
racist programming or ant-fascst
programming, you are going to be
using language and talking about
things which the average listener
{snot necessarily going to under-
stand or appreciate; but that's not
why you're doing it. You're not
oing to go back and explain why
its inappropriate for, say, people
to appropriate other people's stuff;
you're not going to go back and
sive all the history of
‘that, you're going to

ten tit They stat at point‘.
may pay for You're not
the right for foing to go

someone to Co-op radio back and go

through all

effects those other
pie) change in o
ame 2nd of itself. Jian

although that may
not be a limitation that's
been reached, it isa limitation on
the kind of experimentation you
can undertake here.

IP: But that’s true of anywhere. If
‘you want to do a pirate radio sta-
tion, somebody's gotta pay for it,
the opportunity doesnt just appear
from the sky. If you want to go
stat screaming on the corner with
aa megaphone that's one thing, but
-you want to use radio and you
vant to take it into another realm,
it’s going to have to be paid for. If
‘you want to do something that's
‘that powerful, there's going to be
a cost, an opportunity cost, a
monetary cost, a cost in terms of
time and commitment, to do any
‘of those kind of things. So while
‘people may think that thats lim-
itation, that if you come here

to program to; keep-
{ng in mind that anybody
can be listening. And, that you do
have legal responsibilities.

IC: Then its the job of whoever's
‘overseeing the programming, to
‘make sure that there are a wide
variety of audiences that are being
approached by this radio station. If
‘you're doing a gay program, you
red to be able to deal with those
issues on your terms without the
need to have balanced coverage,
‘0 its for that particular audience.
‘But if you're experimenting with
form, then you don't necessarily
have an audience greater than
yourself.

IP: That's not community radio,
‘though The audience has to be

contin on page 20

Noveer 1995 / Emr 19

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sing at sates he
‘nce preepiatng. iene
ped eattaig cmc we
oui tet tesct to tt
‘aie ere oe or test
tke 3 990) te happiness
Gosden.”

Haim Be om Cru of he
Usenet ditt ee bow)

“At Ait, oop 1027 fs
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(x 12-28 Spec programming
apocing throughs yeu wat
becoming 2 member he pane
amber 84-2004

Ne Seu. dott
Semon Yr 1983)
Ison o-snersea42

Dana Apis an an Lander es.
‘ai ek We Pips er
(eae, 194) SO o-20158-6-4
rate on ese inthe ECAD