Local 'pirate' radio station forced off the air

The Federal Communications Commission shut down WSKR 97.7 for operating without a license. For two years, West Philadelphians had a disc jockey who played the hip-hop they liked, ruminated about the issues that interested them, and allowed them to sing on the air -- once they got through to his single phone line. His name is Napolean Kinkaid "Superstar Jackson." As a disc jockey and spokesperson for the local FM station WSKR 97.7 -- a "pirate" radio station shut down last Wednesday for operating without a Federal Communications Commission license -- he estimates he reached 500-700 listeners nightly from the station's 52nd Street offices. "Superstar" Kinkaid, who interviewed neighborhood celebrities and discussed issues ranging from date rape to "women wearing big earrings" on his 6-10 p.m. hip-hop show, is off the air. And until he and station CEO Mike Stone -- who chose not to comment on the situation -- can get a license, the station will stay that way. The station must scrounge up $2,300 for a preliminary "construction permit," without which the FCC will keep the transmitter and antenna it confiscated. "'Pirate radio' may constitute a serious threat to public safety and cause annoying interference to transmissions of legitimate, licensed broadcast stations," FCC officials said in a written release. In the case of WSKR, the "legitimate" station whose airwaves it interfered with was WPST 97.5 FM, which broadcasts out of Princeton, N.J. "I don't see what all the fuss is. Princeton is all the way in damn New Jersey," Kinkaid said. "But this has happened. What we gotta do is pull ourselves up by the buckstraps and start walking again so it comes back as a legitimate radio station." While a regional FCC spokesperson expressed doubt as to whether the station will be able to obtain a license in the crowded Philadelphia FM market, Kinkaid claimed that the problem is primarily a financial one. But the "money problem" isn't limited to his own difficulties with the fledgling station. It's part of a national "mindset" that he feels is perpetuated by modern hip-hop icons like Sean "Puffy" Combs. "With this new Generation X, Puff is the man. I don't think that highly of him, I don't get nothin' from his songs. But that's what everybody's mindframe is into, is getting money and spending money, getting to whatever your goal might be with money." Shutting down the station has brought him and Stone publicity -- most of it positive. After an article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore station WOLV broadcast the two of them over the phone for "about an hour," according to Stone. Last night, Channel 6 called them to set up an interview. "It's a strange situation that something so negative would get a positive response, but maybe this is an indication that we didn't do anything wrong," Kinkaid said. "We didn't tell people to kill people, we didn't tell people the wrong things to do. Our message is positive," he continued, adding that crime in University City "has to be stopped." "This reminds me of Jesus, the way he got crucified on the cross," he said. "He didn't have a lot of money or power per se, but he was a messenger of love and nobody wanted to believe it. Nobody wants to believe WSKR was trying to help the people. We was doing what Jesus was doing."

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