A famed Aroostook broadcaster is selling one of the world’s most powerful shortwave radio stations.
Monticello’s WBCQ The Planet, an international AM/FM shortwave radio broadcast station and free speech platform, constructed the $17 million Monticello Maine Superstation for the World’s Last Chance Church in 2019.
“We are selling [or leasing] the assets of what we call the superstation facilities, one of the most powerful radio stations in the world,” said Allan Weiner, who co-owns and operates WBCQ with his wife, Angela Weiner. “The facility that we built for them is surplus to our needs. We’re trying to get the Voice of America, the government or the military to take it over or other private shortwave broadcasters in the country.”
From rural Monticello, just off Route 1, broadcasters transmitted shortwave signals to some of the world’s most remote and sometimes oppressed nations. Now, others have the opportunity to spread their message globally.
The World’s Last Chance Church, operating on 9330 MHz with up to 500 KW of power with its fully rotatable antenna system, broadcast globally for six years. But it ended the contract with the station in January, according to Weiner.
Galal Philip Habib Doss, an Egyptian businessman and former Seventh Day Adventist, founded the end-of-times church.
Word of the alleged sale spread quickly on social media and in shortwave and pirate radio circles. But in the telling of the story, there was some confusion, Weiner said.
Some shortwave enthusiasts thought the Aroostook couple was selling the radio station, but they are not.
“We’re not selling our radio station, just selling one of the assets,“ he said. “We’re not going off the air.”
The Weiners founded WBCQ nearly 30 years ago and it is the only AM/FM shortwave station in the country, Weiner said.
He calls the powerhouse, which beams all over the world with 12 transmitters, a “Ma and Pa radio station.”
In shortwave and pirate radio circles, Weiner is a free speech legend who battled the Federal Communications Commission for decades related to his multiple underground stations. In the 1980s he operated an offshore unlicensed AM/FM radio station, Radio New York International, broadcasting rock’n roll music along the entire East Coast from a ship anchored in international waters four miles off Long Island.
“There is nothing illegal about this station; we are in international waters beyond the jurisdiction of the FCC,” Weiner said in a 1982 news broadcast.
The U.S. Coast Guard eventually arrested Weiner and dismantled RNI. Free speech advocates defended him. After an ongoing battle with the governing body, Weiner received his license for WBCQ in 1998.
He was inducted into the North American Pirate Radio Hall of Fame in 2010.
WBCQ uses shortwave frequencies 9330, 7490, 6160, 5130 and 3265. Locally they are on FM 94.7 and 98.3 and 780 AM. The AM station is 50s, 60s, 70s oldies and the FM station is traditional country, he said.
“We beam all over the place. We have listeners in New York, South America. Heck, we’ve gotten a listenership from the people stationed in Antarctica,” Weiner said.
WBCQ also leases shortwave time by the hour.
Weiner does not censor content and will lease to anyone in the name of free speech, he said. But because of the content of some lessees, such as the Hal Turner Show, Weiner came under fire by hate watch groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, because of Turner’s racist ideologies. The Hal Turner show is no longer on the broadcast schedule.
Rumors spread that the superstation was selling for $2 million, but Weiner said that is not accurate and the World’s Last Chance Church is asking for offers. The sale is just for the station and the antennae. The superstation operated under Weiner’s FCC license and that is not included, he said.
“Whoever buys it will have to secure a license,” Weiner said. “They would probably have no trouble getting it licensed by the FCC.”
For more information contact Weiner at 207-889-0039.
