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Hank and Jim's RNI show aired the evening of July 27th 1987, right at the height of the media blitz. "A Current Affair" even did a live broadcast from the deck while the show was airing (see previous page)! Because of all the news coverage, that broadcast probably had the most listeners of any of the previous tests (a majority of the reception reports and QSL requests that came to the mail drop seemed to mention the Hank and Jim "show"). Despite being just dry runs, these "test" shows were essentially a preview of what RNI would have been: fun, free-form entertainment...no formats, no constraints. The personality of the person on the air would have been the personality of the program.
Allan needed several things
for maintenance purposes. Some tools, some speakers, some fly swatters
(the fly problem was ridiculous) and some more foodstuffs (plus beer and
pretzels). Hank and I had taken the
supply boat to Brooklyn so we could get all these things and crashed for
the night. The plan was to return
to The Sarah first thing in the morning, as July 28th was going to be a big
day again with the media The clock radio went off at 7AM to the sounds of 1010 WINS as expected, but what we heard them reporting was most unexpected. The bulletin was coming across right at that very moment that The Sarah was being boarded by the FCC and Coast Guard...and RNI was being shut down. We were in shock. We stopped what we were doing to listen to live coverage of Allan and Ivan (along with reporter R.J. Smith from the Village Voice) being handcuffed and led off The Sarah. WINS reported that they were being taken to Federal District Court in Brooklyn for booking, so we headed there instead. When we arrived, the rest of the intended RNI crew had already started assembling, and we all piled into the court room. The magistrate released Allan and Ivan on their own recognizance, pending a hearing. Hank and I dropped Ivan off at his home, and took Allan to Jim's to see all the news coverage he'd been missing via a week's worth of videotape (with a brief stop for King Cones at Hank's Good Humor truck).
In the meantime, the issue of The Sarah had to be addressed. The FCC were unable to cut the anchor chain, so the ship was still sitting out on the ocean unattended. The law said that someone needed to stay with the ship or anyone could "claim" it. A lifetime of drawing the short straw came back to haunt me as I got elected to stay on the ship "for a couple of days" while Allan had some issues taken care of on shore. So on July 30th, we loaded up the supply boat with a full media contingent and headed out to assess the FCC's damage. It wasn't pretty. Equipment had been smashed, cables had been cut...the studio was mangled beyond recognition.
"A couple of days" turned into
one week. Then a week and a half. I was by myself, four and a half miles
out in the Atlantic Ocean. On the day Allan was coming to relieve me from my stationary sea voyage, I woke up to refuel the engines (as I had every morning) only to find five feet of water in the engine room and the water rising fast. Since drowning was not on my day planner of 'things to do' that Friday, I immediately got on the CB and declared a Mayday. Within minutes, the very same Coast Guard that had been reluctantly assisting the FCC just weeks earlier, was now pulling along side The Sarah to theoretically save my sorry ass.
Allan summoned back The Munzer and had The Sarah towed back to Boston with the hopes that he could re-fit the ship for getting back on the air. With things still legally murky, that was with a big "maybe". Allan and Ivan returned to court for a hearing on August 27th. After all the show of force and bully tactics undertaken by the FCC to get RNI off the air, the charges were officially dropped - proving to us that the "bust" was definitely carried out under legally murky circumstances. The government didn't care because they'd accomplished what they wanted - RNI was off the air and that was that.
In the weeks and months that
followed, we continued to be celebrities of the moment. There were
endless appearances on The day of "RNI on WNYG" took place on August 5th, and the station was packed to the roof with media. It was such a success for the station that they invited us back to "take over the station" every weekend. They christened it the dreadful title of "The Pirate Party" (shudder) and the first regular shows began September 5th. Eventually, Hank and Jim would do mornings, I'd do the midday and Randi, Ivan and J.L. would anchor evenings. What started out as a neat idea quickly evolved into a nightmare.
The station refused to pay us,
so they were getting free air talent every weekend at our expense. When
we protested this, we were instructed that we could sell our OWN advertising if
we wanted to. The station was getting free publicity and decent ratings
and wouldn't even help us get any sponsorship. Then came the constant
nitpicking over the content of the
The whole time, very little was being done or discussed as to what the next step for RNI would be. The three of us found it hard to believe that all the work and time that we put into RNI were culminating with this stress-filled show on this insane-asylum AM station in Babylon. Our efforts simply didn't justify the constant headaches we were being subjected to by both WNYG and the fractured state of RNI itself. On Saturday October 24th, we walked in to WNYG, announced that this would be our last show, and simply walked away. We also resigned our services from RNI as well, rather than deal with the constant inside bickering. Regardless, I never regretted the experience - just the peripheral sideshows that never seemed to cease. Now it was over, and that was certainly for the best. We decided to answer the question of "what's next?" on our own. After we walked out of WNYG, we piled into Hank's car and headed back to Brooklyn. Somewhere on the Long Island Expressway, it was agreed that WHOT would HAVE TO make a return to the airwaves. In fact, Hank, Jim, Ivan and I did a test broadcast that very evening. The REAL fun was just beginning...!
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