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Prank Call to Castro
9. Prank Call to Fidel Castro Draws $4000 Fine From FCC
Miami Station Fined For Its Castro Prank
Castro Crank Callers Paying In Pennies
FCC Document Regarding Prank Call To Fidel Castro
Transcript Of Castro's Prank Call
Castro Speech Database
Profile: Hugo Chavez
Over the past several decades, many jokesters have developed a penchant for prank phone calls, including that animated Peck's Bad Boy of the 1990s, Bart Simpson, and of course the often coarse approach to telephony adopted by the Jerky Boys. The achievements of these individuals may have recently been bested by two Miami disc jockeys' who successfully completed a prank phone call to none other than Cuban President Fidel Castro last year.
Not surprisingly, an "informal complaint" lodged to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has garnered the Spanish language radio station WXDJ-FM (which broadcasted the call) a $4,000 fine. The fine was announced last week and in response the two radio hosts who completed the prank call (Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero) remarked that they plan to pay the fine solely with pennies.
Earlier this week Santos remarked "We prank-called a head of state in a country that is considered hostile to the United States. He's a violator of human rights and they're fining us $4,000. We just find it absurd." In the initial ruling issued by the FCC last week, the notice indicated that the radio station violated a regulation requiring that participants in phone conversations be told in advance if the call is being broadcast.
The first link leads to a news piece from the Miami Herald regarding the recent controversy surrounding the prank phone call to Fidel Castro. The second link will take visitors to an online article that talks about the recent decision of these radio personalities to pay the FCC's fine with pennies alone. The third link will take visitors to a complete text document from the FCC regarding their decision to fine the Miami radio station. For persons interested in what this prank call actually entailed, the fourth link provides a complete transcript of the conversation between the two radio personalities and Castro. The fifth link leads to an online database of speeches made by Castro from 1959 to 1996, which includes a number of search options, including date, subject, and type of speech. The sixth link leads to a profile of the current Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, who happened to be one of the persons that the radio personalities impersonated in order to reach President Castro on the phone. [KMG]
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/