Australia cancelled its domestic shortwave broadcasts aimed at the outback, the Northern Territory and peripheral islands about two months ago. An appeal to their legislature failed and the broadcasts are silent.

Therefore any claim that WAPA was being punished for being a progressive voice is null and voided.

WAPA had already replaced the boosters with existing stations which it bought in the respective cities of Puerto Rico, but they were not operative due to the effects of the storm... just as the boosters would not have been operative.

The issue is simply that the storm was so destructive that only 4 or 5 stations were able to stay on the air or return to the air immediately after (WIPR, WKAQ, WAPA, WODA, WUNO) and the ability to operate and serve the Island had as its only limiting factor the logistics of getting transmitters on the air and getting staff members to a place where they could broadcast.

For example, WKAQ had its building nearly destroyed, but within a few hours, they were on the air from the transmitter site which has an emergency studio. WKAQ has, for many decades, been the leading news and talk station in Puerto Rico.

In many other cases, station owners sent their staff home before the storm. Most stations in PR do not have a news department, so placing the staff of each station in danger would have been irresponsible. In fact, many stations outside the San Juan and other big city metro areas have studios at the transmitter and that location is typically low, moist and flat and in a flood zone... so those stations had no way of staying on the air.

Reality is a bummer.

Puerto Rico became a territory, administered by US appointed governors in 1898. It did not become a Commonwealth until 1952, when it got its first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín.

WAPA Radio: the most conservative, right-wing news and talk station of all such operations in Puerto Rico.

"No, its accussing the FCC of bias. While it took efforts to limit WAPAs AM signal to protect licensing, the FCC has let similar signals go on in the continental US."

Where? Examples of stations that are authorized despite not following the rules and not filling in the proper paperwork?

Objective? The post ignores all the other stations (WKAQ, WIPR, WODA, WUNO, etc.) that were on the air during or immediately after the storm. WAPA is not unique, as there are 131 fully licensed stations in Puerto Rico. The poster talks about short-wave, yet shortwave is long-gone from the Caribbean except for the propaganda mill of post-Castro Cuba. The poster blames the suspension of what was always an experimental operation of boosters for Puerto Rico's lack of news and information, yet the locations of those now-silent boosters were all severely flooded and could not have operated in any event.

The terrain is the issue. The news / talk networks on the Island use combinations of 4 or 5 local stations in each of the larger cities (San Juan, Mayagüez, Ponce, Arecibo) to cover most of the territory. Single transmitters, like 50 kw WKVM in San Juan, don't even fully cover much more than their immediate metro and surrounding areas. Ing. Blanco was simply trying to add coverage without having to buy additional stations, and he did it the wrong way. There are 131 licensed AM and FM stations in the Commonwealth. There is no shortage of radio coverage or radio stations. Another consideration is that it has been nearly a century since the last storm of this magnitude and nearly two decades since Georges and three decades since Hugo, the most destructive storms in modern times. What would sustain an AM station in between emergencies in an era when AM stations are struggling to survive? Another government boondoggle would be the only way to keep such a facility running, assuming that it could even be licensed in accordance with international treaties and the existing assignment of 70 AM stations all over Puerto Rico.

The 107 comments so far relate to an inaccurate original post. First, with the exception of Cuba's probaganda machine called Radio Havana, there is no longer any use of short-wave anywhere on the Caribbean islands. On most Caribbean island nations, AM radio has been shuttered with many FM stations operating from seemingly every island and atol in the region. Further, there are no shortwave radio receivers available. Then there is the question of why anyone would open a shortwave station in Puerto Rico, since US radio regulations prohibit serving the domestic population on shortwave. The poster seems to believe that WAPA is a unique service. Not counting translators and LPFM stations, Puerto Rico has over 120 licensed AM and FM stations. Several others, including WIPR, WKAQ and WODA were only briefly, if at all, off the air and continued to serve the Island population. WKAQ and WIPR, in conditions where there is little man-made interference, cover the entire island adequately. So does WAPA's single San Juan transmitter. Other stations, like news outlet WUNO, came back shortly after the storm had passed. There is no lack of radio signals; there is a lack of power and even batteries to operate radio receivers at the listener end. The discussion of program content on the US mainland does little to solve the horrible problems of basic necessities for food, water, power and information in Puerto Rico. Our communications policy is not to regulate content, and, in fact, Puerto Rico had a thriving radio sector with multiple Island-wide networks of news and talk stations reflecting both of the major political parties and philosophies in the Commonwealth.