By Charles Elmore
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 21, 2004

You're in your car, heading out for a Monday night Dolphins game. You dial
up a pre-game radio show. Reception is awful. What gives?

Cuba is jamming the broadcast.

It's not necessarily a government plot, but it is an irritant to
international relations as far as many sports fans are concerned. The source
of the trouble is a Cuban station over which American regulators have no
control, and it's stepping on WQAM-560AM in Miami. Fans in Palm Beach and
Broward counties suffer most.

"There is a station at the same frequency as WQAM, and their power has
increased," said George Corso, chief engineer at WQAM. "They're annoying the
daylights out of us."

WQAM has received dozens of calls and e-mails, mostly from Palm Beach and
northern Broward counties, he said. WQAM's signal is weaker there, and more
vulnerable to interference, particularly at night.

The signal of the Cuban station on the same 560AM frequency has been
measurably stronger since October, Corso said. The interference was
noticeable at the beginning of the 2003 World Series, and then seemed to
subside until it came back with a vengeance recently.

WQAM has measured the problem and reported it to the Federal Communications
Commission, but the agency has no jurisdiction over a station in Cuba.

"We're telling people to write their congresssman," Corso said.

A call to the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, the equivalent of a
Cuban embassy, was not returned Monday.

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