Unlicensed “pirate” radio stations are thriving in the Internet age,
despite the fact that most people can now operate their own Web-based
radio stations without risking arrest.
“A vibrant pirate radio scene continues in the United States, and also
in Europe and to a lesser extent in South America,” said George Zeller, a
pirate radio listener/journalist for the past four decades.
“This includes a very energetic pirate radio scene on shortwave, and
also a stunningly resilient pirate radio scene on FM and to a lesser
extent on medium wave, despite the frequent busts by the FCC of FM
pirates.”
(Read full article at: http://www.rwonline.com/article/pirate-radio-thrives-in-internet-age/220315)
Soure: Radio World
Thanks for posting the article. The US scene is fascinating, because legal radio is so different over there. There is no compulsory public broadcaster in the way that we have the BBC, RTE etc, and commercial radio has been the main provider of services since the 1920's. They never had an offshore radio boom per se, with the exception of the early pirate RKXR in 1933, the Christian fundamentalist Radio Free America in 1973, and free speech station Radio New York International in 1987-8: the FCC has always clamped down on offshore broadcasters, even breaking international law to close them.
ReplyDeleteThere have been legal college radio stations and public access cable stations for some decades, but illegal AM and FM broadcasting has been popular since the 1960's. The Shortwave Scene tends to be a bit more idiosyncratic and political than the European "hobby" scene: stations like The Crystal Ship for example, are broadly anti-authority in political outlook.
Since Radio Free Berekely started in 1993, there has been a revived pirate radio movement of "micropower" stations, broadly anti-establishment in tone, who have operated more openly in defiance of the law and have organised into groupings to represent them nationally. In 1996, the anarchist publisher AK Press published its handbook of Micropower Radio, called "Seizing The Airwaves": if you have a radical bookstore near you, you can still pick up copies of this. The San Francisco based magazine "Slingshot" is also a good source of latest pirate goings on!