The new pirate radio crackdown: 400 stations closed in the past two years

"The unique character of British popular music owes a lot to pirate radio. In the 1960s, the original pirates illicitly brought pop music to the shores of Britain, broadcasting from ships in international waters and forcing an anachronistic BBC to launch Radio 1 in response. From the 1980s, pirate radio saw the genesis of British underground culture, as transistors on top of towerblocks became the only places broadcasting reggae, rave, jungle, drum’n’bass, garage, grime and dubstep.

But piracy has always been at odds with the law. Earlier this month, Ofcom revealed that in London alone they have seized 400 suspected pirate radio setups over the past two years. Ofcom’s head of Spectrum Enforcement, Clive Corrie, says that mostly they stop stations broadcasting because they “interfere with vital radio communications used by the emergency services and aircraft systems, and frequently cause damage to property”. This is a problem specific to the capital, since “of the 100 or so stations illegally broadcasting in the UK, around 70 of them are in London”."

Source: The Guardian

Read whole article at:
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2015/jul/26/outlaw-sound-pirate-radio-defined-british-popular-music

There's also more than 100 comments about this article - some questioning whether in the first paragraph the writer meant "transmitter" not "transistor."