It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed what’s news in pirate radio. Here’s what’s up, including: 22 year-old N. London pirate stays true to drum & bass; Welsh nationalists were pirate radio pioneers in 1959; protest broadcasts in Minnesota, and more.
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Quietus writer John Doran pays a visit to long-running North London pirate station Rude FM which focuses on classic UK pirate music like hardcore rave, jungle and drum & bass. He discovers the station’s 22-year run is due to careful stealth, going on the move when necessary and going on-line only to fill in the gaps when regulators seize equipment.
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A TV show recently revealed that a group of Welsh nationalists were pirate radio pioneers, according to Wales Online. beginning broadcasts of Radio Cockerel (Radio Ceiliog in Welsh) as early as 1959. This was years ahead of the more well-known UK pirate Radio Caroline.
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For those keeping score at home, John Anderson notes that the FCC has developed its own online database of enforcement actions against unlicensed broadcasters. The database includes a map of enforcement actions across the country. John has been maintaining his own database since 1997, which is also more granular, tracking data like how many visits FCC field agents made to a given station.
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Taking a page from the anti-globalization movement’s playbook, in December environmental protesters used an unlicensed transmitter to broadcast to employees of 3M in Maplewood, MN. Activists from Forest Ethics were alerting employees to charges that 3M is using old-growth forest and illegal methods in its paper production.
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The SF Weekly’s Sherilyn Connelly profiled several of San Francisco’s formerly unlicensed broadcasters who went internet-only along with several newer born-digital community-minded stations. She catches up with the folks running Mutiny Radio, Radio Valencia, and San Francisco Liberation Radio, the latter of which was raided by the FCC in 2003 and now appears to be just a one-man online operation.
