I’m delighted to keep stumbling upon video artifacts of pirate radio, like the 1970s Portland public access footage and 1990 shortwave pirate documentary I recently shared. Next up I’ve found a more contemporary documentary from 2014 looking at London’s pirate radio scene. The city has long been a hotbed of unlicensed radio activity, such that […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator (Ofcom) has authorized six more community radio licenses, all in southeast England. The radio project that will serve the Brighton area seems especially interesting. It calls itself Platform B. I quote from the group’s Facebook page: “Working like a pirate station, Platform B will challenge the formal infrastructure of traditional radio – […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its community radio licensing drive. Ofcom says that since September of 2004 it has awarded 230 community radio station licenses across the country, the operations staffed by around 20,000 volunteers. The first went to The Eye in Melton Mowbray, which since then has doubled […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator says Londoners could save “up to” £1 million by cracking down on that city’s remaining pirate radio stations. As we’ve noted earlier, Ofcom has pretty much gone medieval on unlicensed radio of late, smashing and grabbing at least 400 stations, mostly in two London boroughs. “Pirate stations typically use high-rise […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator has awarded four more community radio licenses, and one of them goes to the Funky Academy, aka Funky SX. Ofcom says that the school will (government-speak alert) “provide a rhythmic-based music service to young people,” defined as under 35, in the Southend-on-Sea borough. That’s basically the northern half of the entrance […]
A somewhat discouraging report, classical music-wise, from the United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator, titled “Public Service Broadcasting in the Internet Age.” It concludes that since the government lifted requirements on content, public media spending on the arts and classical music has dropped by 25 percent. Still “there continues to be strong classical music provision on radio,” […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about reports that the United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator has shut down 400 pirate radio stations over the last two years, many of them situated in London. Well over a third of those Ofcom busts took place in two boroughs: Haringey in North London and Lambeth in South London. Why these […]
Louisville, Kentucky’s business paper says that one of our favorite Internet radio stations is going to fire up its Low Power FM signal in the fall. ARTxFM won its Federal Communications Commission LPFM construction permit late last year. Now the station’s General Manager Sharon Scott is telling the Louisville Business First that the operation has […]
The United Kingdom is so famous for its pirate radio stations that Hollywood made a movie about one. But as always the government is quite dour about these unlicensed signals, and has shut 400 of them down recently, according to a newspaper report. The London Evening Standard says that a quarter of the crackdowns over […]
Community radio station KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, California has posted the date for its next Board of Directors meeting: July 13 at the Aptos Community Foundation building at 6 PM. I presume that it is at that meeting or soon following that the Board will decide what kind of format to adopt for the station. “It […]
