When Norway completed the shutdown of its national FM radio signals the tech sites and blogs were all breathless in reporting the news. But, despite the strong currents of digital triumphalism, the way of Norway is not a sign of things to come for analog radio. As Norway paved the way for the wholesale move […]
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 […]
Commercial radio in the UK turns 40 years-old this week. Here in the US we tend to take for granted that broadcast media would be funded by commercials interrupting our programs several times an hour. But the rest of the world came to embrace the commercial system much more slowly. The development of commercial broadcasting […]
One of the most famous off-shore British pirate stations of the 1960s celebrates the 47th anniversary of its first successful broadcasts today. Gibson’s This Day in Music Spotlight reminded me of the occasion. As writer MIchael Wright retells, the next day, the 29th, was Easter Sunday and Caroline was ready to officially launch. At 12 […]
Amazon.com Widgets Sunday was the forty-sixth anniversary of Radio Caroline, one of the most famous UK pirate stations of the 1960s, and the inspiration for the recent movie Pirate Radio a/k/a The Boat That Rocked. Those radio pirates were inspired, in part, by the fact that the BBC played almost no rock music, and was […]
