Pirate Radio - What's going on?

Community radio in London only scratches at the surface at the issue of pirate radio. We now have an ex pirate station Rinse FM who have successfully transferred across to being a fully licensed Ofcom station playing music you wouldn’t hear on Kiss 100 at 2pm, yet as they’ll only play certain genre’s and in their early days, were sanctioned for playing music with content offensive to a younger audience, it’s unlikely they’ll be playing grime with MC’s talking about guns, stabbings and the like on this station if they want to keep their licence. Reprezent gives a voice to south London’s teenagers from a studio in one of London’s deprived areas, yet it could be considered homogenised in comparison to OnTopFM. So if you want to have a ‘free’ voice, pirate is the way to go.

One of the issues which makes it harder is the detection of the studios, most if not all masquerade as internet stations with no mention of the FM frequency linking with a wi-fi or 3G link. You’ll find unlike the pirate stations of the 80s and 90s are not coming from council flat bedrooms, but are more professional set-ups with fully equipped studios in warehouse complexes.

Community radio which was designed to give under served groups a voice has made the FM band even more tight for the remaining stations where you’ll only serve a small scale TSA in comparison to a 90s pirate where all you needed was a clear frequency and a tx on a tower block and you’d get out across most of London and the home counties.

However you dress it up. Pirate radio is still illegal. It has taken us two years to get our ofcom licensed station on air and cost several thousands of pounds. Pirates must be stopped.

Pirates have to be shut down if for no other reason than spectrum management. Simple as that. Spectrum is allocated to those who have the best argument for using it to the relevant authority. Technical standards are also required of broadcasters for good reason – aside from interference things like RDS specifications keep people safe. I was distracted in my car by a dynamic PS string – utterly illegal in all of the EU, practically – from a pirate station I landed on instead of Radio 4 in London this week.

Arguments can be made that pirate radio adds rather than detracts in terms of content and I won’t disagree there entirely. However, they must not use the technical means they are using to broadcast. Especially if they interfere with legitimate broadcasts, which they’re very likely to.

We had one pirate station near $job-1 which was out of the way of most stations in the area and nobody really got pissed off with them interfering; we got licensed for FM (CR) after years on LPAM and a week later they switched to use our frequency. Ofcom/the police did in fact raid their studios and TX site a week later and they’ve not been heard from since.

Internet radio has really made ‘pirate radio’ a matter of advertising. Get people listening on the net, stop with the illegal FM transmissions, and everyone’s happy.

In this day and age there is no excuse for any pirate program providers to even consider broadcasting on FM, when they can do so on the internet at minimal cost and without any risk of:-

death from climbing tall structures and high buildings or even climbing the shafts of or being on the roofs of the buildings.
interfering with other stations or spectrum users.
having equipment confiscated, at yet more expense
facing a heavy fine or even jail.

For pirate stations to be broadcasting on FM in 2013, when other means of broadcasting are available, suggest that there is something a bit more sinister going on in the background that they feel they need to.

Besides, aren’t we often told (on radio forums) that internet is the way to go and FM/DAB/AM etc is dead and buried?

In this day and age there is no excuse for any pirate program providers to even consider broadcasting on FM, when they can do so on the internet at minimal cost

...with minimal listeners. And there lies the problem.

There was a nice man from Ofcom who spoke about this very thing at TechCon at the Radio Festival in 2011. My notes from the time read:

[then spoke] the man who is in charge of closing pirate radio stations down, Jim McNally from Ofcom. McNally – who sounded like an ex-policeman – spent all his time telling us why pirate radio was all linked with drugs and crime, and why they were all very nasty people. As far as I was concerned, he completely misread the audience; many of whom saw much of pirate radio as simply a nuisance who transmitted over their own properly licenced stations, and wanted to know when Ofcom might take action against them. Yet, we heard nothing about Ofcom’s attempts to close these stations down: indeed, he didn’t mention one single successful closure or any statistics there at all. Instead, we heard a story about London City Airport being “20 minutes from closure” because of a pirate radio service. The story dates from 2005, and – while apparently on the CAA’s behalf – only appears online in connection with Ofcom’s attempt to brand all pirate radio stations as uninterested in music, involved with drugs and crime, and affecting public safety. There is no independent reporting of this incident, far less anything to back up the “20 minutes” claim. If it was so shocking, why on earth wasn’t it covered by any news outlet? I’m afraid I saw this entire session as a spin exercise, light on facts and covering up Ofcom’s clear incompetence in actually closing any of these services down. I’d be delighted to be corrected by Ofcom, and actually hear some evidence of the authority protecting its licensees.

If that wasn’t irritating enough, after lunch we heard from a man called Ron Stanley, also from Ofcom. He outlined Ofcom’s legal obligation to quickly shut down any interference caused to the London Olympics next year from unlicensed broadcasters, and showed off all manner of clever kit that his 32 engineers, and a similar number from many European countries, will be using to ensure that (for example) TV coverage or radio microphones are flaw-free at the Olympic venues. He gave an amazing live demonstration of using Ofcom’s broadcast sensors which are dotted around London to hone in on a broadcast: one that transpired to be a legal broadcast from Crystal Palace in this case. The technology was brilliant: but the comparison of Ofcom’s eagerness to ensure a hassle-free Olympics was glaringly different from the smears of his colleague. I wondered out loud what might happen to Mr Stanley’s equipment once the Olympics are over. Perhaps Mr McNally might use them.

As you can tell, I was less than impressed at Ofcom’s attempts to explain how they shut pirate broadcasters down.

While I agree that their are spectrum issues with pirate radio, there is once again a sense of sneering from some media professionals over their output. ‘Minimal listeners?’

Some of these stations manage to do what some small legal ‘Tinpot FM’ playing the safe AC format don’t achieve to do is by selling local advertising and selling out events on a weekly basis.

As I sit here typing this, I’m listening to Flex FM playing 20 year old old school electronic hardcore dance music as part of their ‘Old Skool Sunday’s’ day. The DJ is mentioning dedications throughout the show and are providing a service which I’m not hearing on the BBC and most certainly not on Kiss 100 at the same time.

I’d love to be able to listen to this music over 3G all day instead of clogging up the FM spectrum, but the technology and my phone’s battery isn’t exactly up to it.

My interpretation of James’ comment was that internet radio had minimal listeners, compared to FM.

However, the FM signal of many pirates gets blighted by some other station’s signal, so they don’t get very far and the signal quality (not to mention the audio quality) of these stations is quite poor. I have sat in Hyde Park, Regents Park and also outside the various railway stations in Camden and scanned the FM bands to come to that conclusion.

Granted, the programming content of many of them is actually fairly professional sounding (probably by means of a playout system on a laptop or maybe even a tablet these days) – but I reckon that they would do well or better to be on the internet only, rather than try to broadcast to a few streets or estates at great risk. They could probably capture as many listeners (if not more) across the UK or maybe even the planet. Besides, London’s population is not small … so a considerable listenership on the internet could be had on the net, even if they market themselves (legally) in London only.

I know what I would prefer to do … and being a pirate broadcaster on FM or AM is not the option I would make these days.

It’s always been about protectionism. UK radio has had a very cushy ride, and standards/listener choice have slipped as a result. For example, Birmingham UK (pop 992k) has about 10 stations, as far as I can tell. There are 102 radio stations within listening range of San Jose, Calif (pop 967k), and they even have some vacant channels, eg 92.9FM. All regulated, no significant interference. Last time I checked we live on the same planet, and the basics of radio propagation are the same, wherever you go.

Online changes the balance of power. As peoples’ listening habits start to change over time, conventional UK radio will have to pull up its socks or go the way of the dinosaurs.