Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age
Johns, an expert in the field of intellectual property and piracy, walks us through the history of pirate radio. Pirate radio stations were most famously a British phenomenon (although many other countries had their own versions of these outlaw broadcasters); they operated from offshore sites, usually a boat, skirting the British regulations regarding license fees, broadcast rights, etc. The BBC saw them as illegal and disreputable, but the pirate broadcasters and their listeners (and even many artists) thought they were exciting and indispensable. The end of British pirate radio came soon after a partnership between two colorful station owners, Oliver Smedley and Reg Calvert, ended in violence, property theft, and death. Highly detailed but unfortunately rather dry, the book is closer in texture to a textbook than it is to a lively history of this fascinating period in British broadcasting history. For readers interested in the subject, however, the wealth of information in the book should outweigh its lack of zest. --David Pitt--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.