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An unlicensed radio station, often broadcasting political or controvercial material. The term was coined in the 1960's with "Radio Caroline", which broadcasted from a ship just outside of British territorial waters. Today's pirate broadcasters often play dance music not normally heard on comercial stations, or are intended to provide entertainment or opinions outside the mainstream.
The pirate radio station broadcasted trance music into the early hours of the morning.
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Pirate radio stations are usally one or two-person operations airing home-brew entertainment and/or iconoclastic viewpoints. In order to avoid detection by the authorites (The Man, FCC, etc), they tend to appear irregularly, with little concern for the niceties of conventional program scheduling. Most are found in Europe chiefly on weekends and major holidays, and mainly during the evenings in North America, often just above 6200.0 kHz, just below 7000.0 kHz (6955 and 6995 kHz are common pirate frequencies) and just above 7345 kHz. These sub rosa stations and thier addresses are subject to unusally abrupt change or termination, as well as their frequency of transmission, to avoid being cought by the FCC.
Free Radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. They operate in defiance of FCC rules, which often seem to be more concerned with protecting the big broadcasting interests.
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An example of a popular pirate (unlicensed) radio station in the U.S. today is Boulder, Colorado's "KBFR".
KBFR (Boulder Free Radio) broadcasts on 95.3 FM from a nondescript van that moves from place to place within Boulder. Sometimes KBFR transmits from a fixed location using antennas placed around town (hosted by local Boulder residents) and other times transmits directly from the van itself. KBFR also streams their signal live on the internet using wireless internet connections provided by dozens of Boulder citizens.
KBFR is run by a group of about two dozen private citizens called the Boulder Underground Radio Group (BURG). This group is made up of a broad range of people in their late teens to people well into their 50's. The people themselves include those that are well off, middle class and unemployed as well as professionals, businesspeople and students. KBFR's political viewpoints run from the far left to the far right with many in-between.
KBFR's goal is to create diversity on the airwaves and to bring a service that used to belong to the people, the radio spectrum, back to the community.
The government agency which regulates the airwaves (the FCC) has a charter to "protect the public interest". Instead, the FCC has auctioned off virtually all radio station licenses to the highest corporate bidder.
KBFR is a platform for new voices and new music. Listen to KBFR and you will hear new local musicians and uncensored alternative points of view not heard on any of your local "McRadio" (your typical Clear Channel Corp. owned station) or other mainstream media outlet.
KBFR is part of a new national underground radio network called the Real Public Radio network. The mission of the RPR is to counter the standardized radio that's emerging from the corporate media consolidation being engineered by the FCC today.
For more information, do a Google search on "KBFR".
Pirate radio is a growing phenomenon.
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As Below/above
A radio on a Pirate ship
A radio station hoasted by a pirate
Turn on the radio Blackbeards on right about now
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illegal broadcasting on the fm dial
yo blud im going to play some tunes on flava fm 87.6 londons leading pirate radio station
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