Can pirate stations really be making as much as £5000 per week? 

Luckily pirates only have a few sources of revenue so to answer the question a fairly realistic calculation can be formed as follows:

1. Subs - This is the main source of income, it's a contribution made by each DJ usually paid at a rate of between £5-£7.50 per hour. So even if we times the total number of
hours in the week (168) by the higher subs rate (£7.50 per hour) we still only arrive at a maximum possible revenue from subs of £1260. This is completely unrealistic because
there are no stations that are able to broadcast with live DJ's all 168 hours of the week (especially mid week whilst most DJ's are at work).

To make the calculation more realistic lets consider the average pirate which broadcasts from 6pm-12pm on weeknights and all weekend through to 12pm on Sunday leaving a total of
78 hours, the potential revenue is now £585. This is more realistic BUT there is still one more thing to factor in - that is that for one reason or another some DJ subs will not
be paid so to make the figure more realistic we need to drop at least 20% taking the figure down to £468.

2. Adverts - This is the second best source of revenue, however there is a problem - only the very well established stations can attract advertising. The advertising comes
mostly from club nights and the cost to run an ad varies from between £50-100 per month - so lets say we have a well established pirate running 6 ads at £100 each for a month.
If we divide this £600 by four to get the weekly revenue we arrive at £150.

So far then we have an optimistic figure of £468 for subs and £150 for ads giving us a total weekly revenue of £618 (some way off our £5000 estimate!)

3. Club promotions - This is something that only the most established stations can use as a form of revenue. Make no mistake, it takes a lot of time to promote a night and venue
and it also costs a lot to hire the venue book the DJ's and buy the flyers and other promotional marketing materials. The majority of pirates cannot make a profit from club
nights, period. In fact many make losses when they try. The realistic revenue from club nights = £0 or even -£100's.

So we are still at £618 a week - but now lets consider the outgoings...

Firstly there is the somewhat unpredictable cost of the loss of transmitters from Ofcom raids or "rig thieves"! If we even out these losses over a 12 month period we'd probably
get an average transmitter loss of about two per month. The combined cost of the transmitter, aerials and cables and locks is about £400. So lets take £200 off our £618 weekly
figure leaving us with £418.

Now subtract the studio rent - lets assume an average of £80 per week now leaving us with £338 a week.

Lastly there is the cost of maintaining the studio equipment - for a station broadcasting 78 hours a week this cost will be quite high - Headphones and Mic's break easily and
leads wear out quickly, Mixers (especially crossfaders) die quickly and cost anything from £150-£600 to replace. Turntables and their styluses wear out and are also costly to
replace. It is much harder to accurately gauge the average maintenance cost but I'd say it's at least £80 per week all things considered. New weekly total £258!

Finally we have the potential cost of a studio raid - a very persistent station is likely to suffer a studio raid at least once in a year, the loss of studio equipment is likely
to be around £2000 (depending of course on the quality and quantity of equipment used!). If we factor this cost into the equation we get down as low as a measly £92 per week!