Pirate Radio: An Inconvenient Truth
By Feederz.

There are several common arguments that are repeatedly used by those who are against pirate radio. In the following article Feederz tries to address each argument in turn as openly, accurately and truthfully as possible.

"Pirate stations are run purely for profits and earn £5000 a week"

This is probably the biggest misconception of all and is utter nonsense, pirates are established out of a love for music and radio. The simple fact is that the vast majority of
stations loose large amounts of money, or at best struggle to break even whilst trying to stay on air.

Still not convinced? Well click here for the basic sums that prove it!

"Pirate stations are run by criminal gangs tied to the drugs trade and use the radio to sell drugs"

Pirates are run by groups of friends who unite together because of their love for music and radio broadcasting. Most of these "gang" members hold down full time jobs in the week
and choose to give up their spare time for something that they enjoy doing in the evenings or at the weekend. As with any cross section of a group of youths today some of the
youths involved will inevitably take drugs but this is nothing to do with the radio.

"Illegal broadcasting, by its very nature, is entirely unregulated. It feels no prohibition on playing music that glamorises gang violence and drug culture"

This is partly true, pirates are one of the last forms of free speech that can be found in the nanny state of the UK, this is a big part of their appeal to the listeners. DJ's
have the freedom to choose the music that they want to play - unlike their commercially driven counterparts.

"It abides by no programming codes on taste or decency and it operates without any regard for the consequences of what may be said on air."

All stations enforce their own regulations - self-restricting the use of bad language and irresponsible talk (e.g. talk of race, religion or drugs). Believe it or not, pirates
do have ethics and it is in the stations best interest to keep it's output clean (surely stations inciting social disruption or using bad language will make themselves targets
to be raided by the authorities).

"They cause interference to air traffic control and the emergency services"

All of the emergency services are in the process of moving over to a new digital communication system called Airwave O2, the roll out should be complete by the end of 2008. FM transmitters cannot interfere with Airwave O2 and so this argument can soon be completely eliminated.

With regard to Air Traffic Control interference there have been a few reported cases of this and certainly it is possible. Although Air Traffic Control communication systems obviously broadcast outside of the standard FM Band II (87.5 to 108.0 MHz) badly produced rigs can lead to harmonics and spurious emissions.

What is this? These are unwanted frequencies that may be present on the output of a transmitter. Harmonics are multiples of the main output frequency. If these emissions are amplified, the problem gets worse. Thus full-power stations broadcasting with thousands or tens of thousands of watts are much more likely to cause this type of interference than a pirate broadcasting with a fraction of that power. Broadcasters solve spurious emission problems by replacing their transmitter and/or installing a low-pass filter to attenuate the problem spur(s). Responsible broadcasters, licensed or otherwise, run filtered signals by default and most transmitter technicians test equipment to minimise the effect of spurious harmonics.

How serious is the threat to safety? Although the reported number of cases of interference is very low, the potential threat is quite serious and does cause a considerable disruption. Although, of course as with any part of the Air Traffic Control network, redundancy backup systems are in place so that pilots can switch to alternative channels of communication in the situation of interference. Rightly so, Ofcom will act quickly to take off transmitters causing such interference (treating interfering transmissions with the highest priority).

Higher-risk emissions are those that interfere with an aircraft or airport's radio-navigation and instrument flight control systems. These are typically not redundant; losing them, especially in inclement weather or at night, has the potential to create a real mess. To my knowledge pirates have never been accused of interfering with such systems, but commercial stations have.

"Pirate radio broadcasters steal copyright from music producers"

Pirates play mostly urban & underground dance music which is not catered for by commercial radio, the airplay is a free but highly valuable form of promotion for record producers of underground music, it's a mutual exchange that benefits both parties, copyright therefore, doesn't even come into it.

"They interfere with legal stations"

There is some truth in this - most pirate stations try to keep a reasonable buffer between themselves and the commercial/BBC stations, however with so many legal and illegal stations operating (particularly in London) these buffers are sometimes not as broad as the legal stations would like.

"They steel listeners from legal stations"

Again there is probably some element of truth in this, however as the musical content of a pirate is so different to that of a legal station the impact is likely to be very small. Pirates are in much closer competition with each other than they are with the legal stations.

"They attach live 240V electric cables to the access doors on rooftops in an attempt to cause shock or injury"

This is simply a myth, pirates do sometimes feed power cables across the inside of access doors. However this is to form a "trip switch" that automatically turns off the transmitter power supply the moment that the door is opened. The reason pirates do this is to give themselves an early warning system that somebody has entered the area of the transmitter. Furthermore pirates often need to regain access through these doors so that they can retrieve or adjust their equipment - therefore they are hardly likely to install a device that is intended to cause a shock to themselves.