Did You Know Snippets: 1960s and 70s Britain - When Pirate Radio Changed the Airwaves

 

In 1975, our annual family holiday took us to the Lincolnshire coast of Chapel St Leonards. I took a small radio with me, as I had plans to listen to the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline. 

In 1964, Radio Caroline began broadcasting to Britain from a ship offshore. It was a direct challenge to the radio monopoly of the BBC. Caroline, an unlicensed station, was the first of many off-shore pirate broadcasters that offered something different. 

The pirate stations appealed to a younger audience. 

But only if you could find them.

I had been told that it was possible to listen to Radio Caroline, even inland. But I doubted that was true. It was difficult enough to pick up another popular radio station back then, Radio Luxembourg, but find Radio Caroline? A ship that was somewhere off the coast of England. I was never quite sure where they were. 

No one seemed to know.

Despite many hours of knob twiddling and turning the radio dial through the hiss and silence of the radio waves, I could never pick up Radio Caroline inland. There were overseas radio stations I could pick up, including a Russian communist propaganda station, and the American forces network radio, but not Caroline.

I doubt their antennas reached where I lived. Or maybe it was being jammed?

But at the seaside? Surely I would find them?

Well, yes and no. I did manage to find their signal, but it wasn’t clear. One minute a song was playing; the next it would slowly be lost in the hiss and radio silence. Sometimes the signal never came back.

In the end, I assumed the ship was too far away, and I gave up. The slot and pinball machines in the arcades drew me away from the radio.

But the popularity of pirate radio remained. It put Britain’s established broadcasters on notice to get with the times. In 1967, the BBC recognised the challenge of the pirate stations and launched Radio 1 to play mainstream pop music, and in time, music that was less mainstream. 

The BBC also employed many DJs who had got their break with the pirate stations. The list is a long one, but it included Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker, Tommy Vance, John Peel and Kenny Everett.

Radio Caroline is still broadcasting today. Now licensed, it can be found online.

 

 

Photo by Alan Rodriguez on Unsplash