A Whopper, Fries & hold the stalking, please!

[John Poet]

 Well, Commander "Pat the Bunny" Murphy has been blogging it up in a rabid keyboard-pounding frenzy of late; outing the identities of current or former pirate radio operators and their locations repeatedly, in case we missed it the fifth or ninth or twenty-ninth time; making accusations of pseudonymity  (look it up, Pat-- I know that's a big word for you) against multiple DXers in his frantic attempts to discover the real identity of 'Guise Faux' of the Radio Paranoia blog; and now busy with his online stalking of yet another female DXer.

http://www.tcsshortwave.com/2011/10/have-it-your-way-commander-pat-bunny.html

[John Poet]

This just published at Radio Paranoia:

In a move carefully calculated to alienate every last shortwave radio listener in a way that only a crafty radio veteran who'd finally gone batsh*t insane could dream of, Commander Bunny announced he's changing the format of pirate radio station WBNY from mildly misanthropic to full blown misogynistic.

"My instincts never fail me," asserted the bunnyman, munching on cecotropes, his favourite snack. "My supporters sockpuppets assure me this is the right move for this time, the twilight phase of my career."

"Besides," he confided with a leer, "my statistically significant sockpuppet surveys tell me the b*****s are asking for it."

http://whisperinyourfear.blogspot.com/2011/10/wbny-changes-format-from-misanthropy-to.html

[Nella F.]

So could all this backbiting & betrayal & doublecrossing & I'm running out of keen adjectives be a possible reason that Monitoring Times dropped its Pirate segment & did a slowwww walk backwards w. palms facing up & out...?
just askin'.

[cmradio]

I don't understand why the mods here allow it.

The users make fun of the FRN for drama and then work on turning this place into a carbon copy.

* cmradio confused

Peace!

[John Poet]

Nobody wants this site to be a carbon copy of the FRN... and I hardly think that posting a link to an outside pirate-related site, with a short description, ought to be characterized as "drama" that the mods shouldn't "allow"!  That in itself seems a little bit "over-dramatic" in this context.  It's not as if there's some ongoing brawl in here, or gangs of sock-puppets brutalizing unsuspecting posters-- as has happened repeatedly on the FRN...

Now, if you want to characterize my post titles as 'drama', well, that's fair-- I try to make them entertaining--- you know, to "put some *fun* back into pirate radio"!

As it happens, there are a lot of people who use this site who are interested in the updates on the other two, even if you aren't.

[John Poet]

So could all this backbiting & betrayal & doublecrossing & I'm running out of keen adjectives be a possible reason that Monitoring Times dropped its Pirate segment & did a slowwww walk backwards w. palms facing up & out...?
just askin'.

Nella,

I don't know that any of the bigshots at Monitoring Times were even aware of any of the highlights of the 'pirate war of 2008' which preceded the dropping of the Zeller column by about half a year-- much of it seemed to go on in chatrooms, or on poorly-heard shortwave broadcasts-- so it seems unlikely to me that it was at all related to dropping Zeller's column.  However, if they were aware of any of it, it could hardly have helped matters.

Now that 'Jerry Rabbit' has made these attacks on, and accusations against, one of their main columnists Gayle Van Horn--- I can only suppose that they would now feel quite vindicated in having dropped their coverage of the North American pirate scene as having been 'the right call'.

[ChrisSmolinski]

IIRC, Zeller's column was dropped due to the perceived small size of the pirate listening community.  It's also possible that a factor was the inherent staleness of logs printed in a magazine. That is what did in The ACE (and the rest of the radio hobby clubs). Why pay for 3 month old logs when you can get 3 minute old logs for free online? (Or 3 second old logs on IRC)

There's not really a lot of hard numbers on this. Poet - would you be willing to share any numbers, such as the number of reception reports from unique listeners per year? 

Even with numbers from ops, it's probably difficult to estimate the actual number of listeners. What percentage of listeners write in for a QSL? And how many listeners drop out of the hobby each year?

Back to The ACE, I was loggings editor for a period of time. As I remember it, it was the same folks who contributed each month, usually one or two dozen. I don't recall the membership numbers, but I doubt if it was more than the very low hundreds.

It's a really difficult number to get a handle on.

[John Poet]

I quit tracking numbers quite a few years ago, but I can remember general totals over 7 years...

After restarting in 2004, I believe we sent QSLs to over 100 unique listeners within the first year or two of fairly frequent transmissions.  Then things slowed down quite a bit on the QSL front.

From then through 2011, I will guess that we never issued more than about 200 total QSLs to unique listeners (not repeat requesters).

So yeah, the ranks of hard-core pirate listeners are relatively thin.  When I read about some pirates in the 90s claiming to have issued a thousand or more, I have no conception of that...

[Pigmeat]

I understand I got a mention in his last blog post. I'm honored.

[cmradio]

Now, if you want to characterize my post titles as 'drama', well, that's fair-- I try to make them entertaining--- you know, to "put some *fun* back into pirate radio"!

It started before you got here... it's a culmination. Didn't mean to point a finger at any one op

Peace!

[John Poet]

No offense taken.