Born of Pirate Radio, Seeking a Spot on British Dial

[Fansome]

The New York Times
April 3, 2011
Born of Pirate Radio, Seeking a Spot on British Dial
By JENNIFER MASCIA

Blair Munyan, a former United States Navy officer who served aboard a submarine off the coast of England in 1965, was reading an article about abandoned sea forts recently when he was flooded with memories of Radio Caroline, the offshore pirate radio movement known for breaking the British government’s stranglehold on radio.

At the dawn of the rock ’n’ roll era, when the government-approved soundtrack in Britain consisted of big bands and barbershop quartets, Radio Caroline played “the Beatles, Humble Pie, Uriah Heep — deep cuts” not often heard on the radio, he said.

“They went against the norm, against the establishment,” recalled Mr. Munyan, 63, now the head engineer at a sheet-metal fabricating company in Groton, Conn. “These guys were rebels.”

Since first taking to the air from a makeshift studio on an offshore ship in 1964, Radio Caroline has endured government raids, shipwrecks and a decade of radio silence before finding a land-based studio in the southeastern county of Kent. From there, a cast of volunteer disc jockeys has transmitted album-oriented rock to a global audience over satellite radio and the Internet since 1999.

But to station management, that global reach isn’t enough. In an age when many prefer to listen to music over the Web or by satellite, Radio Caroline would like to be rewarded for its contribution to British popular culture in the most modest of ways: an AM radio designation in the southeast of England, where it was conceived.

It’s a rather mainstream move for a station that made its bones on rebellion. And just as in Radio Caroline’s early days, the British government is not enthusiastic.

“ ‘No, you can’t have it because we say you can’t have it,’ and when you ask why, there is no ‘why,’ ” said Bob Lawrence, development coordinator at the station and father of the AM radio campaign, characterizing what he says is the attitude of Ofcom, the British communications authority, toward its former archnemesis.

In December 2006, as part of a nationwide push for digital broadcasting, the authority announced it would no longer advertise commercial licenses for medium-wave radio. As a result, many broadcasters abandoned AM and embraced the digital format. That leaves empty slots on the AM spectrum, one of which Radio Caroline is trying to secure.

“We believe we should be treated as a special case because of our longevity, and because of what we’ve given to music history,” said Mr. Lawrence, 50, who joined the station in 1978, when he was 18.

Last June, he drafted letters to 168 members of Parliament representing districts in the southeast, imploring them to support the station’s request for one of several little-used AM frequencies owned by foreign governments.

Sixty-five members of Parliament responded. Tracey Crouch was the first.

“Radio was always around in my youth,” said Ms. Crouch, a 35-year-old Conservative M.P. who represents Chatham and Aylesford. But nostalgia isn’t why she drafted a motion in Parliament in December to get the station back on the air.

“I just think that people should have a choice about where and when they can listen to their favorite music station, and technology shouldn’t be a barrier to listening,” she said. Radio Caroline is also deeply embedded in the cultural heritage of her district.

“It’s something the southeast is very proud of,” she said.

The station was created in the spring of 1964 by Ronan O’Rahilly, a music promoter who couldn’t get his acts played on conventional radio because of the dominance of powerful record labels, which were said to engage in payola. So Mr. O’Rahilly commandeered a former Danish passenger ferry and anchored it a few miles off the coast, just out of the reach of the British government.

He named his station in honor of Caroline Kennedy after viewing photos from the Kennedy administration. The British station with the American name soon became recognized as a symbol of rebellion the world over. At the movement’s peak, two dozen pirate radio stations reached a daily audience of 15 million.

The government immediately began trying to quash the movement, instigating a long period of animosity between pirate and government-sanctioned radio. The Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act of 1967 expanded the government’s reach to territorial waters, effectively outlawing pirate radio. Except for Radio Caroline, all offshore stations closed.

In an e-mail message, Rhys Hurd, a spokesman for Ofcom, said that 648 kilohertz, which was recently given up by the BBC World Service, was available, but that “even if we did advertise the frequency for use within the U.K., either at a local or national level, there can be no guarantee that Radio Caroline would win the license. We would judge applications on their merits and their merits alone,” he wrote.

Ms. Crouch, referring to Ofcom, said, “I think they’re just being a bit stubborn. They want everyone to move off these analog stations and onto these digital platforms. But not everyone has that digital capability, and you can’t get that technology in your car.”

Another supporter in Parliament, Teresa Pearce, a Labour M.P. who represents Erith and Thamesmead, was involved in a letter-writing campaign in 1967 to keep Radio Caroline on the air after a government ban, her first foray into politics, at the age of 12.

“Without Radio Caroline, we wouldn’t have the variety of music we have today,” she said. “I think we owe them something for having changed the face of radio.”

Ms. Pearce is one of 51 M.P.’s who signed Ms. Crouch’s petition. The station is broadly embraced, winning support from across the political spectrum — even from the far-right Welsh National Party, an endorsement Mr. Lawrence proclaims with some hesitation.

Toiling at the station is a labor of love, Mr. Lawrence said, but “it’s a labor of love by grown-ups.” For listeners, the experience across the years has been transformative. Glowing testimonials submitted by past and present fans fill 33 pages of Caroline’s Web site, some from as far away as Sweden, Australia, Texas, Turkey and Burkina Faso.

Mr. Munyan, the formal naval officer, listens to Radio Caroline on the Internet, and today he keeps it on all day at work. When asked his opinion about the campaign to acquire an AM outlet, Mr. Munyan chuckled.

“When I picture it, it just doesn’t suit them,” he said.

“I hope it doesn’t ruin their image,” he added with a laugh.