As many regular blog readers know, I am really keen on the idea of community radio and highly against pirate radio, so the recent report on the BBC website about the pirates’ views was very interesting reading for me.
Figures from OfCom show that they think there are over 150 pirate radio stations broadcasting in the UK, half of which operate in London/South East England.
However the report is very interesting because it looks at the views of the pirate broadcasters themselves. I think it is good of OfCom to acknowledge that not all community radio stations are bad, saying that “there are some stations who seek to serve the community”.
Whilst being strongly against UK pirate radio stations, I do sometimes think that the problem is partly caused by the confusing (and expensive) licencing system that radio stations need to battle their way through in order to become fully legal.
Is there anything OfCom can do to make it easier to become a fully legal radio station, yet still maintain the high standards? I think it is the only way to reduce the number of pirates in the UK – as many of the pirate DJs say, they want to become legal stations (and I might point out that it seems some of them probably have less swearing than some of the legal stations) but it is just too expensive.
If you would like to read the report on the BBC News website about pirate broadcasting, click here.
Let me know what you think on this topic.
