Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age

Download or read book Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age written by Adrian Johns and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-11-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A superb account of the rise of modern broadcasting.” —Financial Times When the pirate operator Oliver Smedley shot and killed his rival Reg Calvert in Smedley’s country cottage on June 21, 1966, it was a turning point for the outlaw radio stations dotting the coastal waters of England. Situated on ships and offshore forts like Shivering Sands, these stations blasted away at the high-minded BBC’s broadcast monopoly with the new beats of the Stones and DJs like Screaming Lord Sutch. For free-market ideologues like Smedley, the pirate stations were entrepreneurial efforts to undermine the growing British welfare state as embodied by the BBC. The worlds of high table and underground collide in this riveting history.