Ron Sakolsky, Stephen Dunifer (eds.): Seizing the Airwaves. A Free Radio Handbook (1998)

“The first book to document and emphasize the myriad voices of the free radio movement, from Black Liberation Radio in Springfield, Illinois, to Free Radio Berkeley in Berkeley, California. The first section, “Media Monopoly And The Rise Of The Free Radio Movement” includes contributions from Robert McChesney on the political economy of radio in North America and a history and analysis of the burgeoning pirate radio movement. The second section, “On The Air,” includes interviews with and commentary by some of the key grassroots participants in micropower broadcasting worldwide—from Canada, Holland, Haiti, and Mexico, as well as America. The final section of the book consists of a comprehensive technical guide and how-to manual for going on the air, complete with schematics and “sound” advice.”

Publisher AK Press, 1998
ISBN 1873176996, 9781873176993
212 pages
via esco_bar

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PDF (19 MB; updated on 2015-11-8)

Adrian Johns: Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age (2010)

A killing in the English countryside takes us inside the world of pirate radio in its mid-1960s heyday.

When the pirate operator Oliver Smedley shoots and kills his rival Reg Calvert in Smedley’s country cottage on June 21, 1966, it is a turning point in the careening career of 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 the Who 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 a riveting story full of memorable characters like the Bondian Kitty Black, an intellectual femme fatale who becomes Smedley’s co-conspirator, and the notorious Kray twins, brazenly violent operators of a London protection racket. Here is a rousing entertainment with an intellectual edge.

Publisher W. W. Norton & Company, 2010
ISBN 0393068609, 9780393068603
305 pages

WFMU’s Too Much Information show hosting the author
The Curse of TINA (Smedley’s story told by Adam Curtis, BBC)

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PDF (updated on 2012-11-11)

Daniel Gilfillan: Pieces of Sound: German Experimental Radio (2009)

A cultural history of German radio broadcasting from the 1920s to today

Since the rise of film and television, radio has continued to evolve, with satellite radio and podcasts as its latest incarnations. Any understanding of the development of radio, like its visual counterparts, depends on closely examining the artistic ventures that preceded commercial acceptance.

In Pieces of Sound, Daniel Gilfillan offers a cultural history that explores these major aspects of the medium by focusing on German radio broadcasting, providing a context that sees beyond programming to consider regulations, cultural politics, and social standardization. Gilfillan showcases the work of radio pioneers and artists over the past century, including Brecht’s work with the form, and how radio was employed before and after World War II. He traces how German radio broadcasters experimented with networked media not only to expand the artistic and communicative possibilities of radio, but also to inform perceptions about the advantages and direction of newer telecommunications media like Internet broadcasting and pirate radio, which artists are using today to engage with a medium that is increasingly under corporate control.

Gilfillan astutely observes how claims made for the Internet today echo those made for radio in its infancy and puts forth a broad and incisive historical analysis of German cultural broadcasting.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 0816647720, 9780816647729
240 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)