Regulating the Radio Pirates: Rethinking the Control of Offshore Broadcasting Stations Through a Maritime Perspective

Offshore broadcasting pirates, transmitting radio shows from international waters back into the borders of nation-states, have been largely examined from a media-communications perspective. Drawing on pirate stations broadcasting into Britain I argue that new insights into the regulation of this phenomenon can be formed if it is considered not only as a media-communications venture, but likewise a maritime one. Following the Marine &c. Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967, Section 42 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, and the surveillance missions which ensued, I contend that these were not only aerial strategies designed to deal with an aerial problem (that of broadcasting), but also sea-based strategies, designed to deal with a maritime problem (that of broadcasting from ships and forts at sea). I thus propose re-thinking the ways in which successive British administrations regulated the radio pirates, paving the way for an alternative understanding of this phenomenon in media history.