Nostalgia 2...

Before Radio 1 and Radio 2 etc...the reason for "Pirate Radio" on the high seas was that due the attitude of the national broadcaster and to some extent the society and the establishment of the day refused to play pop music by the original artists. There was also some kind of restriction on how much music could be played that became known as "Needle time" so it wasn't all the BBC's fault.

I wonder what it would've been like had the Government of the day had allowed the Pirates to come on land and broadcast nationally? Instead of closing them all down. Leaving it to the BBC and then 7 years later launch a network of commercial stations but of course they wanted them regulated and sanitised. That does not necessarily mean that I am a fan of the Pirate radio stations that exist today. And they probably do need watching over.

But whilst everyone probably thinks that all the pirates did was play The Beatles, The Who, Manfred Mann and whoever, even the pirates realised that there was an audience for "Light" music and would play Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Matthis etc...or Instrumental etc...hence Swinging Radio England/Britain Radio(that was the American backed outfit with some programming supplied directly from the States)when it was closed down, it was missed as much as any station. We had our own station doing similar programme Radio 390 and that had an interesting history as it was not broadcasting on a ship but from Red Sands Fort.

Swinging Radio England

I found out too late that Red Sands Radio started broadcasting a short term radio station from the fort on 14th July on AM and also on the net with a streaming service but that ends on the 23rd July.

There are plans what they would like to do with the fort even now but if you see any pictures of it from the outside and inside, it is in such a state and it really is a rust bucket. It's a pity, as even from an historical point of view they should've been saved as part of our history and others that once existed were blown up. These never were.

Red Sands Fort

Anyone wanting to relive Pirate Radio as it was(for perhaps the last time) and its rather ironic but its being carried on BBC local radio in Essex in August so if you live in that area or have broadband access there is a stream(I am envious)

BBC Radio Essex Pirate Event 2007

The point is that here we are in the 21st century being offered more stations, in theory more choice and yet in most cases many stations are chasing after the same audience and ever honing their output at who they think have all the spending money and looking at the "Yoof" market. And ignoring great swathes of music.

Back in the 60's you had difficulty finding pop and rock but easy listening was around now its the opposite situation.

Yet the amount of older or easy listening artists that are still recording new material and being discovered a new or people trying to build up their collections of music on CD or digitally there is still a demand for the material. But the broadcasters would have us believe otherwise. Even if the demand was small I am sure the market could support one station playing "easy" music using a mixture of the back catalogue already recorded and the new artists that are going in the studio to do it again.