Page 376 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

P rate Rad o |

for noncommercial low-power radio. While issues remain regarding the expan-
sion of the service beyond small towns and rural parts of the country, LPFM
is nevertheless an important milestone toward increasing public access to the
airwaves.
It is significant that this movement of pirate radio activism took hold in the
period prior to and around the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a
time during which the radio industry was subject to massive consolidation of
ownership, reduction and, in some cases, elimination of local influence over con-
tent and programming decisions. And public radio was increasingly being criti-
cized by some for becoming increasingly national in focus and “beige” in sound.
These criticisms remain in the foreground for alternative media advocates.

ConCLusion
In short, pirate radio is deeply woven into the cultural fabric of our media
landscape, emerging in a range of contexts for a variety of agendas across all
political lines. It has demonstrated the need for more media diversity and pub-
lic access and less corporate and government domination of the airwaves, has
galvanized a movement of media activists, and has entered the cultural lexicon
as an evocative symbol of media resistance. Pirate radio is both an alternative
to mainstream media and a site where important battles over communication
rights are taking place.
see also Alternative Media in the United States; Conglomeration and Media
Monopolies; Global Community Media; Government Censorship and Freedom
of Speech; Hypercommercialism; The iTunes Effect; Media Reform; Minority
Media Ownership; National Public Radio; Regulating the Airwaves.
Further reading: Bennett, Dylan. “Rebel Radio.” Sonoma Country Independent, May 14–20, 1998;
Carpenter, Sue. 40 Watts From Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio. New York: Scrib-
ner, 2004; D’Arcy, Margaretta Mitchell. “Galway Pirate Women.” In Caroline Mitchell,
ed., Women and Radio. London: Routledge, 2000; Fowler, Gene, and Bill Crawford. Bor-
der Radio. Austin, TX: Texas Monthly Press, 1987; Hadden, Jeffrey and Charles Swann.
Prime-Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism. Boston: Addison-Wesley,
1981; Hilliard, Robert L., and Michael C. Keith. Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical
Right. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998; Hind, John, and Stephen Mosco. Rebel Radio: The
Full Story of British Pirate Radio. London: Pluto, 1985; Lewis, P. M., and Jerry Booth.
The Invisible Medium. Hampshire: Palgrave, 1989; Markels, Alex. “Radio Active.” Wired
Magazine (2000), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.06/radio.html, accessed on
October 19, 2005; National Lawyers Guild. “Dunifer Brief,” 2000, http://www.nlgcdc.
org/briefs/dunifer.html, accessed on March 17, 2004; Ofcom. “Illegal Broadcasting:
Understanding the Issues,” 2000, http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/radio/reports/ille
gal_broadcasting/, accessed on April 19, 2007; Riismandel, Paul. “Radio by and for the
Public: the Death and Resurrection of Low-Power Radio.” In Michele Hilmes and Jason
Loviglio, eds., Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. Urbana-Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2001; Sakolsky, Ron, and Stephen Dunifer, eds. Seizing the
Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook. San Francisco: AK Press, 1998; Tridish, Pete, and
Kate Coyer. “A Radio Station in Your Hands is Worth 500 Channels of Mush! The Role
of Community Radio in the Struggle against Corporate Domination of Media.” In Elliot