Pay to Play: Rising Bills and Radio Silence

Pirate radio was undergoing a renaissance.

Long gone were the olden days of illegally broadcasting from boats and sea forts. The late ‘70s and early ‘80s marked the insurgence of unlicensed FM transmissions from London’s soaring high-rise rooftops. With a bit of kit and a couple of copied keys, millions of listeners could be reached. The story of a globally loved broadcaster begins here…

‘In 1980 I had been recording shows in my shed,’ radio hero Gilles Peterson tells me over a cup of tea. ‘Me and my mate Andrew had started a mobile disco, but we’d listen to pirate radio and think how the hell are they doing that? I bought the local electronics magazine and in the back there were engineer listings. I found this guy who could build us a rig.’

As chance had it, the engineer who built Gilles’ rig had assembled heavyweight pirate station Radio Invicta’s too, and in 1981 they had their set up nicked by the Department of Trade and Industry. Gilles was seventeen, and Invicta needed his help. They gave him a set of keys which opened every tower block in London. ‘I was basically that little kid who would go up to the top of the buildings and put the aerials up on Sunday morning,’ Gilles laughs. ‘But I got a show on Invicta out of that.’

Radio, since its inception, has been the most effective way to showcase musical talent.

Gilles broke a lot of hearts, including his own, when he announced that Worldwide FM would be pausing the majority of its operations. The station represented an invaluable source of music discovery, creative indulgence, and community to a large sum of listeners. But amid the increasing costs of, well, pretty much everything, remaining on air required an unattainable level of investment.

Worldwide FM began as a radio station on the video game GTA V, devised by Gilles and Thris Tian, ‘just having a bit of a laugh in Brownswood Road Studio.’ It soon became something much bigger, ‘I found with Worldwide that people were beginning to really associate with it as a community, as they would do with scene or a club. And that was the thing that really hurt me when I had to close it down.’ 

Looking back, Gilles points out that radio in the UK has played a distinctive role in forming music communities unlike anywhere else on earth. At the height of the unlicensed broadcasting renaissance, over eighty stations would fire up into life for the weekend in London. Listeners would attend live events and find people who tuned into the same shows, creating hyper-localised and tight knit scenes. This spirit has remained alive in British music culture ever since.

‘I found with Worldwide that people were beginning to really associate with it as a community.’

A fine example of this prevailing sentiment is the BBC Music Introducing programme, where regional stations air new music from unsigned and upcoming acts, bringing otherwise overlooked artists to a larger, but local audience. Radio, since its inception, has been the most effective way to showcase musical talent. But bills exist for the top dogs too, and the BBC recently caused uproar when a number of their Introducing staff were unexpectedly faced with redundancy. As of now, the thirty-two regional shows will be reduced to twenty, but they will air twice a week instead. It’s a trade off, but catchment areas are now larger, and the localisation that made the show so potent is partially undermined.

There’s no moment quite like when your favourite tune comes on, giving you a few minutes to really relish it before the next number takes its place.

Outside of the BBC and Worldwide FM, a staggering sum of local stations have seen their airwaves fall flat. Gilles, somehow, is still feeling optimistic. ‘I think the difference between radio and other formats is being in the moment together. That’s really the magic and the strength of radio. I don’t think that will ever go.’

Live radio enchants with its perishability. There’s no moment quite like when your favourite tune comes on, giving you a few minutes to really relish it before the next number takes its place. Or the feeling of having your first song on air: you and your mates huddled in a car or box bedroom wondering who else caught it. Or the radio being a companion when there’s discomfort in being alone.

‘I always look forward to Saturdays when I do my show on Radio Six,’ Gilles smiles. ‘I look forward to the walk, up Great Portland Street, where I’m about to play records to the world. I also think people have become so used to over-produced media that can get re-recorded when it goes wrong. That is the best bit about radio, when it goes wrong.’ With a grin he adds, ‘When Worldwide FM comes back it will be completely live. I feel like that is the essence of it.’ 

Gilles’ positivity is infectious. But the last time London’s airwaves fell this silent was a result of the Department for Trade and Industry raiding unlicensed stations, forcing them off-air to apply for legal operating status. Decades later we’re now spoiled with innumerable options to discover new music and artists, so are we likely to feel the loss?

Faced with static, the fifty million Brits who tune in to the radio at least once a week might have something to say on that…