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Chicago Humanities Festival Making Waves

Adrian Johns: Making Waves Pirate Radio

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  • ABOUT Adrian Johns

    Adrian Johns is a professor in the department of history and chairs the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. Johns has authored a number of books, including Death of a Pirate: British Broadcasting and the Origins of the Information Age. He has won a number of awards, including the SHARP Prize for the best work on the history of authorship. Johns earned his B.A., his masters, and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University.

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Pirate radio—illegal or unregulated radio transmission—holds a special place in broadcasting history. In its British heyday in the 1960s, entrepreneurs and music enthusiasts began broadcasting pop and rock music from offshore ships and unused sea forts. Stations proliferated, meeting the daily demand of 10 to 15 million British listeners and ultimately cracking the BBC’s virtual monopoly on radio. Adrian Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, recounts this exciting period of action on the high seas, revealing how pirates changed not only British radio history but also all of broadcasting.

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