culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

CREATING ALTERNATIVES.
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA THEORY AND SWEDISH PIRATE RADIO
60s, the factual co-optation through community radio in the 70s and 80s, the
only thing that was left of the radio monopoly was the non-commercial policy.
Other interest groups (such as right-wing and liberal parties), student
associations et cetera financed a multitude of music radio all over the country,
drawing larger and larger audiences (for example, in Stockholm, in the early
1990s community radio had its all time high with 12% of the listeners). The
radio monopoly seemed weaker than ever. Former pirates, youngsters, new
enthusiasts, free-speech activists et cetera all joined together with commercial
interests in order to overthrow state controlled radio. In 1991 elections the rightwing
coalition promised to de-regulate radio and television if victorious. They
won. And in 1993 the Swedish radio market was opened for private enterprise.
It is difficult to conceptualize success through alternative media theories.
The sympathies with the underdog are many times stronger than the cause itself.
Pirate radio in Sweden becomes in the end a competition between state and
capital where the latter, in the lines with other neo-liberal appropriations of the
time, came out victorious. To talk in terms of co-optation in this period becomes
misleading since the commercial dimension to pirate radio has been ever-present
from the beginning. Pirate radio in Sweden never ‘sold out’ or, in other words, it
was a sell-out from the beginning. This fact does not however weaken its
subversive impact or its ability to seriously challenging an existing concentration
of media power.
4. Instrumental – institutional – structural
In the outlook above we have shown how the pirate radio in Sweden
developed with and against a surrounding media landscape. In the following we
will trace the developments of Swedish pirate radio in terms of practices,
intentions and consequences on an instrumental, institutional and structural
level.
On an instrumental level it is clear how pirate radio from the very
beginning has depended on certain agents and individual initiatives. Especially
in the early days of pirating the story is intimately tied to a limited number of
persons (or, at least, this is what their recorded history wants us to believe). The
stories of Jack Kotschack and Inga-Britt Wadner are examples of how this
concentration on a personal involvement is important. Furthermore, for these
persons the engagement in pirate radio should be understood more as an
expression of creative entrepreneurship rather than a political statement. The
radio monopoly was challenged not for idealistic reasons but rather as a means
to make money. Nevertheless, as their activities became criminalized, the story
gained a political edge where both agents had to face and respond to law forces
and where Kotschack withdraw from radio broadcasting and Wadner became the
first radio martyr by continuing illegal transmissions.
This period is also the only time in pirate radio history when the stations
employed journalists to do paid work in an organization. The ambition was to
create an institution similar to established radio but with different programming.
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