In 1964, rebel radio stations took to the seas in converted ships to offer listening choice to a young, resistant audience, against a backdrop of restrictive broadcasting policies. considering how space matters in the production, consumption and regulation of audio transmission, through the geophysical spaces of sea, land and air.

Prelude.- Chapter 1: Audible introductions: Sound, space and society.- Chapter 2: Contextualising Caroline: The offshore pirate.- Chapter 3: Offshore outlaws: Intimate geopolitics at sea.- Chapter 4: Audio atmospherics: listening from land.- Chapter 5: Broadcasting borders: Controlling the air.- Chapter 6: Sounding out conclusions.-  Encore.  

In 1964, rebel radio stations took to the seas in converted ships to offer listening choice to a young, resistant audience, against a backdrop of restrictive broadcasting policies. This book draws on this exceptional moment in social history, and the decades that followed, teasing out the relations between sound, society and space that were central to ‘pirate’ broadcasting activities. With a turn towards mediated life in geography, studies of radio have been largely absent. However, radio remains the most pervasive mass communications medium. This book breaks new ground, discussing in depth the relationship between radio, space and society; considering how space matters in the production, consumption and regulation of audio transmission, through the geophysical spaces of sea, land and air. It is relevant for readers interested in geographies of media, sensory spatial experience, everyday geopolitics and the turn towards elemental and more-than-human geographies.

“Rebel Radio is a crucial intervention in the academic study of radio. Kim Peters significantly advances our understanding of radio as a distinctly ‘spatial’ and spatialising medium – operating within and in relation to place and space... This book carefully weaves concepts, theory and primary data into a genuinely original account of radio piracy’s heyday, while exploring the legacies of radio piracy through to the present day.” (Alasdair Pinkerton, Senior Lecturer in Geopolitics, Royal Holloway University of London, UK, author of Radio, 2018) “In exploring the Rebel Radio of the iconic off-shore pirate radio station Radio Caroline, Kim Peters makes a compelling case for why geographers need to take radio seriously. Building on her previous theorizations of the political geographies of the sea, Peters outlines why the geographical study of radio must think through the materiality of the different elements –air, aether, land and sea - that shape the production, consumption, and regulation of radio broadcasts. This beautiful and engaging book explores how the anchoring of Radio Caroline at sea, outside British territorial waters, not only exploited a succession of loopholes in the geopolitical regulation of broadcasting, but shaped the audible quality of its broadcasts and the affective atmospheres in which its audience became enrolled and called to action in defence of ‘rebel radio’.” (Gavin Brown, Associate Professor of Cultural and Political Geography, University of Leicester, UK)

Offers a unique conceptualisation of radio in terms of sensory spatial experience Breaks new ground in examining how sound is produced, consumed and contested through the medium of radio Provides novel insight into current geographical concerns by means of an engaging and relevant case study