Pirate Radio (radio show)

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Content

Classified as "comedy", "Pirate Radio" combined live on-air personalities with pre-recorded sketches, commercial parodies, live call-ins, and alternative rock. The title and premise of the show seemed to revolve around the hostile takeover of a commercial radio station. On-air, creators once credited the Radio Free Vestibules and "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with creative inspiration. Production values varied from excellent to poor, although it is unknown if obvious "mistakes" were or were not intentional — meant to simulate an actual illegal broadcast.

The music playing during the intro is the same soundtrack playing during the main titles of "Fight Club", by the Dust Brothers.

For the first 6 months of the show, no one used their real names. They went by aliases like, "Chunky Cheese" and "Albino Alligator".

Controversy

Miscellaneous

The wattage of both 90.7 FM and 105.1 FMclarifyme|date=September 2008 were reportedly elevated during the broadcast hours of "Pirate Radio" to levels that required a higher classification than the station currently possessed, although show creators denied this. No citations regarding power were ever issued by the FCC.

However, according to the FCC,specify|date=September 2008 there were 78 complaints filed against "Pirate Radio" due to objectionable content, including 63 complaints in the year 2001 alone. Telephone call-ins seemed to be unscreened most of the timeFact|date=February 2007 , and callers on occasion used profanity or referenced improper subjects. Although the calls were immediately terminated, many complaints were still made. On one occasion, the producer got into a 7-minute argument with a caller who was complaining about the content of the March 9, 2001 show. This was obviously live, unscripted, and unplanned. The caller complained about sketches that hadn't even aired that night, and told the producer he was going to hell.

Pre-recorded sketches often parodied celebrities and varying social situations using provocative dialog. Notably, Britney Spears was (fictitiously) killed off two separate times in "Pirate Radio" sketches. She suffered 4 fatal gunshot wounds in "COPS at DisneyWorld 2", and in the January 26, 2001 "Poor Sally" she was pureed by a razor-sharp giant revolving fan blade. Both times they used an obviously male, squeaky falsetto voice to parody her. Much criticism arose when some listeners and parent groups claimed the show unnecessarily depicted (albeit via audio) violence and, more specifically, excessive gunfire.

Possibly most controversial was the sexual suggestiveness of a few sketches, although the innuendo was well within FCC regulations (most of these complaints had less to do with explicit words or phrases, and focused instead on the "situations" themselves). For instance, two different sketches depicted the Trix Cereal Rabbit as a homosexual (they even used phraseology such as "that fruity rabbit" and "Peter cock-in-tail"). While there were very few on-air references to producers defending or justifying content of any kind, there remain countless examples of listener call-ins voicing support for the show.

Lipscomb comments

In February 2000, the show was put on a two-week hiatus when a producer (Travis Young) made disparaging remarks on-air about Lipscomb University during a news segment. The comment stated that Lipscomb University "charged an arm and two legs" for tuition, and specifically referred to Kaia Jergenson, a Lipscomb freshman whom had received much local news coverage because she had recently suffered the amputation of several limbs due to complications from meningitis. Friends and family members of Kaia Jergenson lodged numerous complaints in protest, and the parent station, WNAZ, suspended production of the show for two weeks. No public statements were released by any representatives of the station, or "Pirate Radio". "The Tennessean" covered this scandal extensively.

Infamous sketches

ee also

*Pirate radio in North America
*WNAZ

issues|article=y
OR = October 2007
unref = September 2008
fansite = September 2008