Radio Caroline

Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly.^[1] Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.

The Radio Caroline name was used to broadcast from international waters, using five different ships with three different owners, from 1964 to 1990, and via satellite from 1998 to 2013. Since August 2000, Radio Caroline has also broadcast 24 hours a day via the internet and by the occasional restricted service licence. Currently they broadcast on 648 AM and DAB radio in certain areas of the UK: these services are part of the Ofcom small-scale DAB+ trials. Caroline can be heard on DAB+ in Aldershot, Birmingham, Cambridge, Brighton, Glasgow, Norwich, London,^[2] Portsmouth, Poulton-le-Fylde and Woking. Caroline can also be listened to over the internet including via music players such as Amazon echo (Alexa).

In May 2017, Ofcom awarded the station an AM band community licence to broadcast on 648kHz to Suffolk and north Essex;^[3] full-time broadcasting, via a previously redundant BBC World Service frequency and transmitter mast at Orford Ness, commenced on 22 December 2017.^[4]

Radio Caroline broadcasts music from the 1960s to contemporary, with an emphasis on album-oriented rock (AOR) and "new" music from "carefully selected albums". On 1 January 2016, a second channel was launched called Caroline Flashback, playing pop music from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.