Radio anoraks and their false idols

History is only what the loudest or most intimidating historian says it is. Rarely does history have any relationship to what actually happened. This is very much the case with radio anoraksia, a love of the history of radio broadcasting. It’s especially so for the innovative and new frontiers of pirate radio. The players who actually were there and made history happen can be broken down into three easily identifiable groups – the evil, the good, and the unsung heroes.

The first group is the evil group.

This is filled with those who may well have spent 5 minutes doing something way back when, but their primary function is to spend the following 5 decades dining out on whatever it was they once did. Facts never get in the way of a good story for these fellows. They publish books, have radio shows constantly referring to stories of radio events (and, most importantly, themselves) from yesteryear, or, most hideously, they hold court on various anorak discussion boards.

Because of who they once were and their ability to self-hype, they are able to get away with their changes to history. They have ensured the radio anoraks who are staring up at them as if they are the latest incarnation of a Messiah are in a highly receptive hypnotic trance by courting and encouraging their idolatry. From this position of ‘authority’ they are unchallenged as they re-write history or decree who might be a ‘goodie’ and who might be a ‘baddie’. They even get away with racist and sexist outbursts, and it doesn’t matter if they bully those who might expose them for who and what they really are or the lies they have told. They have illogical opinions on everything, rarely allowing alternative concepts or modern ideas to flourish. Despite having no connection whatsoever with today’s audiences or with the operation of today’s radio stations, they know best and everybody else is wrong. Be assured this evil group will certainly know how to make money from anoraks, and some.

The second group is the good group.

These will be the guys typically still working in the industry, probably involved in innovative and creative programming, connecting with today’s audiences. Yes, they may well have a well-worn after dinner speech about how back in the day they did this or they did that, and it may well be embellished by the passage of time, but these guys are honest and mean no harm to the anoraks. Now, these are the fellows that anoraks can and should trust and listen to (even if they’ve written books) as they are genuine and mean well. Usually they actually were involved in doing quite dramatic things rather than the hyped involvement typical of the evil group.

The third group is the unsung heroes.

These are the lovely people who are all too often played down or even deleted in the loud history revisions of the evil group. They are quite shy about what they did, and will say “Oh, it was nothing” when drawn on major events they may have been a primary part of. Their single handed efforts to keep radio stations on the air or ships at sea were them “Just doing my job”. Most anoraks won’t know much about the unsung heroes, because access to their existence is denied by both the reserved nature of the individuals concerned, and by the evil revisionists. The unsung heroes are the guys who could really tell anoraks the way it was and bring out the real truth behind what happened and when, yet will be forgotten when all that remains to speak of these eras is the legacy of the evil group.

It is as impossible to convince hardened radio anoraks to shun the evil group as it is devout Christians to shun Jesus Christ. Because of this, the history of radio remains in the hands of the evil group being twisted, turned and distorted to suit. Very soon the truth will no longer be out there.