Jeff: Today Ray Robinson brings us some interesting historical notes regarding the offshore beginnings and nautical connections of one of Southern California’s best known stations – KBIG, or ‘K-BIG’. As an AM station in the early 1950’s, it created a distinctive presence by broadcasting from a popular passenger ferry, the S.S. Catalina, while plying the … Read more
Jeff: The “Radio Station of the German Freedom Party” was the first European offshore radio station, and the only one which primarily targeted a German audience. Remarkably, it served a political purpose – resistance against the Nazi regime. It was programmed by German journalists living in exile, supported by Dutch, British, and French collaborators in … Read more
Jeff: Offshore radio broadcasting from international waters has most frequently been associated with radio stations in the North Sea that broadcast pop and rock music, such as Radio Caroline or Radio Veronica. But then in 1993 came Radio Brod (“Radio Boat” in Croatian). In the middle of the worst armed conflict in Europe since the … Read more
Jeff: Over the past couple of years, we have presented a series of items under the title ‘Radio Weddings’. The last, part 9, was in April 2023. Today we present one more item in this series, perhaps the most famous radio wedding of them all – the one that took place on board the offshore … Read more
Jeff: Many people worldwide are familiar with the name ‘Radio Caroline’ – the offshore ship-based station which first broke the monopoly of BBC radio in the UK in the 1960’s. They may be less familiar with the fact that the station has continued to operate down through the decades, and is not only still … Read more
How an early offshore radio station ended up in Hawaii in 1931 Jeff: This week’s feature story was written and researched by Jan van Heeren in The Netherlands, and was forwarded by Dr. Martin van der Ven in Germany to our editor-in-chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson. We thank each of those for bringing this story to … Read more
Jeff: The last two weeks here in Wavescan, Ray Robinson has presented the history of radio broadcasting in the North African country of Libya. But, there’s one more aspect to broadcasting in Libya that we haven’t covered yet, that’s hinted at by the country entry for Libya in the 1978 edition of the WRTH, which … Read more
Adapted from https://offshoreradio.info/star-club-en/ Jeff: For today’s feature, we are indebted to occasional Wavescan contributor Dr. Martin van der Ven in Germany for his research. He has uncovered a story about a previously little-known plan to launch an offshore station in the 1960’s off the north coast of West Germany. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles … Read more
Jeff: For 12 years during the Cold War from 1952 to 1964, the United States used a Coast Guard vessel in the Mediterranean Sea to broadcast Voice of America programming via medium wave and shortwave to Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa in up to 16 different languages. Those operating the … Read more
Jeff: From 1952-1964, the U.S. Information Agency operated a Voice of America station from on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter ‘Courier’, anchored off the island of Rhodes, Greece. It was equipped with a 35 kW shortwave transmitter and a 150 kW medium wave transmitter – the most powerful that has ever been installed on … Read more