Does anybody have any idea now what the maximum amount of people who would be tuned in to the most popular pirate station on fm at the peak times for listening these days?

Probably between 10 and 20 - the DJ's Mum, Girlfriend, and his mates from school....

Albert H wrote:Probably between 10 and 20 - the DJ's Mum, Girlfriend, and his mates from school....

aside from that DXers people with an interest in radio, thats about it, know of someone who ran 5kw signal in ireland for about 6 years the signal was often heard up north. For all of that you won’t find any mention of it anywhere on wiki, the guy behide it had mad ideas that would change the status quo, now its gone nothing changed, pretty assume the radio landscape is pretty much the same up there apart from the odd community station. I do know have heard that some djs bedroom producers have started out on London pirates…up here I would of thought it would be unlikely. The only time anyone hears one is when they mistune their clock radio then quickly tune it back because they don't like the bashmen whatever it is.

Dream fm leeds said they had 30,000 alittle hard to believe, would of thought a more realistic figure for todays pirate would maybe afew 100, maybe a 1,000..

So 200 would be on a good day for an fm pirate? 30 years ago would probably be 20000 ?

famefm wrote:Does anybody have any idea now what the maximum amount of people who would be tuned in to the most popular pirate station on fm at the peak times for listening these days?

The world's best all time station loool has only got very limited coverage, so probably only 1 or 2 (You and the DJ in the studio ).

It seems the way to get listeners online is Facebook. Don't use your own dedicated stream, broadcast on Facebook with video too. I'm watching an Origin stream right now that has 340+ viewers. It appeared randomly in my feed. I don't often click these things. I did this time, and was surprised at the viewer count.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, stations like Thameside and Invicta used to actually make it into the RAJAR ratings, with audiences sometimes so big that Crapital had fewer listeners than them when they were on.

One year, Thameside got all their listeners to buy the biggest firework rocket they could afford. On the Sunday night just before Nov 5th, they got all the listeners to let off their rockets simultaneously at (as I remember) 9.30pm. They were doing an outside broadcast from the top of a central London tower block, giving a great vantage point. At 9.30pm, they could see where their listeners were, when the whole of London lit up at the same time with thousands of rockets!

And in to the mid eighties with the likes of the 102.5 fm solar radio /JFM est and also in those days it wasn't quite crapital yet it was still had djs like Rodger Scott and a few other decent djs

It's not like it used to be as music is more readily available. If you want to get an idea on numbers of listeners online then go to shoutcast.com and search for a pirate station on there. At the moment Kool London is showing 100 listeners. Not bad for 8am I guess.

Yeah i kind of expect Kool to have the highest numbers of online listeners for a pirate the way they advertise the online side is spot on through the years i reckon kool is 1 of them stations that when it does go off the fm for few days the djs enjoy rolling on and still enjoy it just as much, they have def branded Kool well.

Aren't they still off the FM at the moment? ...It could be possible there's one of two more online listeners because of this.

They do seem to be of further today but last week it was still on

I ment fm is off

Super Sunday on Kool, I expect in the height of Dnb Jungle they had 1000's listening.

DJ Mikey wrote:Yeah i kind of expect Kool to have the highest numbers of online listeners for a pirate the way they advertise the online side is spot on through the years i reckon kool is 1 of them stations that when it does go off the fm for few days the djs enjoy rolling on and still enjoy it just as much, they have def branded Kool well.

yeah I'm an online kool listener over here in Ireland and if I didn't watch forums like this I would not be able to tell that kool was a pirate, they're so careful to avoid even referencing the fm. of course they have that unique London pirate sound but apart from that...

Hardly any pirates say the fm now just dot net est

lol I've often heard a few say stuff like, "big up all the crew locked in the old way."

famefm wrote:Hardly any pirates say the fm now just dot net est

I think they believe that if they are arrested they can blag that someone else broadcasting it, that has nothing to do with them.

That's it you are right

I read RAJAR body who measure this, apply a factor of around x 4 to online/tunein followers to measure FM listeners.

So dependent on range, station consistency etc this figure could be in the 1000s for some stations.

Figure of between 100 to 1000 or more, is a fair average estimate for an established station in a populated area.