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Four Corners: Radio pirates, 1973

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A man in a vehicle holds a two-way radio handset
Four Corners: Radio pirates, 1973

SUBJECTS: History

YEARS: 9–10


Imagine life before mobile phones.

In this 1973 clip from a Four Corners program, discover the lengths that many determined Australians were prepared to go to in order to communicate through the air waves from their cars and other locations.

This was long before the invention of mobiles, video conferencing, social media and related technologies.


Things to think about

  1. 1.How would you get by without your mobile phone? In the 1970s, before mobiles were commonly available, some people found a way of communicating on the move: radio transmitters. But there was one big problem. Licences for using radio transmitters were restricted to people like police, firefighters and others who needed them for their work. Unlicensed operators were called pirates.
  2. 2.In what ways did the unlicensed radio transmitter operators try to avoid detection? The PMG was the Postmaster General, whose office controlled radio transmitter licensing. How many pirate radio operators did PMG inspectors catch in 1972? What arguments were put forward: a) by the radio pirates for legalising the use of transmitters; b) by the PMG for keeping the ban?
  3. 3.As you saw in the clip, radio transmitters were made in Australia and their use required almost no technical knowledge. They could be bought legally by anyone — licensed or unlicensed — yet it was a crime to use them without a licence. What better ways of dealing with this issue do you think the authorities could have used?
  4. 4.Develop a series of questions you would use to interview someone who was born before 1950, to find out the impact that changes in communications technologies have had on their lives. Swap your questions with a friend to evaluate them and see if you can improve their effectiveness.



Date of broadcast: 1973


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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