Rinse FM gets a licence

Fantastic news - Rinse FM has been given a legal FM licence. The pirate station has been campaigning for this for three years - hurrah!

London has a rich and important history of pirate radio. I was lucky enough to witness it first hand from about 1997. But Rinse goes before that. Set up in 1994, it was another spearhead of the pirate armada, a consistently brilliant underground station that pioneered and promoted sounds like grime, dubstep and funky.

There's fairly sound evidence that pirates can attract more listeners than some corporate stations' specialist shows. And there's a reason for that - what Rinse calls the 'homogenized radio landscape' of London. They're right - pirate radio caters to a much underestimated market.

Hopefully Rinse won't lose its way like Kiss (a station that I do love, for reasons too long to mention here). It started out as a groundbreaking pirate station in 1985. But listen to Kiss in the daytime now and you might as well switch on your RnB jukebox. Its evening specialist shows are great and feature some top names, but to some extent you feel as if they are kicked into the corner, the ignored, scrawny, ugly child of the family.

I have every faith that Rinse will do well, and I'm really happy at this news. With recent cancellations and closures in the club scene bringing the mood down, it's great to have some sunshine after the rain.

Oh, and according to Wikipedia, in 2005 DJ Slimzee's Rinse antics resulted in an ASBO banning him from every rooftop in Tower Hamlets. That's a pretty funny ASBO.