In the summer of 1987, a group of pirates aboard a ship three miles off the coast of Long Island infiltrated the New York City radio airwaves. They hijacked the frequencies in the name of free speech and better music, they said.
In the realm of crimes happening in 1980s New York City, this might seem like a minor infraction, but their actions were highly illegal.
This Is Radio Clash
In the 1980s, New York City radio was a highly influential medium. Not only did the disc jockeys who ran the airwaves have power, but so too did the artists they spun.
“If you got played on the radio, you had a hit. Even though there was less freedom in those days, commercial music radio was still the core of the music culture in the US,” Marty Brooks of the New York Radio Archives told Inside Edition Digital.
While the mainstream radio was playing the hits from records of that year like U2’s “The…
