MN.18.08.1988. Poland and Radio Solidarity

The photo was taken outside Polish Radio in Warsaw in 2005. The programme that accompanies it was made in August 1988, a difficult time for Poland. There were at least 15 illegal FM stations on the air, trying to combat the official government voice coming out of the Polish Radio building. Do you remember international reply coupons? If you were trying to get a reply out of a radio station, sometimes enclosing an IRC would help out. In theory, such a coupon could be exchanged for postage stamps in another country. However, in my experience, they often turned out to be an expesive proposition. We discuss IRC's in this programme. This was also the week that General Zia was toppled from power in Pakistan and IRRS was preparing broadcasts from Northern Italy. If you've arrived at this page from Thomas Witherspoon's SWL Blog, then you may like to know that Media Network's Pubspot talks to John Bryant of Fine Tuning about 9 minutes into the programme. Professor John Campbell looks at clandestine antennas and reviews a book about Harold Beverage called Genius at Riverhead.