From the very first mic check, pirate offered something new to the advertising industry in Canada and no it wasn’t a really good catered lunch.
Find out in this feature article from the May edition of Applied Arts:

Nun hires top ad man (Pirate’s own Terry O’Reilly) to persuade women of the possibility of life as a religious sister.

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In the 1950’s radio stations as we know them today, didn’t exist. There was no so-called musical entertainment on the airwaves.

Radio Luxembourg with it’s fading signal was a young listener’s only option, but even those were sponsored shows-Not much help for young artists without major label contracts.

Ronan O’Rahilley, a wealthy young Irish entrepreneur having backed a record by Georgie Fame couldn’t get airtime on regular stations, so he set up his own on a ship afloat a few miles off of the Essex Coastline instead. With that single stroke of defiant genius, Pirate radio (the real origin of our name by the way) was born.

Ronan’s Radio Caroline was a smashing success and was soon joined by a whole fleet of ships broadcasting music off shore.There was Radio Scotland, Radio Invicta and the most famous of them all Radio London.

A constant source of embarrassment for elected officials, the government was desperate to find a way to shut the stations down. They got their chance when a man was shot dead in an ownership dispute.

The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act was passed in August 1967 and Pirate Radio set sail for silence until re-emerging again in earnest in the Seventies with Radio Northsea International off the coast of Holland.

It’s a wonderful bit of history that’s been turned into a movie starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Tom Wisdom and Nick Frost. We don’t know much about the movie, but we sure do love the title. Check out the trailer.

Pirate’s own Ben Zebelman may be too modest to tell you that he did all the audio and sound design for the award-winning Axe 100 Girls website, but we aren’t.

That’s because this breakthrough site that uses women to advise guys on hair products has already picked up a gold lion, a gold pencil and a gold webby.

(It might also help to explain why Ben just cut off all his hair.) On top of that, Ben’s work for Comcast recently won two silvers and a bronze for music and use of music respectively, at this year’s Telly Awards.

Way to go B.Z!

Looks like Pirate’s own Ari Posner and his partner Amin Bhatia are up to their old tricks. Their work on the hit show Flashpoint has been counted among the five nominees for “Best Original Music Score for a Program or Series” at this year’s Gemini Awards.

In the music world, this is a gold lion. Which is why, if they win, we’ll be dancing in the aisles. The industry Gala will be held October 19th and 20th in Toronto.

We’ll keep you posted.

Wrong. (In White’s dreams.) The correct answer is all three have won big at the Kentucky Derby. Slew in ‘77, Smarty in ‘04 and now Pirate’s own Watt White this coming May 2nd. That’s because WW just wrote the official party anthem for this year’s Derby Infield Party! (Eat your heart out Dan Fogelberg.) What’s more, Watt’s Song “Down and Derby” is a featured free download under the cap of 12 million bottles of Mountain Dew.

Check it out here

Better yet buy like twelve cases of specially-marked bottles of the Dew. Watt would like that. So would his client. They’re at the post!