I don't know if I'd rely on the public's knowledge of what a pirate station is, it seems that the vast majority of average listeners I've known have no clue of what a pirate station is. I think broadcasters can forget that radio isn't the center of most people's attention.
The best exchange I had was with a visitor who stayed with me for a while. He asked what hobbies I was into, and I was barking excitedly about radio and listening to pirate stations, college radio, Part 15, etc. He likes radio and music, and I was asking if he'd ever heard a pirate station where he lived before, a city out west known for being kind of 'quirky.
He said, 'I wouldn't know, I just tune until I hear something I like, and if they play something I don't like, I switch to another station. I wouldn't know if something was pirate or not.'
Boomer