Designing a free radio station

2 messages

There is NO free radio in this country it is over-regulated to the point
of strangulation by govenment(s) who are scared of any sort of free
expression.
The only way to broadcast to the Uk freely is by placing your free radio
station outside of the UK's borders.

Do we not have freedom of expression (relatively) on the internet with forums (which often show why freedom is not automatically a good thing) and internet audio broadcasting?

How about LBPs, sure the risk of raid is always there, but while on air the station staff have freedom of expression do they not? In many cases they don't do as much with it as perhaps they should.

Anoraks (of which I am one) often do the easy part of expressing dissatisfaction with the radio that is on offer, and I believe we do have a valid point in that.

The difficuly seems to arise when we move on from that to try to tackle what we think SHOULD be on offer on the radio instead.

So the question to Neil, R.C. Guff and everyone is:-
If someone gave you a totally free radio station to run starting tomorrow, what would you put on it?

Suggestions that we sometimes hear put forward are in practice often not very different from existing radio stations. Freedom surely is not a question of playing our personal favourite gramophone records instead of someone else's selections. Surely it is not just about replacing someone else's choices of presenter voices with our own pick of Smashies and Niceys.

Other anorak would-be programme controllers end up proposing things which, although not catered for, in practice have very limited appeal and so are difficult to sustain.

We anoraks DO have a point, we ARE on to something, but perhaps we need to develop and refine our ideas a bit before making such a song and dance about it otherwise we risk looking silly and undermining our own argument and position.

Neil Gates is correct in his assumption that there is no "free radio", i mean a national free station that can be heard over the majority of the UK mainland, or for that matter over mainland europe on a MW/AM radio. If i had the resources to set a "free" station up on a ship in the South Falls Head, these would be my ideas of what it should be doing. Have a Nick Abbott type phone in request show and phone in, after 9 at night, comments of a topical or contraversal nature. Let people speak their minds, without being censored or cut off. Play a good mix of music and speech, where the dj/jock gives you the info about what he's playing and ask the listeners their choices too. Play as many unsigned new bands as possible, along side the classics, both hard rock and soft rock combined. If you have to have "the god squad" on for so many hours a day, so be it. With satellite and pc's ruling the world, and technology being what it is now, the station could be a truly two way thing, in every way. Thats my opinion, for what it's worth, all the best from Geordieland (geoff)