Low-Budget Radio

There's a big variety of radio stations worldwide of various formats. Some are hardly worth being operated at all as their USPs can hardly be recognised. Playing the same music time & again produced by the top100 selling artists isn't a hard thing to do. It must actually be a very poor & dull job chosing and spinning these tracks not being once able to adjust the playlist to one's very own taste. Those music directors might fall into deep shock (or get their ass kicked) by simply putting on a track by someone whose music their listeners have never heard of. Play this nobody and get fired!

I admired the pirate radio stations who dared to play tracks I had never heard before. I looked up to the djs introducing unknown, less radio friendly music, tracks that caused a certain confusion when the first tune hit your ear & brain. What the heck is that???

Got tired of the same voices and phrases heard a thousand times. Could have puked at the senseless overkill the music and radio industry was about to produce by streamlining their sound and playlist in such a way that music with grooves and edges, lengthy or complex compositions, extraordinary intros didn't stand a chance for airplay.

Only a few, mainly low-budget radio stations really got the balls to play music of different roots & genres, music outside "mainstream" and artists yet to be discovered.

Funny though when you think about it. Low-budget radio stations have less money, fewer listeners but dare to play those "risky" less radio friendly tracks". Seems like they don't really have to lose anything, eh? Or the bigger & more popular radio stations were just too scared to be a bit different.

I think Radio Stadi was rather low-budget but their playlist was quite unique mixing Finnish artists with international music not so often heard on FM. They played rock, punk, country, blues, latin, and a little jazz. They always had some technical difficulty as their money was tight and couldn't always fix when something was going a little wrong and someday, around Christmas, their announcers just disappeared and music only was played for hours on end. I called the station to ask what's up and they said that their mic got broken and their mixing console was kind of out of order and that they would fix things soon, after Christmas or New Year. I offered them my time & help but they turned it down saying "thanks, but we'll manage somehow".

Unfortunately they didn't and soon, Radio Stadi went off air without an announcement on their behalf. It all happened in the middle of a song, before some skips & hickups for a couple of hours and then suddenly - dead silence. That was it. I read in the papers a couple of days later that they run out of money to keep going - poor chaps, really.

I was pretty upset and sad now that my radio had gone. Where should I turn to? Should I just grap the remote and select the next station available? There was Radio Nova, KissFM & Energy whose sounds & formats I loathed to put up with.... No, there wasn't really an alternative for me. I left the dial right where it was, switched off the tuner, scanned my LPs, took out Donald Fagen's record "The Nightfly" and listened to "The Goodbye Look".

Read on...my next blog called "why radio?"