Reflections on Nancy Updike's lecture

Nancy Updike inspired me with her artistic approach to the subject.

She didn't really talk about the future of radio or radio of the future. She said that radio isn't an old medium that is dying, radio is timeless! I believe that it is true. Radio will continue to exist side by side with other media. However, the shape of radio will change.

I think that radio in the future will not be a device with which you can listen to broadcasts. Radio will rather be the content/programmes which you can listen to. Radio will probably be on the internet in some way.

Updike talked about how you can use the radio to tell stories and describe things, how radio is the perfect medium in creating personal relations and giving the opportunity to come close to a person or incident. I think she is right about that, sound is essential in creating a feeling. You know how important sound is in a horror movie, the movie isn't scary at all if you turn off the sound.

Reflections on Claire Wardle's lecture

Besides that I love British accent and British English, I got really inspired by Claire Wardle and her lecture. She had a very motivating way of presenting the subject.

It was interesting to hear that British people experienced problems in sending information to BBC, or other public service companies, but when they got instructions or figured out how to do it, they started to send pictures and information directly to BBC. Nowadays people don't send information to BBC, they rather send pictures and news that they have experienced to each other. BBC don't get the news first anymore, and they don't get them from the people either.

The most interesting thing was that even though people got the information from other sources first, they still wanted to hear it from BBC. When BBC had the news on their tableau, people could be sure the information was true.

I wonder why the behavior has changed so that people send the information to each other rather than to BBC or other public service companies?

TuneIn Radio

I don’t know if you already have mentioned TuneIn Radio, but in case you haven’t it’s an app and website where you can find radio stations from all around the world. You can either search for what you want (podcast, broadcasted radio etc) or look through the categories such as “Local”, “Talk”, ”Music”, “Sports” and also search for radio by location or by language. A fun way to discover radio stations in different countries without knowing the actual name of the station. Let’s say you want to check out the Cook Islands radio, and you’ll find Matariki FM 99.9.

http://tunein.com/

Or download it from the App-store

Radio Gamer

For all of you game-enthusiasts out there that haven't discovered this Swedish game podcast, check it out! It's run by a radio presenter from Rix FM, one from Bandit Rock, and a gaming journalist from Svenska Dagbladet.

http://www.radiogamer.se/

Hybrid Radio with RadioDNS?

I recently heard a talk by James Cridland at mediauk.com who talked about the future of radio and these were his main points:

• Radio has a clear multi-platform future (DAB, TV, Internet)
• Radio currently has no content-focus experience

His case was that the Future is Hybrid radio, not multi-platform. You choose what program you want to listen to and where ever you are you will hear it through the platform that is available. No matter if it is through FM, Internet or even the TV broadcast (you know that we can listen to radio through our TVs, right?). After shutting of the radio, you can continue listening exactly where you were, integrating podcasts and broadcast.

To do this you need metadata about the show and where you can listen to it. RadioDNS is an open technology that makes switching between broadcast and IP streams a seamless experience. When a radio set (or app, perhaps) receives an FM channel, it receives a special ID tag about the channel/frequency. This together with RadioDNS embedded in the player, you can receive IP data directly from the Internet about the program.

For an explanation of RadioDNS, check out this clip. And if you're interested I suggest you read further at www.radiodns.org.

Radio + TV

We've talked alot about radio, and if podcasts and spotify/lastfm could be called radio. Alot of people has said that it is some kind of radio.

Well, apparently there is radio on the TV also :P
The only two examples I know about are:

Show: "Rivstart" - Radiostation: "Bandit rock" - TVchannel: "TV6" - Status: Dropped

and

Show: "Vakna med The Voice" - Radiostation: "The Voice" - TVchannel: "Kanal 5" - Status: Still on air


Their both in Swedish, but if you would like to watch the later one you could click here!

So is this radio? ;)

RFID

It feels as if most people believe that the use of "offline radio" is about to die and that traditional radio that actually uses radiowaves are beginning to get more and more useless (except when it comes to emergency-messages).

But radiowaves will live on as RFID! :P
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rfid )

I'm aware of that RFID doesn't have that very much to do with the way we are looking at the radio for this course, but:

I find it funny that we on one hand are trying to redefine what radio is (by calling podcasts and spotify radio). At the same time "the radio" has found another possible use but in the form of RFID!

Sasa Vucinic invests in free press

Sasa Vucinic is a journalist from Belgrade who has an excellent speech on TED regarding free press (radio inclusive). He speaks of countries that lack or are in the process of losing press freedom, and highlights the importance of free press now and in the future.

With Wednesdays guest lecture marathon in mind, we really have had some funny, entertaining and amusing lecturers. This particular speech gives another tone to the need for radio or other media. It may be helpful to get other perspectives in order to broaden the picture from "radio is entertaining and fun" to "why radio and other media is important for developing nations and countries emerging from repressive regimes".

A short reflection on Nancy Updike's lecture

During the lecture Nancy Updike some times stressed that radio is a "storytelling".

I could relate this to thoughts of one post-modernizm philosopher Richard Rorty who was an influential modern thinker.

Among other ideas, he was claiming that person creates own identity through language, by telling stories or narratives about self. Or, in the other words, storytelling is the essence of personal identity: we are what we tell about us.

So may be need to listen to the stories told by others is as natural as need to tell stories about self? Then radio, definitely, has future, at least that part of it defined as "talk radio" or radio that tells stories.

The Hype Machine Radio

Finding music through blogs is one of the ways I discover new music, and the blogs are not always necessarily music blogs, but could be art blogs, fashion blogs, tech blogs, and design blogs. Hype Machine actually handpicks music from blogs and create playlists for their listeners along with short information to go along with the songs. This is a great way of connecting to the listeners, giving them a reason to listen to these tracks. And it is always great being recommended new, awesome music.

They also give you tips on how to have your music discovered by them.

From their website:
"What is it?The Hype Machine keeps track of what music bloggers write about. We handpick a set of kickass music blogs and then present what they discuss for easy analysis, consumption and discovery. This way, your odds of stumbling into awesome music or awesome blogs are high."

Check them out here: http://hypem.com/radio

Of course, they have an iPhone app, so they're definitely keeping up with the digitalization of music and offering cross-platform alternatives.

The reason music-sharing is so popular

"In the age of the iPod, it's harder and harder to get exposed to new, interesting music."

We are all becoming more like DJs through torrents instead of listening to radio. It becomes more and more important with availability with music. Corporate radio is focused on a broad national public and not on an individual basis. This leads to more people using programs that enables downloading of music.

This article is from 2010 and it's interesting to read about how it was before the "Spotify craze" where personal music lists became more legal then downloading music through torrent sites. Though isn't the problem that we're not exposed to new interesting music still a problem?

Read the full story here:BitTorrent Sites: How the Internet Makes Us All DJs

Evil beeps from the past

An abandoned old radio station in Russia is still broadcasting, what it's broadcasting is a mysterium. The eerily content, which takes from in "evil" beeping and buzzes and the occasional speaking of names, hasn't still been identified. The story gets even spookier from this quote:

"As you might expect, the Buzzer’s history is murky. Roughly 30 years ago, it’s said, the Soviets built a radio station near Povarovo (the accent is on the second syllable), a 40-minute drive northwest of Moscow. At the time, Leonid Brezhnev was still alive, the Kremlin presided over an intercontinental empire, and Soviet troops were battling the mujahideen. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it was revealed that Povarovo was controlled by the military, and that whatever happened there was top-secret."

Read the full story here: Inside The Russian Short Wave Enigma

Live broadcasting - Lectures from Wednesday 28/9-2011

http://tinyurl.com/dm2571lec

13-15, Nino Cirone, Director, Broacast Research Ltd, "10 things you should know about your audiences".


15-17, Dr. Clair Wardle, Digital Consultant (BBC College of Journalism), "Moving beyond broadcasting: Digital technologies and collaborative radio"

@cward1e at Twitter

17-19, Nancy Updike, producer and reporter at the radio show "This American Life", "Radio is better than other media and I can prove it"

On Disaster: Technologies Involved

I happened to stumble into disaster preparedness and mitigation guidelines which was written by Dr.Satyabrata Sahu. Chapter 1 in particular discusses "Early Warning and Disaster Preparedness" which also includes the technologies involved in early warning system. As technology develops further, it is not surprising to find the growing reliance on many different platforms to provide robustness, redundancy, speed and maximum availability. Radio is, apparently, not the only important player in delivering the critical message to the masses. Of course radio still play a crucial role in our age, but if the prediction of the death of radio comes true, I personally believe that some other broadcast platform will be able to take over the role of radio. Maybe the emergency centers can have their twitter account and people can follow the account for emergency alerts. I believe in the future reliability of mobile internet will be even better than today and provides an viable alternative to radio.

Please find also a few of the disaster centers which utilize many different technologies:

- FEMA

- NOAA

- GDACS

- US Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau

A "niche radio" service: "Blog Talk Radio"

In seminar 3 last week, there brought up a "Youpod" idea regarding to topic "niche radio". And here I find a service that is quite similar with that: "Blog Talk Radio".

Here is the link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/

Users could upload their voice into their account which makes the content could be very "niche". In addition, there are quite a few live online radio shows that enable users to interact with the speakers lively.

In the seminar, Youtube is taken as a primary reference when imagining how the niche radio service should be like. It could be great. However, this "Blog Talk Radio" gives me the feeling of "TEDs" since very clear content categories are listed there.

And I personally think Internet will be the best platform for niche radio at least in the near future.

Micro radio and bacteria-podcasters

While browsing through some articles on media and technology I found several interesting ones.

First can support the micro brain chip idea on one of the seminars. This article tells how graphene can receive radio waves and that it can be used for the radio industry for a very fast and quality transmission. Since the receivers will be tiny it will be possible to place them into the chip and then to the human brain. Or to the earring. Or to any other futuristic device.

Second article tells about how bacteria can generate radio waves. Applied to our course it means that potentially people will be able to listen to waves transmitted by live bodies.

Would like to mention that this post is of a rather joking character but there is a part of joke in everything. The purpose was to show that technology is moving really fast.

Thanks for reading!

Radio Application

Digitalization of Radio is a great opportunity for me to be able to listen to the radio from my homeland.

MOSKVA ★ FM - online radio app for iPhone and iPad. All Radio Moscowbroadcast live and archived broadcasts for 4 years.

Besides listening to the russian radio channels you can make playlists of your favorite songs.

Radio Off The Dial (2011)

Here comes an interesting perspective on the future of Radio when it comes to among other things - multi-functionality. Watch the video as it covers technical aspects and is quite informative. This might be helpful for the project, and if you're a group that thinks that Radio will die - this may give you more to think about (or more to refute!!)

http://www.radiootd.com/?p=413

Social Radio vol 2

A previous post was talking about how Facebook is creating its own social radio service.
Latest news show that they are actually teaming up with Swedish company, Spotify.
"Spotify's app will allow Facebook users to listen to music with their friends and share their favorites and music listening habits via their profile. Facebook's 800 million users will gain access to music for free, while ensuring that artists are compensated for their work." (theLocal.se)
This seems to be quite a threat to commercial music radio stations.
Does this affect talk radio at all? Will this sharing system increase the spread of podcasts?

Seminar 4 topics welcome

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Ok, so we just finished seminar 3 and you now know what that's all about. We'll basically do the same thing next week, but we need a new set of topics to form seminar groups around. Some of the topics were handed in today in the form of your papers, but a suggestion for a topic can come from anywhere. I for example thought of a topic when I heard Michael Forsman's lecture earlier today:

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The ratings industries

Michael Forsman mentioned the ratings companies that measure who, what and where and then sell their results back to the radio channels. What is the history of measuring ratings and the specialized companies that do these measurements. What is the impact and implications of their activities - how does feedback affect the radio industries (content, economic decisions, radio personalities etc.)? What role will measurements, ratings and the rating industries play in the future and for the future of radio? This proposal can be linked to, or compared to last week's "Radio advertising of the future" proposal.

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So, if you think of a topic - perhaps in relation to a lecture or something you read on this blog - please formulate it in a few sentences and post it here! Please name it "Sem 4 topic: [The ratings industries]" to make it easier for others to understand that this is suggestion for a seminar topic!

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Social Radio will bring people together

Gerd Leonhard, a Futurist in the Media specifies following future of radio as concept "Social Networks are the radio". Social networks aggregate thousands millions of members, and why there is no opportunity to listen to the radio there?

And in response to this question, another news published 9/21/2011:

Facebook adds new social Internet radio service that is new app from Myxer Social Radio, to bring friends together through music as they listen at the same time.

People will be able to to join different rooms (channels) based on musical artists.

Service allows chart option, an even record a "Song Story" - a 30 sec. video where someone can explain what the song means to them.

"We see this as an opportunity to bring people together through music and enhance the experience of music through social content," Myxer’s CEO Myk Willis told TechNewsDaily.

Advertisement in Radio

Advertisement in radio is going strong, compared to last august this year had an increase of 14,8%. Radio had a better month than the media industry overall who saw an increase of 2,9% in total and the total number in August was 971 MSEK.

It is interesting that radio, as the "dead" media we most discuss is increasing its ad revenues while the newer media of tomorrow, Internet, saw a downturn in August of 1 % compared to the same month last year.

The statistics are required from a press-release by Sveriges Mediebyråer, it can be found here.

Spotalike , a way to get to know new music!

From a few lectures some have said that they use radio as a way to get to know new music. An other way to get to know new music is to use spotalike. Spotalike generates a spotify playlist according to last.fm from any song the user wants

www.spotalike.com/

Cloudcasting - radio in the cloud

Everything has to be in the cloud today, of course this also apply to the radio. Radio in the cloud is what we call...yes you guessed right: cloudcasting!

The best service i have come across that does this is: http://www.mixcloud.com/getting-started/

Here you can search, filter, find, listen to, subscribe to and share radioshows, podcasts and music directly from the cloud on demand. You can also, for free, upload your own cloudcasts.

Personalized sport stations

I came across this news yesterday in my RSS-feed - and I thought it was quite interesting to read. Slacker Radio has teamed up with ESPN and they've created a service where you can create personalized radio stations “based on favorite sports, teams or ESPN programs.” US only, of course.

I think it's interesting to follow examples like this one. Is this the future? Sort of a mix between Spotify and ESPN.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/20/slacker-radio-espn-personalized-sports-stations/

I also noticed that Slacker Radio also offers "regular" personalized radio.

Daniel Johansson's lecture (Sept 15)

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I thought Daniel Johansson's lecture last week (September 15) was very intriguing and thought-provoking. I've written a text about, summarizing and to some extent analyzing his arguments. It's available on my personal (academic) blog.

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RadioTAG

RadioTAG is an interesting new research project by BBC. They have developed a protocol for internet connected radios so that a listener can communicate with the broadcaster by tagging what they are listening to in real time. They give some examples:

• You're engrossed in an interview on the Today programme but have to leave for work. No problem. Press the RadioTAG button on your radio to remember your place. When you get to work, you resume listening on iPlayer from the point you left off.
• On the beach, you hear a great song you'd like to share with your friends. You push the RadioTAG button on your mobile UKRadioPlayer to tweet the track now playing and add it to your last.fm account.
• You hear an advert for a well-known fast-food chain on commercial radio. You press the RadioTAG button on your radio to get a coupon (in the form of a QR code) emailed to your phone. You show this at the counter and enjoy a tasty, cheaper burger.

If you are interested I recommend to read the first part of the article below. They continue to discuss how the protocol works in practice, which might be interesting for you that are into programming.

RadioTag article on www.bbc.co.uk

Conveying culture

The great thing with, what I consider, radio is the mix of talk and the chosen music. I like it even more because of the simplicity of listening to radio with a smartphone and through a web browser. I listen to radio almost every day, mostly P3, but also P1 and most interestingly "Radio Nacional de Colombia", the public service radio of Colombia.

The reason for this is that my girlfriend is from Colombia and listening to the Colombian public service radio teaches me a lot about the their culture and I get my daily lecture of Spanish. I found this web radio just the other week and I really appreciate the non-commercial mix of talk and music. They have high quality content which is really rare as I have been looking for south american radio for some time. When I got the idea of searching for their public service content I was gladly surprised of my findings.

I believe this holds true for our Swedish public service radio too. We are maybe not aware of it or we might take it for granted. But for me the great content of public service radio is truly important for the culture and the community.
What do you think? Have you ever listen to foreign radio?

Binaural haircut

Here is the binaural haircut that was mentioned in the seminar. A lot of you have probably heard it already, but if you haven't you definitely can't miss it!

Put on your headphones (you can't use speakers!) close your eyes and click the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA

I would also recommend to follow this link after you are done to read more about how it works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

Essay 1 - Radio habits

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Here are a summary of some aspects of your radio listening habits:

- Many mention listening to radio only/especially when on the move - on trains, subways, taxis, buses, bicycles, on foot and especially in cars (driving themselves or being driven by parents at an earlier age). This is often connected to the fact that you don't have access to other media (TV, Internet) in those (and some other) situations.

- A few mention radio when doing work around the house (doing the dishes, cleaning).

- Some mention parents with heavy radio habits and radios in every room at home, sometimes all tuned to the same channel at the same time so that dad can move around and not miss any of the content.

- Quite a few say the "hate commercial radio", that they "can't stand" all the commercial breaks and the advertisements or hear the same songs being played again and again. Taking into account that commercial radio need large audiences, it is (based on your essays) unclear who actually listens to commercial radio.

- A lot of people talk about radio vs dowloaded/streaming music. Some use radio to find new songs and new musical influences so as to "break out of" the playlists on Spotify or the mp3 songs on an iPod. What many have in common is using the radio to listening to (only) music in their youth (if they listened at all), but with more and more people branching out to also include (some) talk radio of different kinds lately (including podcasts) in their "old age" (20's).

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Essay 1 - Anthropomorphization of radio

Some have anthropomorphized radio in their essays, given it human characteristics. I wonder what that could mean? Is there a hidden project idea somewhere here?

"Radio was once a good friend of mine and from time to time it keeps coming back"

"Radio and I never really clicked [...] Although we have been seeing each other on and off for the past 20 years. [...] the most consistent issue is me not really appreciating Radio, and therefore cheating on Radio with other mediums such as TV and the Internet. I first met Radio when I was riding in the car with my parents; my first impression was that Radio talks too much. [...] with a [...] mp3 player, Radio was replaced and forgotten. [...] My relationship with Radio was never the same after this. [...] Although we don't see each other very often, I think our relationship has matured over the years [but] the road back is paved with temptation for other evolving mediums."

Still, is there a possible happy end there, sometime in the future?

Essay 1 - initial feelings about the course

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It was 10 days since you handed in your essays about your expectations and apprehensions about the course, and your personal relationship to radio. I will write a couple of blog posts where I summarize some aspects of your essays.

1) There is (naturally) a difference between those who have seen one or several presentations of earlier courses and those that haven't. While some comment that the quality of earlier presentations has varied, most have enjoyed the presentations and have looked forward to this course. Here is an extreme case:

"I've been looking forward to this course since I saw the first presentation [during] my first year at KTH. [...] Not only did I find the course enjoyable, but also inspirational. [...] From time to time, those presentations were the ones that kept me going and made me believe that this education was right for me."

2) Some of those who knew less about the course were (at least initially) disappointed to learn that the course would not cover different kinds of media or the whole media landscape, but rather just one specific type of media.

3) Many (but not all) were furthermore disappointed to hear the the theme for this year's course was radio. ("When I first heard about the subject of this year's course I was disappointed". This is fortunately often followed by a "however...") Some express (justified as it has turned out) hope that we will not focus only on traditional broadcast FM radio. The majority of students don't have, or have a very tenuous relationship to radio. Many relationships decreased, or ended with the arrival of Internet music services of different kinds (Napster, Direct Connect, Kazaa etc.). My experience from this course is fortunately that students like a theme better and better as the course progresses and you learn more about the theme. This is expressed in succinct form by a student:

"I'm not sure how much this year's theme, radio, will entrance me (at the moment I'm not very thrilled), but usually the more engrossed you are forced to become in a subject, the more interesting it becomes as you find new angles and viewpoints."

4) Most (even those who were initially disappointed by the theme) manage to find some consolation in different aspects of the course and the theme as it is. Many have mentioned that they look forward to hearing lots of guest lecturers and lots of different perspectives from industry and elsewhere. Some look forward to the project work and the freedom to be able to choose topics for the project phase (some also worry about being in "bad" project groups). Some mention the final presentation and the book as motivators.

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What's worth paying for?

I just got my bill from "Radiotjänst", the company that collects the fee for the Public service in Sweden. Or that is how I would like to put it, although Radiotjänst on the other hand actually always just ask you if you have a “television” when they are calling you to see if you are paying this fee or not. Even though the actual name of the company includes the word "Radio" and not "Television" and also that the fee got nothing to do with an actual “television”, as a lot of people today just have a "television" as a bigger screen to watch movies (which they by the way probably didn't pay for anyway) transferred from their computers. However, that's another discussion although it might be interesting to think about. Maybe they should change their approach so that we will start paying for Public service instead of a furniture? At least to me, the whole idea seems a bit old-fashioned.

Anyway, the bill itself is kind of special. You can choose when and how much you want to pay, although in the end it will always reach the sum of 2076 SEK a year. And that made me wonder, am I willing to pay that much to keep our Swedish Public service? I mean, basically that amount is the same as what you pay for a Spotify premium membership where you get to choose the music yourself. I think this is something to think about when we start our projects. What's actually worth paying for?

Radio in the movies

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Here are some suggestions for radio-related movies:

• "Radio days" (Woody Allen, 1987). A comedy that looks back on an American family's life during the golden age of radio (1930's-1940's). Imdb, Wikipedia
• "Private parts" (1997). The auto-biographical story of the foul-mouthed radio rebel Howard Stern. Imdb, Wikipedia
• "The king's speech" (2010). Widely acclaimed British historical drama. Imdb, Wikipeida

Please add to the list in the form of comments to this blog post!

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Roger Wallis on P1

I discovered that Roger Wallis (tomorrows guest lecturer) was featured in SR P1 Morgon, Swedish Radio channel one’s morning show, last Wednesday. He gave his comment regarding the new EU bill proposal to extend music copyright from 50 to 70 years. This bill is quite controversial and has recently been heavily debated. Wallis himself doesn’t support this proposal at all, and he says, among other things, that this is just another way for the music industry to get extra money to pay their lawyers to sue 15-year olds who download music, in order to get even more money.

Available here: http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/3448776.mp3 (Starts at 39:56). Unfortunately the show is in Swedish only.

Also, a fun fact about Roger Wallis is that he wrote the Swedish contribution for the 1969 Eurovision song contest, “Judy, min vän”.

I hope this post works as an extra intro for tomorrows guest lecture instead of spoiling it..

Radio stations in Russia

It seems to me that there are a lot of differences between swedish and russian radio stations.

When you come to Russia you would probably like to check the most popular Russian radio stations. Here are some of them.

Russkoye Radio (Russian Radio)

Russkoye Radio is the first national radio station playing Russian music only, generally pop songs. Russkoye Radio is exceptionally popular with people aged 30 and up. You can listen to it on buses, route taxis and in some stores. If you want to learn about modern Russian pop singers, listen to the radio for an hour – that will be enough for you to get an idea.

Russkoye Radio is one of the biggest radio networks worldwide, comprehending 1100 cities and towns of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Moldavia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, the Baltic States and the USA. The weekly audience of Russkoye Radio is over 20 million people.

Every hour the radio station broadcasts the latest news from the Russian News Service.

Besides, the name of Russkoye Radio is often associated with the annual Zolotoy Gramophon Music Awards in the Kremlin (the first ceremony held in 1996). In Moscow you can catch Russkoye Radio on 105.7 FM.

Europa Plus

Europa Plus is the Russian first commercial radio station set up on 30 April 1990. Within a very short period of time it became the most popular station in Russia. Europa Plus is aimed at 20-40 year old people, as broadcasts primarily hit music, such as Beyonce, Maroon 5 and Russian hits.

The official site of the company says Europa Plus is the world-largest network of FM radio stations broadcasting in over 900 cities and towns of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Latvia. Besides, Europe Plus is available via the Internet at www.europaplus.ru.

Europa Plus is a part of French Group Lagardere, a leading media holding, operating the most popular radio stations in France, Germany, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the SAR and other countries. In Moscow Europa Plus broadcasts on 106.2 FM.

Radio Mayak

Mayak (103.4 FM) is the oldest and the most reputable State radio station of Russia. it was founded over 40 years ago in 1964, when the Central Committee of the Soviet Union made a decision to create an absolutely new 24-hour broadcasting radio station, which could be heard in every corner of the country.

5-minute news every half an hour, music programmes, live concerts, breakfast funny shows, special reports and radio films quickly gained popularity with the Soviet citizens.

For a long time Mayak was the only means able to immediately inform the population of the most important events. However, now Mayak has to compete with numerous radio stations, though, it is still beloved with millions of people for its traditions, discussions and phone-ins.

Echo of Moscow

Echo of Moscow can’t be called a typical radio station, since it focuses on current affairs, analytics, news and discussions. It started broadcasting on 22 August 1990.

Founded in under the Soviet rule, Echo of Moscow was designed as a radio station for those, who eagerly tried to find an independent source of information providing news on politics, culture and other spheres of everyday life. In the early 1990s the Russian authorities made several attempts to shut down the radio station, but it survived and now is a respected media resource.

Weekly about 900 thousand of people choose Echo of Moscow on 91.2 FM as their personal news guide.

BUSINESS FM

BUSINESS FM is a media project launched in 2007 by Soviet-born billionaire Arkady Gaidamak on 87.5 FM. The news-talk radio is a part of media holding “Joint Media” (Obyedinennye Media).

Every 15 minutes Business FM reports about current events in Russia and in the world, stock market news (quotation of securities, currency rate, staple prices), resignation and assignment information, the world financial capitals weather.

Every 30 minutes the leading Russian and foreign companies’ news and events, business press monitoring are on air. Business FM also broadcasts Breaking News.

The recognized stock exchange analytics Grigory Beglaryan, Vladimir Levchenko, Aleksey Zavyalov are covering stock market news from the openings till closing the world stock exchanges.

The radio audience is everybody who is involved in the fast growing Russian finance market, including professional finance market participants: traders, financiers, bankers. They are listeners who use finance products: credit cards, share funds and participants of credit life of Russia.

The radio site is www.bfm.ru.

Elena Rynkova