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E. Van Dijckkaai 21 / PO Box. 554
B-2000 Antwerpen I
Belgium

RaDiO CentraaL 103.9 FM
int code + 32/3/232-30-30
int code + 32/3/232-91-92
e-mail: webgang@radiocentraal.be
The concept
Independence
Programming
Megalomania

























The concept

 Radio Centraal exists now 15 years. We are an independent non-commercial radio station and transmit on the frequency 103.9 fm, 24/24h, usually live, except from 3 till 10 a clock in the morning, then you can listen to tapes. The radio only consists of individuals. Organisations are not allowed to make a program, therefore we have managed trough the years to maintain our independence from government, from politics and from the logic of the marketplace, which dominates the media nowadays. Strictly spoken every individual can come to this radio station with an idea or a concept and achieve it.

Independence

As I said we are independent, and in the strictest sense of the word. We managed to secure ourselves a financial backbone which allows us to transmit without advertising and without subsidies, a unique in the modern media-landscape. We own a house in the centre of Antwerp: the upper part has been converted to enable us to broadcast, in the lower part of the building a café is located. Besides that every collaborator pays a 35$ a year as an investment in 'their' radio station.

Programming

In programming we have always striven to be complementary and not competitive with other radio stations, be they local commercial stations or national public stations. (In Flanders non-public radio is only tolerated on the local level, national public radio still has a monopoly) What they don't, won't or can't do, we try to do. We consider radio as being a medium that stands on its own and not merely as decor in the background or as we put it: wallpaper. In that way we have a radical and different view on the purpose an the possibilities of the medium radio. Our program schedule therefore is very diverse. It's build around 4 mayor pillars:

On the one hand we have the specialised - mostly alternative - music-programs. Very eclectic, going from surreal electronic and experimental landscapes to trippy techno-beat patterns, from rolling and flowing hip-trip-hop, old & new school to jazzy, funky vibes, from conservative classical music to post-modern non-linear contemporary composers, from ganja dubbing reggae to world-wide musical formulas like salsa or soukous, from sixties psychedelica to tasteful magic mushrooms, from unshaven punk to bloodthirsty hard-core metal, ... etc. You think off something and we've got it, in one form or another.

On the other hand there are, what we call, programs using 'the spoken word' as main feature. Here the program-schedule also shows a lot of variety. From culture in it's diversity to humour good as well as bad tasting, from backgrounds with the news of the day, week, month or year to talking absolute nonsensical bullshit about nothing and everything at the same time

We have also quite a lot of programs which are made by minorities, mostly from the sub-cultural of multi-ethnic part of society - mainly speaking about the gay community. The languages spoken on Radio Centraal are: Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Greek, Albanian, Turkish and Moroccan.

Last but not least we also spend a of air-time using our means 'radio' to it's full extend. Normal programming can always be interrupted or even cancelled in favour of radio-experiments or projects on location. Exemplary for this is an experiment we called 'The bathroom project'. We locked up 4 people in our small bathroom together with some microphones. They could only bring along clothes, food, drink and drugs, no watches, no reading material, no transistor radio. For 24 hours the door remained locked and for that period they were live on the air. Another experiment was the 'Door-Bell project'. Every night at the end of the broadcasts the microphone inside the door-bell was linked up to the transmitter and this for a year on. After a while it became known and people came singing, yelling, calling messages, discussing before our door, which is in the centre of Antwerp. Besides the experiments we also tend to go a lot on location in the city or outside. A daily program during the 'Theater festival' in Antwerp, Live transmission of the free-jazz festival 'Free-music' or the retrospectives of the 'Studio Experimental Music'. On election-nights there is always a special program partly from the studio, partly on location. And difficult locations, like a boot or a marquee-village in the middle of nowhere are also favourites.

Megalomania

Our transmitting range is quite small (20 km radius). This is partly due to governmental limits posed upon us and every private radio-station in Flanders. On the other hand there is a serious discrepancy between the media-laws in Flanders and the media-laws in Walloon. Where in the latter private radiostation can transmit up to 5kwatts, in Flanders we are only allowed to go up to 100 Watt, which has as perverse effect that we are being jammed by radios in Walloon. We are not a local radio station and have never considered ourselves as being one. We are merely local because of legislative limitations put up by the Flemish governement, limitations which we are fighting against. This is the reason why we founded ORCA (the Organisation of Radios for a more Creative approach of the Accoustics), a lobbying organisation which unites all four (4) non-commercial radios in Flanders. When the monopoly of public radio is broken and the guidelines of th European comunity demand so, will there be place for a non-commercial cultural radio station or shall the franchise system be adopted ? As for the governement they remain with their reactionary point of view, national public radio and private local radio. In the mean time we keep on lobbying for what we believe in.

























- a Web Gang ® Creation - updates by and comments to: WebGang@RadioCentraal.be