01/01/2024
"ShoutOut" Team members Steffi, Ezra, Tara and Terry together with a live studio audience provided five hours of New Year's Eve programming from 8pm on December 31st, seeing in the New Year of 2024 on the station from which "ShoutOut" is networked out each week - Bristol's BCFM.
We welcomed the New Year in with Munchener Freiheit's single "Keeping the Dream Alive". This was released in 1988, and is sometimes, erroneously, considered a Christmas single, so much so that it gets airplay on specialist Christmas music stations. The track is considered a "free radio anthem" and was (and is) used by pirate radio stations in hours of need. With the extended mix of the single, we reflected on the power of radio and the need for community radio stations, and how they contribute towards a just world. We thought that it was worth sharing the full text of our reflection here.
You know, when I was at school, like a lot of people, I struggled with feelings of loneliness and homesickness. And, as Freddie Mercury sang on the 1984 single "Radio Ga Ga", I found solace through the radio. Especially independent, underground and unlicensed stations that overcame various barriers to bring listeners entertainment. When I felt bad at school during the day, I knew that my friends at Radio Luxembourg would be on the air that evening with happy sounds. When I felt particularly oppressed at the regimen and callousness of the school day, I pictured the radio stations on the North Sea, Laser and Radio Caroline, and gained strength from the knowledge that some people at least, were breaking out of the shackles and doing their own thing. Later, when I first left home to study at college in the early nineties, I experienced a deep depression and homesickness for a while, but again the radio helped me. From my location, I could pick up Irish stations, Manx Radio, and at weekends, the regular shortwave land pirates who have been a feature of the radio spectrum for decades, and still are.
My story is not unusual - many many people have loved the radio, its intimacy, its friendship, the music it plays, the fact that it can speak directly to us wherever we may be. Under the covers in bed, in the kitchen, in our living rooms, at work, at college, on the bus.... it can be a constant companion.
Today there is a lot of choice in radio what with all the platforms that are available. But I never forget that community radio was particularly hard won in the United Kingdom. It took decades of struggle through lobbying, but also through direct action in the shape of pirate stations that eventually proved both the need and provided the expertise for a new generation of community stations which were finally legalised by the government in the mid noughties.
All over the free world, community radio stations have been introduced by progressively minded activists. In authoritarian states, the struggle for access to the airwaves continues. Community stations are, I believe, dear friends to people and tonight I want to acknowledge the close bond that exists between listeners and the stations and to assure you that as we go into 2024, your local community radio services will be here for you, not because the government says so, or because advertisers want to sell you something. But because we love communicating, and we love radio, and we also love being a part of your lives day by day.
The world is in a bit of a sorry state at the moment. But as has been demonstrated time and again, community radio can be part of the solution to our problems, promoting discourse, constructive dialogue and allowing people to see that their supposed enemies are also human. BCFM Radio is part of an international family of community and grassroots broadcasters, tens of thousands strong worldwide. And we intend to be here throughout the year to come, for all its triumphs and failures. We are part of your family too, your friend and companion. Thank you for making community radio part of your world in 2023, and let's face with love and optimism, the New Year together.
And I will finish with the words of Bob Stewart when he used to close off Radio Luxembourg's programmes at 3am every night. "We wish you God's blessing and peace - wherever you may be".
