December 2010 Radio Advent blog 12

Dave Michuda “distant transmissions flicker and fade, there's a drift on the signal...a ghost in the phase “



Low Light mixes blog at: http://www.myke.me/  


With some amazing 90 minute long downloads merging ambient music with shortwave Interval signals and Ids, plus atmospherics. Wonderful stuff for someone like me who loves chill out and ambient music and shortwave radio. A treat for dark winter afternoons and evenings.

December 2010 Radio Advent blog 11

Jazz FM’s Virtual Christmas competition starts from 13 December 2010, at: http://www.jazzfm.com/



Have yourself a merry little Christmas by joining Jazz FM at the Barbican in London on Saturday 18th December for Christmas Swingtime. Guest singers Jacqueline Dankworth and Graham Bickley (above) will deliver a Christmas special as part of The Raymond Grubbay Christmas Festival 2010.




Meanwhile Sarah Ward and Helen Mayhew’ s Dinner Jazz, weekdays from 1900 UTC and Claire Anderson’s Late Lounge from 2200 to 0100 UTC weeknights remain two of the finest programmes on the air, anywhere. They are like a Christmas present all year round.

December 2010 Radio Advent Blog 10

Some links to radio bloopers, ancient and modern, as published in The Media Guardian on 7th December 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/dec/06/james-naughtie-jeremy-hunt-radio-4

including the on-air laughter of  disbelief at some of the corrupt expense claims that British MPs were making in 2009:

"Not only did revelations about MPs' inflated expenses claims become one of the biggest stories of the year, it also – unintentionally – provided one of the most memorable radio moments of 2009 as Davis suffered a fit of the giggles over Sir Peter Viggers's £1,645 duck house. "Evan, just shush... it's serious stuff," admonishes co-presenter Sarah Montague – also suppressing giggles."

December 2010 Radio Advent blog 9

Some festive radio links you might care to try- Internet radio stations with Christmas themes:

http://www.smoothchristmasradio.co.uk 
http://www.allchristmasinternetradio.com/  
http://www.northpoleradio.com/  
http://radiotime.com/channel/c_253111/Christmas.aspx  




A list at: http://www.listenlive.eu/christmas.html with  radio and internet Christmas stations including some in Germany, Poland and Switzerland


A favourite of mine is the Soma FM Christmas lounge channel, along with others in San Francisco. The space shuttle mixed with ambient music is quite something: http://somafm.com/  

December 2010 Radio Advent blog 8

Radio Slovakia International started broadcasting in 1993, the year it broke away from the Czech Republic and ended Czechoslovakia as an entity. It is leaving shortwave at the end of 2010 but retains internet and satellite broadcasts.

National radio is from Slovensky Rozhlas, part of the group who bring us Radio Slovakia on shortwave. Their QSL gallery is worth a look, covering all the cards issued by the station in their ten years of existence. The 2002 set of Czech radios is especially creative: http://www.slovakradio.sk/


The Tatra mountains in Slovakia don't make it into the Top 100 Snowboarding and Ski resorts guide, but they have long provided good skiing. Starý Smokovic is one such ski town, and from there an hour on a narrow gauge railway takes you from 1025 metres up to Strbske Pleso at 1355m, which was a top ski resort in the 1930s. The Grand Hotel there can be seen at: http://www.kempinski.com/en/hightatras/Pages/Welcome.aspx and they have a Facebook page.

There is an outlet of Lumen Radio in Strbske Pleso: http://www.lumen.sk/
Many moons ago as independence dawned on Slovakia, I bought an Olympia radio in the small Prior Department store in Strbske Pleso for 880 Slovak crowns (£19). The box said it was made in Taiwan, the radio's label stated India. Either way, this mw, sw, lw, and fm receiver served me well as a robust pocket portable for ten years, before its demise.

Local radio in the area may inform you of weather conditions on the ski slopes. Radio Expres 96.5 , Radio Zet 84.5 and Radio Frontinus 104.6 cover the region:
http://www.expres.sk/
http://www.radiozet.sk/
http://www.frontinus.sk/

National station Radio Twist became Radio viva and also has outlets in the Tatra regions towns of Kosice and Zilina: http://www.radioviva.sk/    Another popular national station that has been running for nearly two decades is Fun Radio. Western European pop merges with eastern at: http://www.funradio.sk/  Both stations have live webcams so you can see what's going on in the studio.

December 2010 Radio Advent blog 7

Some thoughts of mine from 2003-2004: Festive listening- Christmas 2003.



As ever there was a good selection of programmes over the Christmas and New Year period. The first programme to set the festive mood for me was Garrison Keillor's weekly variety show, coming from New York.
It had the usual blend of folksy singers and groups, with some nice seasonal tunes. There were some poignant, and some just downright funny, reminiscing of Christmas past in the Keillor household. Poverty and a church collection for the family when Garrison was a child, and the year that he managed to burn the turkey to a frazzle, and set the tree ablaze with hundreds of candles. Tall tales or not it is magical stuff.


Christmas songs and tales from Lake Wobegon wound off a great show. With a choice of hearing the show in the UK on the World Radio Network, BBC Radio 7 or the Internet I plumped for the middle option, 'watching' the show on BBC 7 via Freeview digital tv. That was on the Saturday night before Christmas, and I heard sections of the repeat in the small hours on my bedside radio.


Christmas carols from Kings College Cambridge ushers in Christmas for many around the globe. DAB station One Word played a selection of carols from Kings as fillers in its programming over the festive season. BBC Radio 4 also looked at the history of the broadcast in a half hour production.

Christmas Day, 0715, some lovely music on Radio Prague, in Czech, choirs singing. I didn't find much else on shortwave at the time, but with children eager to get at those stockings, time was at a premium. I seemed to miss out slightly on shortwave at Christmas this year, probably distracted by my first Christmas with DAB Digital Radio. You can't beat shortwave though and the variety and multilingual, multi cultural programming. I wish it got a wider press.


Tony Hawk's 12 Days of Christmas was on BBC 7. I assume it was first aired on Radio 4 in 2002. A very inventive and funny 30 minutes, with Tony trying to get hold of all of the things mentioned in the song to give his girlfriend for Christmas. Ornothologist and ex-Goodie Bill Oddie was on hand to help with some of the many feathered birds required. The Nine Ladies Dancing came courtesy of a dance agency, providing Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aquilera lookalikes. A trip to the House of Lords managed to get some of the less senile peers actually leaping, in turn for a donation to charity.


The Masterson Inheritance had two Christmas editions on BBC 7. This improvised show from the mid 1990s with Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence et al, is often a bit hit and miss, but the 'Stuffing of the Mastersons', set in Victorian times, worked well, intertwining Dickensian myth and post modernist humour.


A marathon 3 hour session on the morning and evening of 27th and repeated again at dawn on the 28th had James Follett talking about some of his radio plays, Men, Martians and Machines, with examples being broadcast (BBC7 again). His work was new to me and the Earthsearch series was especially chilling. The storyline in summary is: Earth has disappeared when the grandchildren of astronauts on a space ship launched from earth try to return home. The guardian angels (on board computers) want to gain control of the earth, but the four grandchildren, raised by the angels, and now adults, rebel. Series Two sees them colonise a planet called Paradise, which doesn't live up to its name for long.

December 2010 Radio Advent blog 6

Adapted from my December 2003 websites column for Radio Active, with some additions:


Winternet radio


It's the time of year when department stores and radio station play a selection of hoary chestnuts in the form of Christmas pop songs. If you have had too much Mistletoe and Wine or can't stomach another rendition of “Last Christmas”, then join me now on a tour of some alternative wintry Internet radio stations, in countries that are guaranteed a white Christmas.


It's back to Switzerland first to Swiss Radio International in Bern. Their shortwave broadcasts ceased with energy being transferred to their web output. I'm not alone in bemoaning the loss of the station and favourite programmes of the past like Swiss Shortwave Merry Go Round, but time moves on, and there is a good selection of all things Swiss on the website at: www.swissinfo.org  


N.B Swissinfo with Bob Zanotti can now be heard at www.pcjmedia.com  )


For local radio in Switzerland, and a mixture of traditional Alpine music and Swiss pop, try Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) Couleur 3: www.couleur3.ch


and Radio delle Swizzeria Italiana (RSI): www.rtsi.ch  They also have a 2010 advent calendar at: http://www.rsi.ch/calenradio/