Tuesday, March 13, 2007

New English Language Radio Station

There's a new English language radio station in town: RAM 93.6 FM. I found it by accident a few days ago, and I liked some of the music, although the playlist is fairly pablum.

A little Googling picked up the following information from Haaretz:
An English-radio station based in Ramallah and financed by a Jewish South African will go on air live beginning Wednesday morning.

The station, 93.6 RAM FM, aims to provide a platform for "peaceful dialogue" and is based on the popular South African radio station, 702 Talk Radio, which the station's founders believe played a key role in the transition from the country's apartheid regime to democracy.

The format will include adult contemporary music, as well as hourly news updates provided by the station's service, Middle East Eyewitness News.

...

"We're committed to telling both sides of the story," Andrew Bolton, the station's news editor said. "We are apolitical and will not toe any political line, other than peace."

Bolton said the news program would therefore not include either terms like "martyr" or "terrorist," both of which he called "loaded." (full story)
Yehuda

7 comments:

Simon J said...

I don't usually comment on the Isreali politics posts, but I can't help wondering what the "unloaded" replacements for 'martyr' and 'terrorist' are?

Yehuda Berlinger said...

I think they're just going to say "A Palestinian killed X people today ..." or something like that.

Yehuda

Catherine said...

I found the station this week as well. It seemed like a decent station, and I've been trying on occasion to raise it on my mp3 player ever since, but the signal's too faint in nearly all parts of Jerusalem. Plus, Galgalatz obscures the signal most places. Not very smart of them to put their station so close to one of the strongest signals in the country.

Yehuda Berlinger said...

Keren: Interestingly, I found a stronger signal at 87.5 . Might be a temporary glitch.

Yehuda

Catherine said...

87.5 works excellently, thanks! 93.6, from what I've seen, is only audible in the far eastern areas of the city - Ramot Rahel, probably Talpiot Mizrach - while 87.5 is stronger on the other side of the city - the central bus station area, Ramot.

The music is nice - lot of good, classic hits, plus some newer ones that I haven't heard in a while. I haven't heard enough news on it to know what its political leanings are, but it unsurprisingly has a lot more news about Palestinian politics than, say, Galgalatz. For the music alone, it's now my favorite station. Most of the songs on the other main radio stations seem to be badly-sung, inane Hebrew-language songs.

Yehuda Berlinger said...

88.0 is a great station. I've listened to it for ten years and never heard the same song twice.

I'm finding 93.6's selection rather insipid, actually.

Yehuda

Catherine said...

That's odd, I usually dislike 88.0's music selection. And like 93.6's playlist, insipid or not. It's probably just a matter of personal taste, but most of the music on 88.0 just fails to engage me. They play a lot of jazz music, especially in the evenings, which I've never had a taste for, as well as some more current music that I simply don't find as enjoyable as the hits (both old and new) that 93.6 plays. Guess I'm just too used to MTV. :)