The Guardian – Radio Reporter

Repeating the famous song "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" hundreds of times was just a way of drawing listeners' attention to the station, which changed its name and programming — Repeating the famous song “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” hundreds of times was just a way of drawing listeners’ attention to the station, which changed its name and programming
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The news of the Canadian radio station looping the song Killing in the Name by Rage Against The Machine for 30 hours went viral on 30 June 2022. Some speculated that it was a form of protest by the employees of Kiss Radio, which broadcasts on 104.9 from Vancouver, over the dismissal of two colleagues, so much so that many sites relaunched it as such (the song, in fact, contains an explicit line “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”, however, in the aired version this part was cut out). But The Guardian caught up with and interviewed the station managers, unravelling the mystery: it was just a way to get publicity. In fact, it was a typical gimmick used by broadcasters to attract the attention of listeners: when the news went viral on Twitter, spikes in online ratings were recorded from Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Europe. But it was a marketing operation, to announce a change of format for the station, which switched from soft-rock to alternative music, even changing its name to Sonic Radio.

London pirate radios — Ten years of London life are reinterpreted through advertisements aired on pirate radio stations
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Thanks to the patience and intuition of Luke Owen, defined by The Guardian as a “musical archivist”, it is possible to relive the atmosphere of London in the Eighties by listening to the commercials aired by London pirate radio stations between 1984 and 1993, which have been collected on two CDs. Owen in fact recorded the free-range and unprofessional commercials that were aired and that, given the lack of professionalism, were considered a boring interlude between one song and another. And yet, listening to them again, one finds a London that has disappeared, in an era in which there was no web, and in which listeners, in order to be informed about the musical events taking place in the city, had pirate radio stations as their only resource: programming of public or official radio stations was only musical, aiming at the English middle class and did not represent the different ethnic groups present in the capital.

Space also for minorities

On the site of the record label Death Is Not The End you can listen to excerpts from the two CDs, available for £ 8 each
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Thus are curious the advertisements in Greek, the news about raves or the advertisements of stores that allow to reconstruct a map of alternative shops. The two CDs are published by the London label founded by Owen: “Death Is Not the End“, which is also the name of a program broadcast online by the London internet radio station NTS Radio.

Tag: The Guardian

CANADA: A RADIO STATION AIRS THE SAME SONG FOR 30 HOURS. A PROTEST IS SPECULATED, BUT WILL IT HAPPEN?

UK: The 80s atmosphere of London pirate radio stations comes back to life

Space also for minorities