Radio conveyor belt

Radio Förderband was a local radio station in Bern from 1984 to 2001 . Originated in 1981 by the journalists Urs Schnell, Daniel Leutenegger and Beat Hugi, the “Förderband” cultural association, it received a trial license from the Federal Department of Energy and Transport to operate an advertising-financed cultural radio in the Bern region in 1983, shortly after private radio stations were legalized in Switzerland . simultaneously with the competing full-program broadcaster Radio extraBE .

Radio Förderband began operating on December 31, 1983, five minutes before the expiry of the time limit set in the license. The studios were in an apartment on the first floor of the Bierhübeli concert hall and restaurant . The team of former newspaper and radio journalists and freelancers initially produced a lunchtime and evening program, later a day and evening program, and finally a 24-hour program consisting of programs for linguistic minorities (in addition to Italian, Spanish, Turkish and - at that time - Serbo-Croatian), for special styles of music (French chansons, Italian canzoni, tropical specialties, Austrian news, etc.), for listeners with special interests (books, cinema, theater, etc.) and from talk programs lasting several hours. Since the reception situation on 96.7 MHz was unsatisfactory, transmission was carried out on 104.2 MHz from March 1984. In 1990 the station was re-assigned the old 96.7 MHz frequency as part of a new network planning process.

history

A sponsoring association under President Christoph Reichenau , later Secretary of Culture of the City of Bern and Franz Biffiger , SP Grand Councilor and architect, was supposed to secure the financing. However, the work was characterized by a lack of money from the start; Organizational and club structure tied the forces of the actors.

The SRG research service showed a few thousand listeners in the first year; From 1985, not a single conveyor belt receiver was found in the random samples. In 1986, instead of the insolvent association, Schawinski founded a marketing company ( Radig AG ) and leased the entire volume of advertising seconds. At the same time a new, more commercial radio program u. a. designed with hourly news and broadcast from new studios at Hirschengraben 9 in Bern from July 1986. The new moderators and editors were Bänz Friedli , Jürg Hofer and Martin Freiburghaus . Well-known employees were Matthias Aebischer and Sven Epiney .

On July 16, 1986, the EVED banned the unlicensed programmatic changes, especially the message format. For a few weeks, the Bern 104 radio conveyor band news was "cultured": The Bern rock singer Polo Hofer , the jazz musician Franz Biffiger and others sang the news; Editors recited their bulletins in verse, read them out as radio plays, or told them to each other as regular discussions. Later the news bulletins were no longer presented as news from Bern 104 - Radio Förderband , but read out over the phone as a German-language news bulletin (from the French-language radio station on Lake Geneva) to Radio Thollon . Finally, a petition, a demonstration with 7,000 participants in front of the Bundeshaus, and a 'Concert for Federal Councilor Schlumpf' organized by jazz musicians got the EVED to give in and the approval of the new program in September 1986.

From 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., a commercial, majority-enabled daily program was broadcast, with hourly news and three daily information hours (7–8 a.m., 12–13 p.m., 5–6 p.m.). In the evening there was a colorful mix of cultural, minority and music special programs. On Sunday mornings you could hear classical music and church broadcasts, on Sunday afternoons folk music and on Sunday evenings a two- to three-hour talk show.

In November 1987 the station was occupied by Zaffaraya sympathizers, at the same time as 'Radio ExtraBe'. The occupiers broadcast political calls on both channels.

In 2001 the radio conveyor belt became Radio BE1 .

swell

Head first: 10 years of local radio, or, The story of radio conveyor belt / Urs Schnell, Bern 1992. ISBN 3-9520320-0-X (out of print). Table of contents [1]
The conveyor belt becomes Radio BE1