A Selection of Talk/News Radio Stations

Until quite recently my main purpose in listening to internet radio stations was to experience different types of music from around the world. This was partly to extend my musical comfort zone beyond the Western music genres which I experienced in my mis-spent youth. Listening to ragas, klezmer and Persian instrumental music has certainly been an interesting educational and aesthetic exercise. There are still many areas of world music I have yet to discover, and so the internet radio listening continues.

In more recent weeks I have found that there are times when I need to step back from listening to endless music and I have started to listen increasingly to various News and Talk radio stations. Again, what I like about internet radio listening is the fact that it is possible to listen to music broadcasts from anywhere in the world, either through their embedded radio players or through websites such as Radiotime and Reciva, without any of the interference, fading and white noise which used to accompany this process. I have added the stations which are my favourites to my personal database in atunes which I referred to in my earlier article.

Here are some of the Talk/News radio stations I have added to my database, with a few (hopefully) relevant comments on each one.

Sky News TV

This is the audio feed of the Sky News TV channel. It is good for breaking news features, weather forecasts and Sports news. The downside is that it can sometimes become repetitive after a while and for some reason they play a large section of their instrumental theme tune instead of playing adverts, which they probably think would be rather pointless and boring without the video dimension.

BBC Southern Counties Radio

BBC Southern Counties Radio is my local BBC radio station. It features the usual local news, weather and travel and also plays some music and phone-in programmes. The great thing with internet radio is that I am not limited to only hearing my own BBC local radio, I can also listen to any other BBC local radio station in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. When I get time I intend to try out some of the other local stations to see how they compare with SCR.

BBC World Service

I used to listen to the BBC World Service on 648AM before the advent of internet radio. It was very difficult to hear it clearly because obviously the radio signal was beamed out to Europe and beyond. Sometimes I got better results listening to it on Shortwave, I think it was mainly on the 49 and 31 metre bands. For those of you who prefer real radio no doubt those options are still open to you. For those who like to hear it really clearly, I recommend the internet option. The great thing about the World Service is that it really tells you what is going on in the world at large, whereas Radio 4 and BBC local radio tend to concentrate on UK news. The short feature programmes, reports from correspondents around the world and the occasional music feature programme make the World Service a good quality variety radio station.

LBC 97.3

LBC is described as London's commercial news and speech station. There are actually two separate stations, LBC 97.3 and LBC News 1152. If you love London, its culture and its inhabitants this is definitely a good station for you. There is plenty of local news and interviews, features and phone-in programmes are also part of the mix. I used to listen to this station when I was a student, (usually quite late in the evening) and found it quite entertaining.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Radio Netherlands Worldwide may be regarded as the Dutch equivalent of the BBC World Service. It has been broadcasting since 1928 and features a good variety of programmes giving news about the Netherlands and Europe. It broadcasts on two separate channels, one in English and the other one in Dutch. I listen to both at different times depending on whether or not I am in the mood for improving my Dutch! RNW has come under government attack recently for being rather left-wing in its views.

Air America Media

Air America is not strictly speaking a radio station in its own right but an American radio network which broadcasts on quite a number of different radio stations. It specializes in liberal talk programming and is therefore generally pro the current American government, as opposed to Fox News which is conservative in its stance. Air America is now officially entitled Air America Media and was formerly Air America Radio. it is quite entertaining to listen to, even if one is not necessarily of the same political persuasion. It features discussion and information programmes with hosts reflecting progressive points of view. Its most popular host, Lionel, is estimated to have 1.5 million listeners.

CNN Radio

The CNN Radio Network provides news, sports, business and feature reports to affiliated radio stations worldwide. It uses the worldwide resources of CNN to bring accurate and timely news. Obviously, like Fox News and Air America it is very much based on what is going on in the US and the way in which they view what is going on in the world at large. I find it quite a useful channel for staying informed about what is happening in the business world, economy and stock markets. CNN is generally regarded as being quite quick on the mark with breaking news.

Fox News Radio

Fox News Channel (FNC) is an American news and satellite TV channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group. Broadcasting mainly out of its New York studios, it was launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1996 and is rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers. Some critics say that the channel promotes conservative political positions but Fox News Channel denies that it has any such bias in its reporting.

Fox News Radio was started in 2003 and syndicated throughout the United States. This division of Fox provides short newscasts and talk radio programmes featuring various personalities. In 2006 Fox News Talk was started as a satellite radio station featuring Fox News personalities. Like other news networks, Fox News Channel has a news website featuring the latest coverage including video and audio clips but this is not as popular as many other news websites. I find that Fox News Radio can have some quite interesting and lively political debates when I am in the mood for them.

Voice of America

Voice of America (VOA) is the official radio and television broadcasting outlet of the United States federal government, its voice to the external world. It produces a wide range of programming for broadcasts over shortwave radio in 46 different languages and seeks to promote a positive view of the USA. It has a lot of affiliate and contractual agreements with radio and television stations and cable networks worldwide. I quite enjoy some of its programmes and find it quite informative about what is going on in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

WCBS New York

WCBS is often referred to as 'WCBS Newsradio 880' and is based in New York City. WCBS is owned by CBS Radio and is regarded as the flagship of station of the CBS Radio Network. Its studios are in the CBS Broadcast Centre in the middle of Manhattan and it shares a transmitter with WFAN, the antenna being situated on High Island in the Bronx, New York. On AM it can be heard as far away as Baltimore, Maryland. At night time it can apparently be picked up in most areas east of the Mississippi River including Florida and eastern Canada and Ontario. On the internet, however, even we can listen to it! I found it quite a useful channel for coverage of the Presidential election last November.

WAPI 1070 Big Talker

WAPI 1070 'Big Talker' is an interesting News/Talk station which makes a welcome change from some of the other stations I listen to. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, it is the Birmingham outlet of various nationally syndicated talk programmes including Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.

WAPI started out its life as WSY in 1922 and was then owned by Alabama Power Company. Initially it was not a great success and in 1925 its broadcast facilities were dismantled and shared out between WMAV (another rival station) and Alabama Polytechnic. In 1928 WAPI returned to Birmingham and in 1929 its broadcast power was increased to 5,000 watts. It became affiliated to NBC in 1928 and remained so until 1940 when it became affiliated with CBS. In 1949 WAPI launched the first television station in Alabama (WAFM-TV) which is now known as WVTM. Since 1996 it has evolved into a Talk station like many other AM stations in the United States.

I enjoy WAPI for its debates and phone-in programmes, it can be good entertainment at times.

This completes my initial round-up of some of the Talk/News radio stations I enjoy listening to over the internet. No doubt I will discover many more and hope to revisit the genre in a future article. I hope you get the opportunity to try out some of these stations for yourself and welcome any comments, observations or questions relating to this blog.

Contact: erikretallick@yahoo.co.uk

Internet radio- A Brief Introduction

This is a reprint of my earlier blog which appeared under Erik's Musings. I intend to separate this from my music blog and thus have started this as a separate venture. Continue to follow Erik's Musings for more articles about music and follow this blog if you want to follow my ignorance of internet radio. Alternatively, why not follow both blogs?

In my earlier blog I talked a little bit about listening to different types of music and how I personally have found this to be of great enrichment to my philosophical, religious and logical thinking. I realize that this is very difficult to quantify and do not profess to be able to produce concrete results of my investigations. Perhaps at a later stage I will be able to do so. Meanwhile, I would like to follow up my earlier musings with a few thoughts about internet radio.

One of the great advantages of listening to radio online is that you are not limited by broadcasting range limits and other such concerns. I listen to radio stations from Alaska, The Netherlands, Norway, Israel, Australia and India all the time.

There is no doubt that the whole world of internet radio listening is vast and is expanding at a phenomenal rate. I began my internet radio listening experience by using sites like Radiotime and Reciva which have databases and listings of internet radio stations worldwide.

Once I had explored Reciva, Radiotime and a few other similar sites I discovered that itunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp also had their own radio databases, Winamp leaning heavily on utilising Shoutcast and CBS/AOL radio. I also bought a plugin dongle called Aluratek internet radio jukebox which claimed to give me access to 15,000 plus internet radio stations. As I am a rather curious (in both senses of the word) person, this number of stations was not sufficient for me, so I decided to start making my own database of the electic stations which I wanted to make an integral part of my listening experience. After all, I am a musician and normal music becomes boring after a while (I jest, of course).

I then downloaded atunes which is available from Sourceforge.net at the grand price of £0.00. Initially I intended to try this as an alternative music/mp3 player. You are probably aware that each music player is configured differently and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. I therefore tend to use them according to my mood and whim and enjoy the fact that they are not all alike. I compare it to playing one of my piano pieces on ten different pianos, the tone and acoustic will vary considerably.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that on atunes it is possible to add your own radio stations to those already included on the downloaded software. I proceeded to do this and decided to make this the main database for my own personally preferred radio stations. To date this has been quite successful and I am now regularly adding new stations to this growing database. It is also possible to add stations to Winamp and itunes but this is a bit more involved than it is on atunes. I hope to write more about this and look at other related questions and possibilities.

Having dealt with the technical aspects of this subject I would just like to add that I am open to questions and suggestions about internet radio and aspects of listening to music raised in my earlier posting. Please contact me on erikretallick@yahoo.co.uk with any questions or comments. I know others of you may be much more advanced in the knowledge of the world of internet radio but would like to hear from you anyway.