| on 20-10-2008 14:17
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Published in : , Politics |
By Stephan Delbos
 Well, what’s done is done. Radio Wave, Prague’s only youth-oriented radio station, a station which broadcast a cavalcade of eclectic, non-commercial music, was forced off the air and converted to digital format on August 30. Just a few weeks ago, tuning your radio to 100.7 FM filled your speakers with the dulcet voices of young, energetic DJs broadcasting music you couldn’t hear anywhere else on Prague’s airwaves. Now the same frequency vomits a monotone Czech voice announcing the latest Lucie Bila drivel. It’s enough to make your ears weep wax.
Provokator reported on the situation in our last issue and distributed 5,000 flyers in Czech and English calling concerned listeners to action. And action was undertaken, in the form of emails to responsible parties like Dana Jaklová and Cesky Rozhlas. Bravo to everyone who was involved. As an employee of Radio Wave told us, “Thank you. We feel embarrassed that we didn’t do more ourselves.” Indeed.
This month we spoke to Jiri Kokmotos from Cesky Rozhlas, Radio Wave’s parent station. Kokmotos explained that the decision to turn Radio Wave digital was a “political decision” handed down from above - ? from the Czech Radio Council, the Czech version of the BBC. Though Cesky Rozhlas, according to Kokmotos, tried for more than a year to reverse the decision, in the end it was as powerless as Radio Wave’s many listeners to do so.
What can we do about it now? According to Kokmotos, “protests probably won’t change the situation, but I think that it will give psychological support to people working at Radio Wave. You must imagine, that they now broadcast for fewer listeners and I know that it is very demotivating, so every manifestation of support will help them.”
As the wheels of industry and monopolistic power turn, the organizations that matter most are inevitably crushed beneath them. Prague has lost the one radio station that made its airwaves more vibrant than the cobblestone gray of sick communist-era elderly faces buying pig’s heads in plastic bags. The loss of Radio Wave puts Prague youth culture back twenty years. Though the Czech Radio Council's decision shows that non-mainstream and underground media is a threat to corporate culture and a force that must be reckoned with, it also shows who has the power in this country. Unfortunately for Prague, the people who control what we hear and how we hear it are stuck in a previous era. If we want this city to be more than a cultural backwater, we must take steps to ensure that independent media is not only tolerated, but encouraged. And if the loss of one radio station seems insignificant, realize it will get worse.
Kokmotos put it aptly when he said “My dream was public radio for young people and now it is destroyed.” So lift a glass to the passing of Radio Wave and mourn the destruction of a dream. And if you see any dejected DJs lurking in the corner of your favorite watering hole, buy that man or woman a pitcher of something stiff.
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