I have discovered two excellent radio stations in Wellington, New Zealand which I had never heard of, and only caught one of them by accident when fiddling with the dial in my car. Groove (107·7 MHz) has jazz—even caught the Tigress from Tiger Bay doing ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ one day. And the Matrix (107·5 MHz, which is very close, and again found by accident) has alternative politics, including a great lecture on the G8 today.
   Since few have heard of these stations, they are ripe for citizen support—bloggers, emailers, and other campaigners. Why they have not been started I’ll never know. Groove doesn’t even have a web site, from what I can tell, while the Matrix is still on Geocities.
   I think these stations deserve to do well against the dull mass-media ones, because they offer programming quality, even if their signals are not the strongest in town. Tall poppy syndrome might prevent it, but I might just start a few emails going. Let’s see how sophisticated we really are here in New Zealand with publicly driven brands.
   The public already saw to the reinstatement of Phil O’Brien’s Matinee Idol programme on National Radio in New Zealand—an entertaining show that contrasts the station’s usually conservative (not politically conservative though) style. If emails can see Phil return in the summer, then a good ol’ citizen-driven awareness campaign might bring these guard-band stations a few more listeners. posted by Jack Yan, 10:14 AM  permalink