Against the barriers

 
René Worni on bidding farewell to the radiophonic international connection. 
The Zurich radio war has startled Natalie Rickli. Rickli is a newly elected member of the SVP National Council in Winterthur and is concerned about the diversity of radiophonic coverage under the new radio and television law. That is why she immediately resorted to political means and proposed to the Federal Council in an interpellation (supported by publisher and fellow FDP councillor Filippo Leutenegger) that it should make an effort to ensure that more private radio stations could broadcast on FM. In the case of Zurich, the stations Radio 24 and Energy (formerly Radio Z) are on the brink. In order to free up the frequency band, Rickli would like to take the programs of the SRG stations in French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino off FM and broadcast them via the still underdeveloped DAB. This is unlikely to knock anyone's socks off, as Rickli's and Leutenegger's proposal comes a little late and has little chance of being heard (the Uvek is unlikely to listen after an expensive but possible expansion of the FM band was finally buried some time ago).
But apart from the lack of political explosive force of the request, if, hypothetically, Rickli's idea were to come to fruition, a valued achievement of multilingual and multicultural media Switzerland would disappear. This would mean the greatest luxury for radio listeners. Anyone who has ever approached the Liechtenstein border by car from Munich and unexpectedly been able to receive Radio Suisse Romande knows what we are talking about here. Anyone who is desperately looking for alternatives after the disappearance of Radio Tropic, the only ever urban (Zurich) radio station with regular news from all over the world (BBC, Radio France), will also understand this. This is understandable for anyone who feels pushed into a corner by the overly ambitious adult radio station and doesn't really feel at home. Although, for example, the Romands are accused of stubborn blindness when it comes to German-speaking Switzerland - the press review on RSR regularly quotes the Swiss-German press at length. The reverse is never the case.
 
René Worni, Editor