What kind of radio does your country have?

[jammytoast]

I've just bought a house and am currently spending my days scrubbing walls while listening to BBC Radio 4, and I'm interested to know what kind of radio stations other countries have.

I'm in the UK where we have the BBC Radio stations:

Radio 1 - current pop music, mostly aimed at the 16-24 market, with certain DJs having a particular music genre (e.g. dance music, hip hop)
Radio 2 - pop music and chat, 24+ (I'm guessing these age ranges by the way) - everything from 50s music onwards
Radio 3 - classical (considered to be quite highbrow)
Radio 4 - speech - news, news analysis, radio plays, documentaries, arts & culture etc.. my favourite station - this weekend I listened to a programme on Vanilla, a radio play about Thomas Payne, poetry in prisons, and all sorts of other interesting things. Also has the 'Today' programme, always satisfying to hear politicians squirm under interrogation
Radio 5 - talk and sport
Then there are the digital radio stations, which are a bit more niche in content - I haven't really explored them though.

Each county/city also has it's own local BBC station, and then there are commercial (i.e. with adverts) radio stations which play pop music (can be local or national), and Classic FM, which is classical music, but a bit more 'popular classic' if that makes sense.

We don't have any political radio stations (or at least I've not come across any) - the BBC have to give airspace to all parties so are supposedly balanced, whereas our print media has more political bias.

What does everyone else have?

[WillyNilly]

Thats a difficult question to answer and we have hundreds of thousands of radio stations in the states!  Public radio, talk radio, religious radio, pop music, country music, rap music, hip-hop music, rock music, "oldies" music, religious music, various cultural stations in various languages, children's radio, news radio, you name it, its there.

[magicdomino]

First, the U.S. has two kinds of radio transmission (I'm lumping AM and FM together):  satelite and broadcast. 

Satelite radio works like satelite TV.  You buy a receiver (usually installed in cars, although there are home versions), and pay a monthly subscription.  The satelite receiver can pick up multiple channels all over the country, so it is great for people who drive long distances a lot.

Broadcast radio is more chaotic.  Individual stations have their own programming.  Well, more or less their own; many stations, especially talk radio, buy syndicated shows, and a growing trend is one company owning stations all over the country and using the same programming for all.  The vast majority of radio stations are like jammytoast's commercial stations, with commercials. 

Most major cities also have National Public Radio (NPR), which is the radio equivilent of public TV.  Instead of commercials, they have incredibly annoying pledge drives every few months.

[CLE_Girl]

First, the U.S. has two kinds of radio transmission (I'm lumping AM and FM together):  satelite and broadcast. 

Satelite radio works like satelite TV.  You buy a receiver (usually installed in cars, although there are home versions), and pay a monthly subscription.  The satelite receiver can pick up multiple channels all over the country, so it is great for people who drive long distances a lot.

Broadcast radio is more chaotic.  Individual stations have their own programming.  Well, more or less their own; many stations, especially talk radio, buy syndicated shows, and a growing trend is one company owning stations all over the country and using the same programming for all.  The vast majority of radio stations are like jammytoast's commercial stations, with commercials. 

Most major cities also have National Public Radio (NPR), which is the radio equivalent of public TV.  Instead of commercials, they have incredibly annoying pledge drives every few months.

I'll add two other options:

HD radio, which is hybrid of satelite and broadcast.  The channels are run by broadcast station but you have to buy a special receiver to get the stations.  A lot of times the main FM station will have 1-2 HD stations that are more specialized versions of the FM station (for example in Cleveland the alternative/hard rock station 100.7 has two HD stations one for Heavy metal and one for what they call Adult contemporary alternative (I call it "hipster" music). 

College Radio, broadcast FM stations run by universities.  Since these stations are "indepentant" (not owned by one of the 2-3 major communication companies) they can play a wider variaty of music and the DJ's are students either doing it to become a professional or just for fun.   

[Venus193]

To  complicate matters further, commercial radio in the US varies by metropolitan area, so if you're into country music and don't have satellite radio, you're out of luck in New York City.

Music formats have sub-genres like crazy, so except for classical (which isn't everywhere) there are numerous forms of:

Rock
Latin
Jazz
Rap
Oldies

Commercial radio stations also do promotions with people calling in trivia answers or going to specific locations when the station's van is scheduled to be there to collect free things like T-shirts and things provided by advertisers.  Vans typically look like this:



Do British stations do things like this?

[magicdomino]

To  complicate matters further, commercial radio in the US varies by metropolitan area, so if you're into country music and don't have satellite radio, you're out of luck in New York City.

And if you are in rural Oklahoma, you are out of luck for much of anything other than country music.   

[Seraphia]

We don't have a lot of country-wide stations on the average, in-car, no-frills radio. About the only ones I can think of are NPR (National Public Radio) and probably a few on AM bands. The radio landscape is probably as varied as the territory it covers.

Ex: In the Toledo area, there's a station on 95.3. It plays hits/top 20 songs, sans Pop, from the 80's through now for half the day, then cuts in for sports, which ranges from Cleveland Indians baseball to local basketball games to NASCAR races on Sunday.

That same station number in northern MI is a Modern Rock station, with lots of call-in games and a morning show called (I think) the Breakfast Flakes.

[MummySweet]

I'm in the UK where we have the BBC Radio stations:

Radio 1 - current pop music, mostly aimed at the 16-24 market, with certain DJs having a particular music genre (e.g. dance music, hip hop)
Radio 2 - pop music and chat, 24+ (I'm guessing these age ranges by the way) - everything from 50s music onwards
Radio 3 - classical (considered to be quite highbrow)
Radio 4 - speech - news, news analysis, radio plays, documentaries, arts & culture etc.. my favourite station - this weekend I listened to a programme on Vanilla, a radio play about Thomas Payne, poetry in prisons, and all sorts of other interesting things. Also has the 'Today' programme, always satisfying to hear politicians squirm under interrogation
Radio 5 - talk and sport

We've recently moved back to the US after living in England for several years.   I miss BBC radio so much!   (I liked Radio 2 and Radio 4.)  The biggest difference?  Advertisements.  Listening to US radio is almost painful to me because of the constant Ad breaks.  I would pay a license fee in an instant to have more ad free radio choices. 

[jedikaiti]

Personally, I love the fact that I can stream radio stations online. I sometimes like to listen to classical music when I sleep, and when we lived in a small mountain town, we had no actual radio reception, so I'd stream Colorado Public Radio online. Or Espace, from Switzerland, or Radio Orpheus, from Moscow. I like listening to people talking in foreign languages, too. :-)

If anyone has a favorite radio station from wherever that streams online (not just classical - rock/pop/punk/metal works too!), I'd love a link.

[Snooks]

I'm in the UK where we have the BBC Radio stations:

Radio 1 - current pop music, mostly aimed at the 16-24 market, with certain DJs having a particular music genre (e.g. dance music, hip hop)
Radio 2 - pop music and chat, 24+ (I'm guessing these age ranges by the way) - everything from 50s music onwards
Radio 3 - classical (considered to be quite highbrow)
Radio 4 - speech - news, news analysis, radio plays, documentaries, arts & culture etc.. my favourite station - this weekend I listened to a programme on Vanilla, a radio play about Thomas Payne, poetry in prisons, and all sorts of other interesting things. Also has the 'Today' programme, always satisfying to hear politicians squirm under interrogation
Radio 5 - talk and sport

We've recently moved back to the US after living in England for several years.   I miss BBC radio so much!   (I liked Radio 2 and Radio 4.)  The biggest difference?  Advertisements.  Listening to US radio is almost painful to me because of the constant Ad breaks.  I would pay a license fee in an instant to have more ad free radio choices.

It does take getting used to, I've just started listening to commercial radio after deciding I can't face Radio 2 in the mornings any more and the ad breaks are really jarring.  I'd listen to BBC 6Music but they have the news on at the wrong time and it would throw my morning routine out.

[jmarvellous]

I googled it, and supposedly you can get 84 stations in my metro area. In practice, I have 12 tuned in to my 6 car radio buttons (all FM; I don't use AM stations or know anyone who's not a politics hound or sports nut who does).

My buttons are set to:
1. NPR/local music station (soon they're splitting into separate news and music stations, which should be great) (Run on a college campus)
2. Current pop (national chain-owned)
3. Classical (local nonprofit)
4. Classic rock/oldies music (smaller chain)
5. Rock (local for-profit)
6. Co-op radio/college radio (two nonprofits split the frequency day/night)
7. Classic country-Western (national chain)
8. Adult contemporary rock/pop (dunno)
9. Alt. Rock (local for-profit)
10. Christian contemporary or sports station I haven't bothered to change since I got the car
11. See above
12. Comedy radio (syndicated national with a bit of local content; runs standup bits 24/7)

In our house we basically just listen to Nos. 1 and 3. The college radio station (where I worked a bit when I was in school and thus have some attachment to) doesn't tune in well most places.

There are lots of country stations and Spanish-language stations and Christian stations that I just don't know about or care to listen to, but you see billboards for them around here all the time.

ETA: Pirate radio! We get these from time to time (until the Federal Communications Commission shuts them down) and I love them. They're small and play awful-but-great music, usually.

[MummySweet]

I'm in the UK where we have the BBC Radio stations:

Radio 1 - current pop music, mostly aimed at the 16-24 market, with certain DJs having a particular music genre (e.g. dance music, hip hop)
Radio 2 - pop music and chat, 24+ (I'm guessing these age ranges by the way) - everything from 50s music onwards
Radio 3 - classical (considered to be quite highbrow)
Radio 4 - speech - news, news analysis, radio plays, documentaries, arts & culture etc.. my favourite station - this weekend I listened to a programme on Vanilla, a radio play about Thomas Payne, poetry in prisons, and all sorts of other interesting things. Also has the 'Today' programme, always satisfying to hear politicians squirm under interrogation
Radio 5 - talk and sport

We've recently moved back to the US after living in England for several years.   I miss BBC radio so much!   (I liked Radio 2 and Radio 4.)  The biggest difference?  Advertisements.  Listening to US radio is almost painful to me because of the constant Ad breaks.  I would pay a license fee in an instant to have more ad free radio choices.

It does take getting used to, I've just started listening to commercial radio after deciding I can't face Radio 2 in the mornings any more and the ad breaks are really jarring.  I'd listen to BBC 6Music but they have the news on at the wrong time and it would throw my morning routine out.

So, you've had your fill of Chris Evans, huh?   I thought he was a bit much for the mornings too, but my children liked the show on our long school commute.   I did really like that  BBC radio offered a lot of programming that was OK for the kids to hear... not aimed at them, but not objectionable.  I'm really having a problem finding that on commercial radio.   

[Thipu1]

To  complicate matters further, commercial radio in the US varies by metropolitan area, so if you're into country music and don't have satellite radio, you're out of luck in New York City.

And if you are in rural Oklahoma, you are out of luck for much of anything other than country music.   

No one here has yet mentioned NPR (National Public Radio) in the USA. The closest thing to it sounds like BBC4. 

There are also local stations that broadcast nothing but news, traffic and weather. 

[Snooks]

I'm in the UK where we have the BBC Radio stations:

Radio 1 - current pop music, mostly aimed at the 16-24 market, with certain DJs having a particular music genre (e.g. dance music, hip hop)
Radio 2 - pop music and chat, 24+ (I'm guessing these age ranges by the way) - everything from 50s music onwards
Radio 3 - classical (considered to be quite highbrow)
Radio 4 - speech - news, news analysis, radio plays, documentaries, arts & culture etc.. my favourite station - this weekend I listened to a programme on Vanilla, a radio play about Thomas Payne, poetry in prisons, and all sorts of other interesting things. Also has the 'Today' programme, always satisfying to hear politicians squirm under interrogation
Radio 5 - talk and sport

We've recently moved back to the US after living in England for several years.   I miss BBC radio so much!   (I liked Radio 2 and Radio 4.)  The biggest difference?  Advertisements.  Listening to US radio is almost painful to me because of the constant Ad breaks.  I would pay a license fee in an instant to have more ad free radio choices.

It does take getting used to, I've just started listening to commercial radio after deciding I can't face Radio 2 in the mornings any more and the ad breaks are really jarring.  I'd listen to BBC 6Music but they have the news on at the wrong time and it would throw my morning routine out.

So, you've had your fill of Chris Evans, huh?   I thought he was a bit much for the mornings too, but my children liked the show on our long school commute.   I did really like that  BBC radio offered a lot of programming that was OK for the kids to hear... not aimed at them, but not objectionable.  I'm really having a problem finding that on commercial radio.

Yep, loved him on drive time but he does not work well in the morning.  My alarm is still tuned to Radio 2 due to the news being at the right time and the benefit of us both hating Chris Evans so much it makes us get up.

[CakeEater]

You'd like ABC Radio National here in Australia. Sounds just like BBC radio 4.

I listend to a half hour discussion about dumplings the other day. What is the structure of a dumpling? What is the correct way to eat a dumpling? What is the ideal amount of sauce to eat with a dumpling? Is it better that the dough of a dumpling be too thick or too thin? Should dumplings eaten with stew be known as dumplings, even though they're not the same food items as Chinese dumplings? Do I just like to type the word 'dumplings'?

These are all questions to which I now know the answers.