Radio is far too bureaucratic in Finland

For the past two years I have been actively listening to internet radio. In the beginning, I listened to a Finnish radio channel called, X3M, until I just thought ‘’goddamn stop talking bullshit’’ and changed to South FM - which was a brief low-budget local summer-radio channel in my hometown Hangö. There was nothing wrong with the radio channel. The channel was highly successful and the local people just loved it. However, this summer that project did not take off. I suspect that the reason is the Finnish old-fashioned radio legislation and bureaucracy which made the project far-too expensive. There have been so many occassions when I have thought ‘’why could we not have a own radio channel in Åbo Akademi University it would be so amazing’’. The answer is quite obvious; it just gets too expensive with the bureaucracy. Frankly it is quite funny – because of the growth of the internet-based radio. I firmly believe that the radio-world is going to change dramatically towards the internet, more than currently. Therefore, it is just plain pointless and stupid with REALLY strict radio-legislation.

There is this phone app called tuneIn radio (that is just an amazing app). You can listen to radio channels globally. And it did not take long until I found this university campus radio channel called UCT-radio from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. That is a well-done radio channel which makes such unique radio broadcasts. People have fun making those radio shows and they are dealing with the daily issues that the students are facing. They also serve a very good public-service role by providing information about events and exams in their university. To be quite honest, I have no clue what sort of budgets they are running at. However, I do not think that it is a very grand budget. Sadly, I know that making such a radio channel at my university here in Finland would be next to impossible. Firstly because it costs too much and secondly I do not believe that people would be willing to pay too much for something like that. Lastly it is far too bureaucratic to run a radio.

Perhaps the radio-industry will move to low bureaucracy countries in the future, to countries where it is cheaper and less bureaucratic to broadcast. For instance, depending on legislation, perhaps a radio channel such as South FM could be broadcasted on the internet from a country such as Estonia or elsewhere?

- Well on a positive side-note we can rejoice the fact that radio cannot be moved to censorship ridden countries such as the Oligarchy of China.

Radio legislation ought to be made more lax - we do not live in the late 1800s nor the 1900s anymore. The fact is that radio will move further from the outdated radio-wave based technology towards internet based technology. Forbidding internet radio broadcasts from abroad is just an unrealistic option, unless a government wants to move towards heavy internet-censorship.

TuneIn 

UCT Radio 
5FM