Frequenz 94,6

On air

Freies Radio Graz / seit 1979

Twenty-four hours
a day, and nobody
here is paid.

On air now

14.00 Zwischenspiel

Ruth Padberg · New music, no talking over the intro

A radio broadcast studio at night with a microphone on a boom and an amber on-air lamp
Studio 1, 23.48. Nachtstück, hour three.
94,6
MHz, Graz and Umgebung
1979
On air since
91
Programmes
2 140
Members

Today

  1. 06.00FrühwerkMiron SalzerChamber music and weather
  2. 09.00Der lange SatzIvo BrandOne piece, in full, uninterrupted
  3. 12.00MittagsbandRotatingListener requests, read out badly
  4. 14.00ZwischenspielRuth PadbergNew music, no talking over the intro
  5. 17.00FeierabendNadia KovačWhatever got us through the week
  6. 20.00NachtstückEmil WeilerLong-form, low volume, four hours
  7. 00.00BandmaschineUnattendedThe archive plays itself until six

Four things we insist on

  1. 01

    Live music, weekly

    A band in the small studio every Thursday since 1984. Two takes, one microphone pair, whatever happens happens.

  2. 02

    The archive

    Eleven thousand hours on tape, digitised at four hours a week by two volunteers who refuse to be thanked in public.

  3. 03

    Open desk

    Anyone can propose a programme. About one in five gets a slot, and the first one is always at three in the morning.

  4. 04

    No advertising

    Funded by 2,140 members at €5 a month. If that number drops below 1,800 we go back to twelve hours a day and say so.

Shelves of tape reels and record sleeves in a station archive lit by one lamp
The archive. Eleven thousand hours, four a week.
A close view of a broadcast mixing desk with faders and amber meter lamps
Desk 2. Channel 7 has been crackling since 2011.

Membership

Five euro a month keeps the transmitter on, the licence paid and the coffee tin full. There is no other tier and no premium feed.

Members get nothing extra, on purpose. The point of a free radio station is that the person who pays and the person who does not hear exactly the same thing.

Our accounts are posted every January on the noticeboard by the door and, since 2016, on this website as a scan of the noticeboard.

A lattice transmitter mast against a deep dusk sky with a single warning light
Schöckl, 1,445 m. 300 W ERP, which is plenty.

Come in

Studio
Lendkai 94, Hof
8020 Graz
Studio line
+43 316 000 000, open during live shows
Open desk
First Monday of the month, 19.00. Bring an idea.

Three rules of the desk

Pinned above the fader panel since 1984 and never once revised.

01

Do not talk over the intro

If the piece has a beginning, let it begin. The listener came for the music and can read the time on their own phone.

02

Silence is allowed

Four seconds of nothing is not dead air. It is four seconds. The transmitter is fine and so is everybody listening.

03

Say what it was

Every track, back-announced, with the label. Somebody is always trying to find it again and we are the only record.

Technical

What the station runs on. Most of it is older than most of the presenters.

  1. Transmitter, Schöckl300 W ERP, 94.6 MHz1979Rebuilt 2011
  2. Studio desk 1Analogue, 24 channel1998Channel 7 crackles
  3. Studio desk 2Analogue, 16 channel1991Spare, and fine
  4. PlayoutOwn software, on Linux2007Nobody understands it
  5. Archive, tape11 000 hours1979Digitising, slowly
  6. StreamOgg and AAC, self hosted2004Same audio as air

Getting involved

How do I propose a programme?
Come to the open desk on the first Monday of the month with an idea and, ideally, twenty minutes of something you have already made.
Will I be paid?
No. Nobody here is, including the people who have been doing it since the eighties. The membership pays the transmitter and the licence.
Do I need experience?
No. You will be shown the desk twice, then left alone with it at three in the morning, which is how everybody learned.
Can I play whatever I want?
Within the licence, yes. Nobody vets a running order and nobody ever has.