1999

January; Not much activity

In the New Year the first FRS activities were already on January 24th (10.00-13.30 CET) on a frequency close to 6240 kHz via the same relay who put us on the air June 21^st and September 27^th 1998. Power was 150W making use of a fourfold 807 transmitter. After this broadcast FRS would remain silent for no less than 9 months.
October 31^st saw FRS-Holland’s 19^th birthday on 6240 and two Dutch relays were used between 10:00- 14:30 CET. RIt was announced during the programmes that this could be the final millennium broadcast. It wasn’t because that was granted to Sunday December 26^th. By the way: response was pretty satisfactory.

New CD Jingle project

The e-mail address peter.verbruggen@tip.nl was temporarily replaced by frsh@iname.com. During the autumn Joop ter Zee and Peter Verbruggen started a new project: the production of the first FRS-Hollandjingle CD. Loads of jingles in all kinds of styles, using different recording techniques and in varying quality, had been produced since 1980. Peter’s first job was to make an inventory. Then Joop ter Zee started with editing, digital remixing, sorting and burning on CD. The jingle CD was released in October and got a suitable title: ‘From Pro7 to MD’ reflecting on two vital recording devices used to produce new jingles. A Pro7 used to be a professional Philips 2-track tape recorder, MD stands for MiniDisc. On the CD a total of 9 sections with no less than 224 clean cut jingles. And that was not all… An 8 page booklet accompanied the CD containing all kind of interesting background information regarding the rich FRS jingle history.

Millennium jingle set

A second jingle project had already started up early 1999: producing the FRS Millennium Set. 1999 not only marked the turn of a decade but also the start of a new millennium and the media paid much attention to this memorable fact. Peter Verbruggen came up with the idea of producing a set of jingles based on the upcoming new millennium. Nolan– FRS’ steady voice-over– recorded the lyrics produced by Peter V. and Joop ter Zee did the technical job and styling. A number of German voice-overs were done by good old Johnny Best. The new set of jingles was introduced during the October 31^st 19^th anniversary shows.

Promotional broadcast

To promote the aforementioned new jingle CD a 90 minute promotional broadcast was carried out on 6210 on Sunday November 28^th from 11:00-12:30 CET presented by Joop ter Zee. For he  was the responsible producer, it was logical he did the presentation of that broadcast. It would be one of the very few FRS broadcasts with only Joop ter Zee’s voice.
At the end of 1999 yet another change took place regarding the e-mail addresses: frsh@planet.nl  was added  replacing frsh@iname.com and  peter.verbruggen@tip.nl was reintroduced. The website could be easily surfed to via switch.to/frsh.

ringing out the millennium

Boxing Day December 26th FRS-Holland rang out both 1999 and the millennium with a combined X-Mas/ Millennium broadcast. Programmes that morning commenced at 08:52 UTC and close down was at approximately 12:45 UTC. Peter Verbruggen expected an overcrowded 48 mb and decided it would be a good idea to move to 41 metres 7450 kHz. Joop ter Zee, Mark Jones & Peter Verbruggen presented the final millennium programmes and correct reception reports were to be verified with a special and unique millennium QSL-card. Indeed it felt strange…ringing out the millennium after more than 19 years shortwave broadcasting.

a reflection

1999 had been rather disappointing. Looking at the broadcasting part of the story, we had only been on air with regular broadcasts in January, October & December. Let’s not beat about the bush, the quantity on shortwave is not a guarantee for quality. We discussed things with EMR’s Barry Stephens. Many SW free radio listeners from the late 70s/early 80s might be listening from time to time but they had been getting older, married, had a family and thus spent less time on writing letters. The new generation had possibly a wider choice in hobbies compared with say 20 to 30 years ago. German listeners wrote in quite often, were loyal etc. But: there were so many stations a listener had to put one’s focus on; it were simply too many different stations. The lack of support from for instance the UK- a main country when is comes to SW free radio- was very disappointing, even outrageous. Even when putting out strong signals into the UK, only very few persons took the trouble to write a letter/ reception report. Perhaps some listeners were pulling out because of lack of quality on Sunday mornings. The  situation perhaps looked normal to many listeners because of the  great number of stations being active. But it would be wrong to judge the situation by appearances… EMR had almost closed down, many OPs complaint about lack of response. What about Britain Radio International? It was time to set things right telling the naked truth. SW free radio had always had a special position within European radio. Firstly because of entertaining programmes. FRS-Hollandwas determined to survive but realized that couldn’t be done without the listeners’ support!