Broadcast Information

FRS Broadcasts (when, how many)

In the 1980s and 1990s FRS-Holland followed a regular ‘3rd Sunday of the month’ schedule. As an extra the station carried out so called ‘5th Sunday of the month’ broadcasts, primarily in the first decade of our broadcasting life.
As we entered the 2000s, the sequence changed from ‘9 to 12 times’ a year to ‘once in a while’. Main reason was that at that time (shortly after Joop ter Zee’s death) the FRS crew was reduced to only two presenters being Peter Verbruggen and Mark Jones (German Service). It was a difficult time and the enthusiasm was simmering. Slowly but surely the spirit returned (partly thanks to fresh blood in our team) and that resulted in more activity (read: broadcasts). Since quite a few years FRS operates 4 to 5 times a year on shortwave.
Traditionally broadcasts do take place late October and on the final December Sunday ringing out the year. This is FRS’ long time traditional Seasonal broadcast in which we always empheticly try to have the listener’s participation (Seasonal greetings, musical requests). Apart from these broadcasts there’s always a broadcast in the early period of the year ( February – April). Since a few years a threesome Summer’s evening broadcasts are part of our yearly schedule as well.

Times, frequencies

One side of the picture is that we only broadcast a handful of times a year. The other side however is that any FRS broadcasts lasts 5+ hours. Usually a broadcast starts at 10 CET and ends in the afternoon at 15 or 16 CET. All shows last 45 minutes apart from FRS goes DX which normally has 30 minute editions (or sometimes 45). 
FRS tries to use fixed frequencies but because short wave is often unpredictable, things can change. Think of interference from other stations, utility etc. but also the season.
At the moment (2024) FRS is using 7700 kHz (39 mb), 6185 kHz, 9.3 MHz (32 mb) and 5.7 MHz (in Summer). During 2024 there will be most likely tests on higher frequencies, possibly in the 13 MHz range.

Programme items

FRS-Holland’s main slogan is “A Balance between Music & Information joint to one Format, the FRS concept tasts Different, Just a bit Different.”
We try to fulfil this within our programme philosophy. Focussing on quality pop music (rarely played/ unknown tracks), DX & (Free) Radio news but also various items within the separate shows: ‘Uplink’& ‘Forgotten Pirates’ in the German Show (Jan van Dijk), landbased pirate and offshore radio items in Radiowaves (Dave Scott), Everything 80s (Mike Taylor) and the Musical Express (Bert van Leer). FRS Magazine (Peter Verbruggen) features the Day Calendar, a look back at what happened on this day in the past.
‘The listener of the month’ title is awarded (also a prize) to the one writing an interesting letter to our headquarters. That can either be via snail mail or e-mail. In the past we had a separate listeners’ letter show (ILLS), nowadays all snail mail/ e-mails from a previous broadcast are handled within the various shows (except for FRS goes DX). Every broadcast we look back at a particular broadcast from the past. During that broadcast we play a number of sound bytes from our programme archives and provide some interesting backround information from that particular day in the FRS history. See also ‘format‘.

streaming

Choosing for ‘the best of both worlds’ FRS-Holland opts for broadcasting on shortwave in good old AM and digital high quality web streaming. The latter means listeners can make their choice out of two streams: [http://laut.fm/jukebox] and [frsonline.ddns.net]. Usually streams are scheduled in the two week period following a Sunday shortwave broadcast. In most cases there are 5 or 6 streams enabling listeners to choose for a suitable day for listening. Detailed info about streaming is always to be found on this website (Latest News section)!
For already a few years German Laut.fm streams our programmes. They stream every broadcast 3 or 4 times on different dates.

QSL/letter policy

Like any serious station, FRS is keen on receiving reception reports. Ordinarily the quality of reception reports is varying quite a bit. We have compiled a kind of guideline, with some general (unwritten) rules listeners have to comply with…. 
Please go to ‘QSL Policy‘ for detailed information.