On Air

Just screw once the tuning knob of a FM radio from side to side and take a sample of what's "on Air" during a sunday afternoon.

Take details

Date: september 14th 2008 h. 17:30
Position: 46°04'27" N 13°14'08" E (Udine, Italy)
Scan: FM band 87.5 - 108.0 MHz
Duration: about 27'
Numer of channels detected: about 50

Notes 

The idea that certain music is difficult to understand or the question if certain music can be considered music or not are basically wrong. It mainly depend on the habit and how often people get in thouch with unusual material and ideas. Many people at a certain point simply stop asking for something different to listen to. Many others simply don't have access to it. 

Public broadcasting has strong responsability and influence  on the diffusion of culture.
National TV and radio had - and still have a pivotal role for unification and developement of languages, culture, identities.

Nowadays in Italy most of public and private FM radios are totally booked by major companies that decide the playlist. That is obvously driven by commercial needs of music industry.
Music industry doesn't promote new or unconventional music because it's not a good business. Not in a short time. Rather it only invests on a very narrow range of musical genres, as the sample clearly evidence.

Production needs masses to be convenient, while diversity (taste-diversity) can be economically speaking disadvantageous.
From a cultural perspective this could drive to sterility.

OnAir log is a sample of the state of public radio broadcasting in a specific area. It would be interesting to receive different scans from different part of the world.