Happy Talk

July 6, 2007 1:03 PM

My Freeview box has decided to ignore TV signals! Noooo! I'm looking to get back into listening to radio, and I need recommendations for live shows to listen to online.

Things I like/need:

- a mix of crazy right wing and left wing opinions
- a regular amount of callers allowed in to voice their opinions, emails read out, interesting guests etc
- something that broadcasts a variety of hosts throughout the day, 24/7
- topics revolving around the news or general cultural stuff
- English speaking
- no sports
- female presenters not talking about fluffy kittens, cooking, or anything related to cliched women's radio are a plus!
- if there's a station that combines music AND talk, I like hip hop/rap/rock/pop music.

Example for those that know the station: I used to listen to Talksport radio here in the UK (back in the day when I was a young and impressionable teenager) but tuned out thanks to the dominance of sport related topics (I just looked at the schedule and George Galloway is on tonight, but he doesn't start until 10pm GMT). Ideally, I'd be looking for something akin to their schedule in the evenings, but all day and perhaps more varied in subject.

Basically, aside from the podcast, is there a Metafilter in radio form?

posted by saturnine to media & arts (5 comments total)

5 Live? News and debate all day long, not too serious like Radio 4 yet not wacky shock-talk radio either (although at night it does get a bit shouty and acrimonious.) Downside is that they cover major sporting events such as Epsom, Wimbledon etc.
posted by fire&wings at 1:19 PM on July 6, 2007

They have lots of female presenters too, Anita Anand hosts one of the late night talk shows which is a lively listen.
posted by fire&wings at 1:21 PM on July 6, 2007

Yeh, the sport is preventing me from wanting to go that way (like Talksport). The hours I'm looking to fill are 9am-1:30pm/8:30pm-2am on a weekday, if that helps any.
posted by saturnine at 1:29 PM on July 6, 2007

Diane Rehm is my favorite talkshow host ever, on Mon-Fri for two hours a day. Why do they need to be live shows? What if you just listen a little later in the day? Really, you should check her out. She has a vocal chord disease, so her voice is a little strange, but you get used to it.
posted by Eringatang at 2:21 PM on July 6, 2007

- something that broadcasts a variety of hosts throughout the day, 24/7
- topics revolving around the news or general cultural stuff
- English speaking

BBC World Service! It's not just news! I lived in Indonesia last year and listened on shortwave - it literally saved my sanity. So much great content, always something refreshing, and you get the news really well done as well. I even taped some of the shows for my English students, who loved hearing someone's voice other than my own. :)

Some possible shows you'd dig:

Have Your Say - daily call/sms/e-mail-in talk show on prescient topics, often on current events, but also on wider issues like "the rise of India" or climate change
Assignment, From Our Own Correspondent - documentaries from around the world
Outlook - cool human interest stories, often from the far corners of the developing world
Heart and Soul, Reporting Religion - religion and spirituality
Digital Planet - technology and computing
Discovery - science
The Word - literature and poetry interviews

You can listen live or to any past/archived shows here; here's the schedule for Bristol. If your Freeview box submits to your will anytime soon, you can pick it up on channel 710 on Freeview.

Also, there isn't much non-English or non-Spanish hip-hop here in Los Angeles, so I love BBC Asian Network's bhangra/hip-hop/filmi music to get moving; I'm not South Asian and many of the Bollywood songs aren't in English, but the commentary is and the music is AMAZING for working out and jogging...check it out. You might also dig Street Sounds and Wo' Pop from KEXP, a commercial-free, listener-supported (rare in America) radio station out of Seattle.
posted by mdonley at 2:05 AM on July 7, 2007