Rádió

Depois de duas sessões sobre jornalismo radiofónico que conduzi no King Sigismund College, em Budapeste, foi interessante verificar como a rádio, tal como cá, é na Hungria um meio praticamente esquecido pela investigação académica. Escasseiam as teses, as conferências e investigadores que se interessam pelo tema.

Relativamente ao cenário radiofónico húngaro, merece destaque o peso da rádio pública (Magyar Rádió) consubstanciado quer nas audiências, quer na rede de estações que detém. Um pouco por todo os país proliferam diversas estações locais e outras rádios temáticas dedicadas aos vários estilos musicais. De sublinhar é a quantidade de rádios comunitárias existentes no país (cenário que não encontramos em Portugal).

Dois alunos de Comunicação do Sigismund College prepararam este curto texto sobre a origem das rádio comunitárias na Hungria:

Community radio is a little more than two decades old in Hungary. It started in the city Kaposvár in 1991 with the radio ZÖM (trans. great mass) and with TILOS (trans. Forbidden), which was in the capital city Budapest. The TILOS (as the name says) was a pirate radio lead by its dreamer and creator Vladimir Németh. In those times most of the emcees acted like teachers, placed themselves above the audience. The goal of TILOS was to counteract this mentality by bringing the listeners into the creation of the radio program.

NMHH (National Broadcasting Authority, similar to FCC in the USA) made a rule about the transceiver’s radius, which can be maximum 1km. Another important fact, that these radios are working by non-profit system so they are organized by volunteers. This type of radio started to spread only in 2002. At this time TILOS was already ten years old. There is a media law which says: if there are two commercial radios in an area, the third one (if there is a free frequency) has to be a nonprofit radio. According to NMHH in 2008 there were 69 community radios in Hungary.

One of the biggest and most successful community radios is Rádió Mi (can be translated as Radio We or Radio Us) in Szeged. Szeged is the third biggest city in Hungary with the population of 170.000. Rádió Mi started seven years ago in a garage with nonprofessional equipment, but the enthusiasm and the proficiency soon paid off. Nowadays they meet their audience on monthly basis, where they continue their cultural and social critical discussions in live. These meetings are attended by 50-150 listeners every month. The radio cooperates with the Science University of Szeged.

Translated and summarised by : Gergely Aradi and Csaba Nagy