Country Music on the Frequencies of Radio Herford.
That is (almost) all there is to say about our relation to our station. ;-)
That's because our programme airs as part of the Public Access segment.
A small digression into German media politics: In Germany broadcasting is regulated by the »Bundesländer« (federal states). When the introduction of commercial radio was discussed here in Northrhine-Westfalia (NRW) at the end of the 80s, it was tried not to repeat the mistakes of the other Bundesländer. Although it was decided to divide NRW into 47 relatively small coverage areas (these areas are usually identical to one or more »Landkreise« (counties) or »kreisfreier Städte« (independent cities not part of a Landkreis)), there was a guarantee that within each coverage area there would be just one local commercial station and the stations do not have to produce a full time schedule of their own. This is even true for stations serving big cities like Cologne. For the rest of the day they may relay a »frame programme« (the literal translation of the German term »Rahmenprogramm«. Elsewhere this is usually called Network feed, the translator). More controversial is that the publishers of the local newspapers were allowed to run the local station. In order to guarantee variety of opinion, the programmes are the responsibility of the »organising company« (Veranstaltergemeinschaft), which is separate of the »conducting company« (Betreibergemeinschaft). The latter is responsible for the economic aspects of running the station.
Another obligation anchored in the broadcasting licence is the duty to transmit the programmes of the »Bürgerfunk« (public access programming). Its duration is 15% of the mandated local programming time - depending on the specific license area that is 5 or 8 hours - but at least 60 minutes and at most 2 broadcast hours per day.
The obligation of the station is limited to check whether the programmes submitted meet the legal requirements and then to broadcast them. The station has no influence on the contents of the broadcasts! Differences of opinion between the stations and citizen broadcasters are settled by the administrative authority for broadcasting matters in NRW, the Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen (LfM) (State institution for media in Northrhine-Westfalia)(Web site is in German). If one of the parties involved is unsatisfied with the result, it can go to court. And the judges decide quite often in the public access broadcaster's favour! This does not keep some station heads to put put obstacles in the citizen broadcasters's way. Here in Herford the situation is mostly relatively relaxed.
More about public access broadcasting under the menu item Public Access.
The Landesanstalt für Medien NRW informs on these pages about current developments regarding radio broadcasting in NRW (in German): www.lfm-nrw.de/hoerfunk
And this is the LfM page about Public Access Broadcasting (Bürgerfunk): www.lfm-nrw.de/hoerfunk/buergerfunk
Information on the frequencies and coverage areas can be found in the menu item The Station->Frequencies
And here is the link to the station's website: www.radioherford.de