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In a local context in which Peruvian radio [es] and television [es] stations have lately been closed for supposed political reasons, the end of transmission of a pair of “album-oriented rock” radio stations may seem insignificant. However, against what might be expected, the reaction from radio listeners is worth mentioning and analyzing.
On December 8th, 2009, Miguel Villamizar of the blog LO MEJOR del Rock and Pop en PERU [es], celebrated the 12th anniversary of the station Radio Z. However, later that month on December 30, Villamizar wrote that the rock and pop music station Radio Z would stop transmitting, and in its place, La Calle Radio (The Street) would begin on the same radio frequency, which would play reggaeton, cumbia, and salsa. He writes, “this time another company owned by Mr. Capuñay are now the standard bearers of this ‘worsening’ of radio music in Peru.” Even though the post is short, it attracted 221 comments, and most disagree with the closure of the radio station.
On January 3, 2010, Villamizar wrote that Radio Z [es] could now be heard online:
However, on Monday, January 16, the blogger reported on the first of the new radio advertisers: the National University of Trujillo, Ecomuebles and Merchants [es], but he remained suspicious of the source of these advertisers. From Santa Clara, California, Javier Lishner of the blog Rock Around the Blog [es] spoke with Julio Villar [es], a fan and connoisseur of Lima radio station, and also with Villamizar [es]. Both interviews provide very good background information on the history and current status of radio in Lima. Fairly similar to the above case is the case of Radio Telestereo [es] (link works only in IE). Isabel Guerra of the blog Burbujas Recargadas [es] shares her impressions in this post:
This post also received a significant number of comments, 74 so far, most of them were lamenting the virtual disappearance of the radio. Then, Guerra published another post that the Telestereo signal could be heard via the internet [es], even though there were no announcers. Javier Lishner also addressed the issue in three posts: (1, 2 and 3) to figure out what really happened to this radio because, so far nothing is definite:
Leaving aside some of the specifics of each case, a common point to bloggers and commentators in the posts above is the complaint that there is a reduction in the number of listening options for certain types of music, in this case for rock and pop. Ernesto of Física3 [es] puts it this way:
Meanwhile, Luis Gadalupe also commented saying goodbye to Telestereo 88 FM and thanking them for everything [es]:
In reality, and even though the way people identify with “their music” could be seen as being snobbish, there are some who outright dismiss the tastes of others, even going as far as being derogatory against those who do not share their own music tastes. For some, it is difficult to understand why there are less options to listen to rock and pop on Peruvian radio, despite the increase in the number of international rock bands that arrive to Lima, as shown by the recent concert by Metallica. This shows that there is in fact, a market for this type of music.
In an article that contains some points of agreement with the problems described here, Professor Adrián Menéndez in the blog PuntoEdu [es] from the Catholic University asks, “what must be done in order for Peruvian radio to be played more often on Peruvian radio?“
The way that internet users protested the absence of two music stations is symptomatic of the level of civic consciousnes by listeners. Perhaps the fact that this happened in Lima and not in the provinces explains, but does no justify, this large difference in reactions.
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This post was previously published on globalvoices.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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