Radio Minute, when the radio formula arrived in Spain: "It is remembered as a hooligan radio"

All the pieces in life has an origin.

All the pieces in life has an origin. And the musical radio system in Spain was Radio Minuto, a small Barcelona station with a brief life (solely eight years, from 1982 to 1990) that imported the format from america and marked a earlier than and after. 4 many years later, the e book 'Radio Minuto: La historia' (Círculo Rojo publishing home) claims and remembers the success "of an modern, modern and recent station that may nonetheless be legitimate at present", within the phrases of its writer, Agustín Rodríguez.

“The system based mostly on music and information 24 hours a day meant the arrival of a radio model that didn't exist in Catalonia and Spain; That was the nice revolution of Radio Minuto”, affirms Rodríguez. The station was created in Barcelona in 1982 by Marcelino Rodríguez de Castro from the frequency occupied by FM and Olé of Radio Miramar and which was primarily devoted to flamenco. In 1985 it was already absolutely the chief with greater than half 1,000,000 listeners in Barcelona alone. The success of the system unfold all through Spain with 18 extra stations.

“In Radio Minute the star shouldn't be so-and-so, however the system itself. On Radio Minuto there are not any personalisms, what there may be is a 24-hour programming, deliberate with trendy standards for contemporary folks, for listeners who need to learn as much as the minute and listen to good music”, Rodríguez de Castro wrote within the letter of introduction from the station A declaration of intentions.

"The peculiarity was to mix the tune, the time, the temperature, the knowledge, a track and the publicity in blocks of 5 minutes and repeat the system 24 hours a day," says Agustín Rodríguez. Along with innovation and novelty, the station additionally had one other think about its favour: having the most recent musical information “due to agreements signed with North American file firms that allowed Radio Minuto to be heard, earlier than some other station, to Michael Jackson, Pet Store Boys, Diana Ross, Elton John, Phil Collins and likewise Spanish artists reminiscent of Miguel Bosé, José Luis Perales or Julio Iglesias”.

Radio Minuto de Barcelona assembled a really younger staff. "For a lot of it was his first job," says Rodríguez, a kind of who exactly started his skilled profession at that station. "There was nice concord with the viewers made up of a technology of listeners that had simply come out of the dictatorship and most of whom nonetheless lived by way of adolescence beneath the Franco dictatorship."

The e book collects the testimony of greater than 30 professionals who handed by way of there reminiscent of Toni Clapés, Toni Peret, Quique Tejada, Jose Manuel Lázaro, Carlos Losada, Francesc Xavier Monfort, Ricky Romero, Santi Cardús and Óscar Barberán, amongst many others. There have been additionally feminine voices like Esther Eiros, Pepa Álvarez and Esther Pardo. "Virtually everybody continues within the career in a method or one other, linked to journalism or company communication."

“Everybody remembers it as a hooligan radio, wherein we regularly laughed on the air after we offered a track or defined a bit of reports”, particulars the writer of the e book. “Every one in all them had their very own model, there was no absolute orthodoxy within the presentation of the data or within the model of the announcers; these days they're all just about the identical”, he opines.

Within the information part, Radio Minuto had a gaggle of journalists who, amongst different achievements, managed to talk with Salvador Dalí by cellphone from his room when he was admitted to the Clínica del Pilar or with the President of the Generalitat himself, Jordi Pujol, by way of who awoke greater than as soon as to ask for an evaluation on a present political concern.

The station was pioneering in some ways. It included service info such because the climate or the visitors within the metropolis, “which at the moment no person gave out”. They linked with Radio Taxi, "who paid to exit", they usually advised if Aragó road was full or if there have been queues on Tibidabo avenue. On Sunday afternoons additionally they linked with the Nou Camp and the already demolished Sarrià stadium to seek out out the minute of play and the outcomes of the Barça and Espanyol matches.

The station additionally promoted the 'Minuto de Oro' awards, which had eight editions, with a gala dinner included on the Princesa Sofía resort and greater than 500 company. Among the many winners have been Paquirri (“Isabel Pantoja got here to choose it up”); Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev after they signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (“Reagan even despatched us a video”); La Cubana, for its first theatrical reveals; Xavier Cugat, Francisco Umbral or the GEOS who freed Mélodie Nakachian after being kidnapped.

However Radio Minuto had a brief life. Cadena Ser, which was targeted on Los 40 Principales, purchased the format in 1990. The frequency, nonetheless, remained within the fingers of Marcelino Rodríguez de Castro, who based Radio Tiempo, and who adopted the identical system. However after altering tunes, sort of music and announcers "the ability that this radio system had and particularly that model blurred." A untimely goodbye however whose legacy remained.