Euroradio Turns 10

How did the Euro­ra­dio start?

A for­mer head of the Radio 101.2, one of the founders of the first Racy­ja Dzmit­ry Novikau decid­ed to set up a new mass medi­um. That is how the new radio appeared in Poland in 2005. There are dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions among its founders, includ­ing BAJ. A few months lat­er, the first pro­gram went on air. First, the radio broad­cast via satel­lite. At the same time, the web­site was launched.

Now we broad­cast via satel­lite and on the web­site all day long, and we have a set of waves cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent regions of Belarus. We rent trans­mit­ters in Poland, with which we broad­cast for the Brest region, and trans­mit­ters in Ukraine that cov­er the Pin­sk dis­trict; and we broad­cast 24 hours for the north of the coun­try on ultra­short waves. But we dream to get nor­mal FM broad­cast­ing in Belarus.

What was the first con­cept of the radio, has it changed with time?

From the very out­set, we aimed to work as a mod­ern youth FM radio in the for­mat 70 per cent of music and 30 per­cent of news. First, we had the radio, then the web­site appeared, and we start­ed to bal­ance between. Now we can say that we are a mul­ti­me­dia plat­form – the web­site, the radio, social nets and YouTube.

Our prin­ci­ples are urgency, neu­tral­i­ty and accu­ra­cy of infor­ma­tion. Euro­ra­dio is not an oppo­si­tion­al out­let, we are in oppo­si­tion to the author­i­ties, and to the oppo­si­tion, too, we gen­er­al­ly like to view an event crit­i­cal­ly. We try to treat all infor­ma­tion from the stand­point of an ordi­nary per­son – whether this that deci­sion changes one’s life for the bet­ter or for the worse.

What jour­nal­ists have worked with the Euro­ra­dio for these ten years?

There were many fas­ci­nat­ing and cre­ative peo­ple who worked with us. For exam­ple, Aly­ona Andreye­va who is now on TUT.by, Pavel Sviard­lou who is now on kyky.org, a lot of our for­mer employ­ees are now on Bel­sat. How­ev­er, the key peo­ple are with us as ear­li­er – Sla­va Koran’, Dzmit­ry Novikau, Siarhei Akhramovich.

We do not split offices in War­saw and in Min­sk – this is one edi­to­r­i­al office for us. Espe­cial­ly that the Inter­net now allows to com­mu­ni­cate eas­i­ly at a dis­tance. We a kind of sit in dif­fer­ent rooms: War­saw is respon­si­ble for broad­cast­ing, and Min­sk pre­pares most of the mate­ri­als.

How did the Euro­ra­dio man­age to get accred­i­ta­tion in 2009?

In 2009, there was a wave of improve­ments in rela­tions between Belarus and the West. At all, we haven’t got a clear answer why we’ve been accred­it­ed. Per­haps, those can answer who grant­ed us accred­i­ta­tion.

Now, by the way, there is anoth­er rap­proche­ment. So, I think it is prob­a­ble that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Bel­sat or the Radio Racy­ja can be grant­ed accred­i­ta­tion.

And were there any fears that your accred­i­ta­tion would not be extend­ed?

We had such fears when we applied for exten­sion of accred­i­ta­tion for the first time. It was Novem­ber 2010, right on the eve of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Then we were very wor­ried, but accred­i­ta­tion was suc­cess­ful.

Next time we got wor­ried after the elec­tions, in 2011, because the warm up changed for a cold spell. Now, nobody wor­ries much because the pro­ce­dure has become an ordi­nary thing.

What can you name as a vic­to­ry of the Euro­ra­dio for ten years?

The main thing for a jour­nal­ist is when he stops writ­ing or telling some­thing sim­ply into space, and when he starts mate­ri­als that change the real­i­ty. Our mate­ri­als real­ly had some dis­cernible impact – for exam­ple, caused legal changes. Enough to men­tion the sit­u­a­tion on the mar­ket of loly­pop seeds inves­ti­gat­ed by Yauhen Val­oshyn.

There has been also a huge num­ber of splen­did mate­ri­als, reports, inter­views. For instance, the inter­views with Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka or Mikhail Gor­bachev.

We prac­ti­cal­ly don’t have unat­tain­able tasks. When an idea appears at the plan­ning meet­ing, we take all efforts to ful­fil it.  So, I am very glad for our jour­nal­ists: when they set a goal, they achieve results. They can find any per­son from under the ground when they need to talk to them.

Our social activ­i­ty can also be called an attain­ment. For instance, we had a joint project with embassies Tele­port thanks to which many peo­ple got the pos­si­bil­i­ty to trav­el to West­ern Europe.

We have our own annu­al music award. It is the fourth year in a row that, in spite of the cri­sis, we name those the best in our coun­try. How­ev­er banal it may sound, all best achieve­ments are yet to come.

And were there any fail­ures?

There were few of them. The biggest one, I think, was that in 2012 we were unable to stand for our col­league Pavel Sviard­lou, and he spent 15 days behind bars. A big job was done then: lawyers, advo­ca­cy, appeals. We even reached the Supreme Court, but still our col­league served the arrest. And because of that, he could not work with us for the whole year, as the admin­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment deprives the per­son of accred­i­ta­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly.

We hear the first chords of the cel­e­bra­tive con­cert to be in the Re:Public club this Sat­ur­day. You promised sur­pris­es to lis­ten­ers. Can you share any now?

No, I won’t give out sur­pris­es now. Let it be for those who come to the con­cert. And, I would also add to our vic­to­ry the sup­port of Belaru­sian musi­cians. We man­aged to stand for them in the times of bans. We paid much atten­tion to this issue, addressed the ques­tion to Lukashen­ka at the press con­fer­ence, held com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the President’s Admin­is­tra­tion.

And I am very hap­py that we, joint­ly with Ali­ak­san­dr Kulinkovich, got it that bands Kra­ma and Neu­ro Dubel, who had been banned (from on-stage per­for­mance) for quite a long time, took part in the con­cert Day of the Radio orga­nized spe­cial­ly for check – whether they are real­ly allowed to sing. Now we see that they suc­cess­ful­ly sing and don’t have trou­bles with con­certs. This is how we work and keep doing so!