The credo of Açık Radyo of Istanbul, Turkey begins as follows:
“We have apparently lost our ability to have fun!
Radio, TV, newspapers, and the like are all so terribly tedious and boring;
mainstream media mainly serving nothing but a magnanimous mediocracy;
being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but a deafening cacophony.
Paradoxically, mass communication have separated and detained us all incommunicado.
Ergo the need for a new radio station.”
Founded in 1995, to this day Açık opens its signature show about the news of the day with the Beach Boy’s song Good Vibrations. Over the summer Sharon Wood and I travelled to Istanbul and visited Açık’s studios. There we met and interviewed two of the operations denizens, Omer Madra and Kutay Derin Kugay.
The result is posted on Youtube. Enjoy . . .
“Açık,” by the way, means “open,” as in the station’s credo: “Open Radio is open to all the sounds, colors, and vibrations of the universe.”
