Jenni Murray, one of radio’s most respected broadcasters, speaking on ‘The Message’, BBC Radio 4 described BIRSt as “One of the most lauded of the Internet Radio Pioneers.“
Coral Perez-Moreno (BIRSt 2008) says: Hope you all well. Good luck with this new edition of BIRST, the page looks awesome and all the content on it is very good. Keep the hard work, Coral.
Chris Straw from CBC Radio One, Vancouver, Canada writes “I have been listening to countless hours of radio from all over the world and can safely say that you folks are producing some of the most creative and entertaining material anywhere.”
Michelle from England says: Just listened to the Quick Lit version of Wuthering Heights and thought it was inspired! Can’t wait to hear more from this series!
Kristin Lindsay fom Canada says about ‘Pocillovists on Parade‘
That was great! I had to laugh. Thanks for the great program, Alan!
Amy Wong from the USA simply says: Wowowowowowow.
Oliver J D from Xeton Records says BIRSt is a very interesting site, fast, easy to use and a good clean layout.
Thomas C.Sansone from the USA says: This is a fantastic site you’ve pulled together…keep it coming.
Gemma from Hampshire says: Congratulations… This site is kool.
R & V Coe say: Really interesting and varied…enjoyed it enormously, congratulations to all the team.
Mike Herron in Ireland says “Found you by complete accident, delighted to have done so. Excellent, eclectic range of programmes.”
Evan Lewis in Queensland, Australia is amazed by the clarity and sound quality he is receiving on the Gold Coast.
Ed. – A big thanks to all the guys down in Engineering !
Patrick Adams in the USA writes “This was my first time using media player. It was a kick. It strange for me in Oregon hearing a station in Europe. I’ll be back.”
Karen Bryant in Australia says “Discovered your station today for the first time. It is a breath of fresh air – congrats on delivering such entertaining items. More than anything else it was great to hear your accents from Bournemouth, made me feel quite homesick. Keep up the great work!”
Ed. – As ever, we certainly will !
From John Hopkins “Listening to you guys here in Dallas Texas…cool radio station…..heard it’s raining rather hard over there…hope it lets up.”
Ed. – It never lets up !
Michael Reilly has also mailed us, he says “I have listened to your station several times from New York – very impressive and enjoyable. Keep up the good work!”
Ed. – We sure will!!!
David Damiral of World Vision has emailed us all the way from Mozambique… “Hi Folks, just a quick note of appreciation of your web initiative. You are achieving the best quality audio I have yet heard at 28k, and it’s a pleasure to hear South Coast Brit. voices down hear in Mozambique. Interesting programming, too. Keep it up!
Ed. – Once again, a big thanks to all the guys down in Engineering !
Alan Brown writes: One of most surprising things was the sound quality, or rather the lack of it, coming from major players such as the BBC. I guess that they regard Internet broadcasting as an afterthought, and are simply taking the audio feed to the transmitter and encoding it for the Internet. My own experiments have shown that a highly compressed ‘bright’ sound as favoured for radio transmission is the worst thing to use for Internet broadcasting. Too much compression means that undersirables such as breath sounds & studio ambience are encoded as ‘mushies’, and too much treble causes sibilance and ‘flanging’ effects. Moderate compression is desirable however, as without it, any subtleties or quiet passages would be lost on most PC sound systems. So a ‘from the ground up’ approach was taken for BIRSt. (written in 2001)
Martin Scholes has written to us, he says “Wonderful! At last, an Internet radio broadcaster that is not US-based and broadcasts something INTERESTING!!! Well done!”.
Ed. – Thanks Martin, we’ve added your email address to our mailing list, so your sure to hear from the next cohort of MA Radio Production students, (and their programmes) soon!
We’ve had an email from Mexico, Jesús Axayacatl Cuevas Sánchez says… “Congratulations for your excellent work. Perhaps in order to improve the comprehension of the dialogs involved in the Drama Section, it should be pertinent to read them. This is very important for people for which English is not our primary language. Thank you for your attention, and go ahead with your very interesting transmissions.”
Ed. Thanks Axayacatl, we’ll endeavour to post the scripts up on a More Info page alongside the drama programmes, thanks for your comments!
Don Spillane has emailed. “Greetings from an Old Bournemouthian, living the past 25 years in Santa Monica, California.” They get everywhere, don’t they! Ed. “Liked the story about the RNLI. I was in the Bournemouth police during the sixties and we ran a lifeboat out of Bournemouth at that time. Nothing to compare to RNLI however. Good stuff, keep it up, I’ll be listening in.”
Ed Rose has this to say…”Hi from Florida, I have just discovered you for the first time and you sound great…I will visit you again, Ed :0) ”
Ed. We have the same name – gosh! Thank you for your mail, x:-> [I’m an artist too!]
Dr Peter Goss, who was local to Bournemouth has emailed us…”We used to live in Three Legged Cross and therefore I was very interested when I found this web site. Good Luck.”
William Fitzwater from Charles Stuart University, Wagga Wagga, Australia has emailed us and says… “Wonderful to hear your drama and experimental works. Bravo.”
Ed. Thanks William, never been to Wagga Wagga, what’s it like?
Tony Acomb has mailed us and asks…”can i get dance music on your radio and can i see u if u have a web cam?”
Ed. Well Tony, the only bit of dance music so far was in a feature about clubbing in Bournemouth in our first edition of BIRSt LIVE, (available in our continuous stream of live programmes and in Features), not to say that we won’t put more on, but to be different, we’d probably do a feature about it. There’s lots of dance music out there already on the net! As for a web-cam, you wouldn’t want to see what we get up to in the studio! Thanks for your mail.
Phila Gobbett has emailed us at BIRSt and says “Just tuned in like your sounds!”
John Hamar says “Hi Folks, Listening to you from east coast Canada, New Brunswick. Love to listen when I can and do enjoy your programming. Will comment more as time allows.”
We’re honoured to have had an email from Dr John L Dimmock at Media Services in Sussex, England. He writes…”Nice to see that somebody in the UK is starting to experiment with the possibilities that broadband will make a reality – 30 odd years ago I and two others at London University formed the WAN known today as “JANET” – believe it or not I had to apply to the general post office (GPO) for a special permit to send data over the public telephone lines! Now look at what is happening – well done. Cheers, Big John.”
Ray Thomas has emailed us, he says…”Keep up the good work! I’m a D.J on our university radio in Victoria B.C Canada. Radio is still the most important medium. Great reception.”
Ed. Thanks for the support Ray!
We’ve had an email from beyond the grave!!! Or is it just that this J. Lennon exists only in cyberspace…he says “Hey there guys… I think this is a very cool site. I am living in Brisbane, Australia. Reception is great, and you have a nice mix of interesting stuff…Legend Lennon was very neat, thanks…keep up the good work.”
Ed. As ever, we will!!
Kelly McDonald says “Hi there: We are just listening to your live broadcast in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. My mum is here with me, she is originally from Manchester England. Could someone please say hi to her on air, her name is Evelyn Brindle. Her & my dad moved here in 1957. It would be nice for a hello from her homeland!!! Thank you.”
Ed. We’re not strictly live, but we’re glad you like the ‘as-live’ continuous stream of BIRSt programmes. Here goes…”Hi Evelyn!!!” Did you hear that?
Paul Busby was ‘surprised & delighted’ to see internet radio from his home-town of Bournemouth. Cheers Paul, stay listening and spread the word about BIRSt.
Derek Reid of Hampton Timber has been tuning into BIRSt, he says “Sounds good, good sound quality! Keep up the good work!”
Ed. We will Derek, don’t worry! New programmes will still appear on the site from time to time, see our new and home pages for more details. These are also likely to go to the front of our ‘as-live’ continuous stream of programmes.
Kathleen Dawson from London has sent an email to BIRSt just to say, “Love the Being Kinky programme.” Thanks Kathleen!
James Berkeley, a local university student, also wrote in to say, “cool site, having listened to it at home (London) love the comedy… unfortunate we can’t get it in our room at Uni, would bring cheer to a late night editing session!!!”
VJ Manickam from Clarkson University, USA, enjoyed our programmes. She said, “I am looking forward to a sequel version of Misinterpreted… it’s so Cool guys! Splendid job, so original and you definitely had the audience 100% attention …BRAVO! I love all your musical pieces… Superb job! A whole new exhilarating experience via internet radio”
Roger Tidy (Radio and TV monitoring) has emailed us and says “I’m glad that you concentrate on speech programming, which to me is a much more challenging medium than music radio. I especially enjoyed listening to the short pieces on Procrastination and Insomnia. Both were well scripted and competently presented. I wish there were more short contributions of this nature on British radio!” Roger also made some constructive comments about Legend Lennon.
Ed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were two programmes entitled ‘Procrastination‘ made by our students. In fact, I was going to make one myself, but decided to watch ‘Cash in the Attic’ instead.
Björn Eriksson of Hola Folkhögskola has written again! “Hello! I enjoy your internet radio. I though have a comment on a technical aspect… When I start listen it can happen that I want to go somewhere else on the Internet and if so the transmission is interrupted. For sure the best thing is to just do nothing else when listening to the radio features, but there sometimes comes times when one whishes to go somewhere else but still wanting to stay in tune…. Have you any thoughts about this?”
Ed. We have made some changes so you can now browse and still listen.
Paul Gerrard from Bournemouth (Hey, a local!) is “Very impressed!” with BIRSt. He continues…”I loved the programme Contradictions. Have you got any plans to do any live broadcasts? Good luck with everything.”
Ed. Yes, in June.
Paula Letang from Canada has been listening to BIRSt, she said this about Eunice’s Contradictions… “Great Stuff – the ’80s !!! – talk about taking me back down memory lane. Can’t believe I was there for ALL that! All the best!”
Neil Hatfield from Luxembourg has tuned to BIRSt. He said “…listened to ‘Stairways to Heaven‘ by Mr. Noriega, very informative and mildly amusing; he’s obviously a bit of a loser though if he supports Tranmere!”
Barbara Skew from Bristol, England tuned to BIRSt and said…”Well done you guys, very impressive.”
Björn Eriksson from Hola Folkhögskola in Sweden said about BIRSt “Interesting! Great! Will be hanging round here for sure some hours, most likely!”
Paul Pettit from ‘Broadcast.net’ said about BIRSt… ‘Great to hear some creative radio for a change. Keep it coming!’
Piers Plowright, ex BBC features producer listened to Flashpoint and described it as “…the most purely exciting piece of radio, mainly because of the powerful selectivity of the material”.