It takes only a quick glance at the most recent Rajar listener figures to see that we are not the most adventurous of nations when it comes to radio. The good old Beeb has more than 54% of the available audience across its 11 national channels. Of the rest, only Classic FM gets close to the 5% audience reach mark, with most of the smaller stations failing to get above 1%.
And yet these days there are more listening opportunities than ever before, thanks to the increasing availability of new channels via digital radio, satellite and cable. For the more web-savvy, there is even more choice, as even the most obscure local stations are now likely to stream to the wider world over the internet.
Daniel Martin on our music site today pays witness to the remarkable sonic pearls which can be unearthed with a little selective Googling, as part of his new series on worldwide radio gems, Over the Waves. On the blog Alexis Petridis waxes lyrical about the thrill of discovering a truly original music show for the first time since John Peel's death in the shape of Stuart Maconie's 6Music Sunday night cavalcade of the bizarre, The Freak Zone.
But since the whole point of this whole blog business is its interactive nature, we thought we would start a little debate here on the best unusual radio shows and stations both here and abroad. Please post your own views below and help make the world a better place. With a little luck come the next quarterly Rajar figures, Chris Moyles will have lost 500,000 listeners and Terry Wogan will have been sent on an extended BBC "sabbatical" to a partner station in Azerbaijan. Or maybe not.
