Nobody Does Web Radio Better Than BBC

The first Internet radio station broadcast was in December 1993. The subject: a speech by Larry King at the National Press Club in Washington. The number of people who tuned in: nine.

King gets a bigger audience than that when he has breakfast at Nate ‘n Al’s.

Now there are 3,834 broadcast radio stations in 151 countries that stream online, according to a tally compiled by Live-Radio.net in London, not to mention the thousands of personal Internet channels that emanate from bedrooms and basements around the world.

These stations include the highly official -- China Radio International (en.chinabroadcast.cn) -- and the highly obsessive -- the all-”Ave Maria” channel (www.avemariaradio.tv) that plays the song 24/7, performed by the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Jose Carreras, Barry Manilow and Jewell.

But no one does Internet radio better than the grande dame of broadcast radio itself: the British Broadcasting Corp.

At the BBC radio site, www.bbc.co.uk/radio, you’ll find live broadcasts of the network’s hallowed World Service -- in 43 languages -- that debuted in 1932 and set the standard for international radio.

But the Internet has also brought the rest of BBC radio -- designed for domestic consumption -- to a far wider audience. It is some of the most vibrant, entertaining radio in the world.

The domestic service consists of 10 English-language, live channel streams with programming on business, current affairs, drama, comedy, science, religion and a variety of music genres, including pop, classical, hip-hop, jazz, country-western and world music.

It’s also a site that many people apparently turn to for breaking news. Shortly after the London public transit bombings Thursday morning, I tried to access the BBC’s all-news Five Alive channel online, but it was so overloaded with people seeking its live local coverage that I couldn’t get to it for nearly two hours.

Under normal circumstances, however, the service is so good that it can lure you into areas you never thought you’d find engaging.

Take hip-hop, for example. Even if you’re one of those people who thought you’d never like the genre (my hand is raised), it would be hard to find the mixes by announcer Ras Kwame on the Radio 1 channel as anything less than enthralling.

Conversely, any open-eared listener to “Discovering Music” -- probably the best show explaining classical music since Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” half a century ago -- would find it hard to dismiss dead-composer music as no longer vibrant.

In addition to the live streams, hundreds of archived programs are just a click away. And in the last few weeks, the BBC has begun making a few of the shows available via podcasting.

BBC executives decline to release figures on how many foreigners are tuning in to these domestic channels, which went online in 1999. But given that about one-third of the visitors to the radio website are from outside Britain, there’s no doubt they are globally popular.

Maybe too popular. Enjoy it while you can; they might be taking it back.

Sending BBC’s domestic programs around the world for free amounts to subsidizing foreign consumption of a service that British citizens have to pay for, and BBC management is considering ending it.

The domestic service, including the online streams, is subsidized out of the annual license fee charged to every household in Britain that has a television set. The fee, which also supports a variety of other noncommercial BBC radio and television operations, comes to about $230 per household.

The fact that we outsiders get the service without having to pay a fee probably would not be an issue if this was standard broadcast radio, which costs the same to distribute no matter how many people are listening.

But the more people listen to online radio, the more bandwidth the broadcaster has to purchase.

“It’s a complex situation,” said Simon Nelson, controller of the BBC’s radio and music interactive services.

“I’m proud that we deliver a service that is valued all over the world. But I have to make sure we are not using the public license fee to subsidize free international services. We need to find the right balance.”

Nelson said no decision has been made on the possibility of restricting the online domestic service in some way -- possibly to listeners who have Internet addresses inside Britain.

The message is that it’s probably not going to disappear right away. But just in case, go for it now.

You’ll need access to a broadband connection. The channels stream at the fairly bountiful rate of 44 kilobits per second. That information stream is fat enough to provide quite adequate stereo quality, but it’s too rich in digital content for dial-up connections to comfortably handle.

(The World Service, meant for an international audience and subsidized by a separate government fund, streams at a 16-kbps rate that accommodates listeners with dial-up connections.)

At the BBC radio home page, a list of music and spoken-word categories can be found on the right. Clicking on one leads to archived shows -- most broadcasts on the domestic service are held in the archive for a week and some for far longer.

Access to the live broadcasts are in the center of the page.

Here are some highlights:

* Radios 1, 2 and 6 are pop/rock stations with various degrees of edginess.

* The 1Xtra channel is billed as “new black music,” encompassing hip-hop, R&B;, garage, dancehall and other styles.

* Radio 3 is the killer classical service, with nearly 150 of the aforementioned “Discovering Music” shows -- each of which typically examines one piece of music to explore its themes, history and importance.

* Radios 4 and 7 are the spoken-word channels, with business news, drama, comedy (Radio 4 streams adaptations of the late Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and children’s shows.

There are also general news and sports channels, but the news -- unlike on the World Service, which provides an international perspective -- is weighted to local coverage, and the sports coverage is of limited interest unless you are into professional soccer and cricket.

I hope it doesn’t all go away. When I was a kid growing up in a small town, there was a retired neighbor who had on her screened-in porch an old shortwave radio in a cabinet the size of a washing machine. I would sit there for hours, slowly twisting the frequency knob to work my way across the dial, looking for stations.

That was a long time ago, but I still get a bit of a kick out of listening to live radio that is originating from the other side of the world. The fact that the stations are of such high quality adds immeasurably to the experience.

I hope it stays around for generations to come.

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On the Beeb

Ten channels from the BBC’s domestic service are available at www.bbc.co.uk/radio. In addition to the live broadcasts, many of the programs are archived for at least a week for listening later. Here’s a guide to the channels and a sample of their offerings:

Channel: Radio 1

Genre: Top 40, dance, hip-hop, live concerts

Current programs: “Radio 1’s Chart Show,” “OneMusic With Ras Kwame,” “Dance Anthems”

*

Channel: 1Xtra

Genre: “New black music,” including hip-hop, dancehall, garage, R&B; documentaries

Current programs: “Destination Africa,” “Mixlab,” “Dancehall Splurt,” “Sounds of Soca”

*

Channel: Radio 2

Genre: Album pop/rock, oldies, jazz, folk, musicals, gospel

Current programs: “Lulu,” “Elaine Paige,” “Beverley’s Gospel Nights,” “Masters of Rock”

*

Channel: Radio 3

Genre: Classical, jazz, world music

Current programs: “Discovering Music,” “Composer of the Week,” “Early Music Show,” “Jazz Legends”

*

Channel: Radio 4

Genre: Current affairs, arts, business, science, history, religion, philosophy

Current programs: “Adventures in Science,” “A Good Read,” “Poetry Please,” “Year in the Arab/Israeli Crisis”

*

Channel: Radio 5 Live

Genre: News, business, sports, call-in shows

Current programs: “Morning Reports,” “Wake Up to Money,” “Sport on Five,” “The Rumor Mill”

*

Channel: Radio 5 Live Sports Extra

Genre: Live sports

Current programs: Live coverage of sports events

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Channel: Radio 6

Genre: Archived studio sessions, documentaries, album pop/rock

Current programs: “Dream Ticket,” “Tom Robinson’s Evening Sequence”

*

Channel: Radio 7

Genre: Drama, comedy, children’s programs

Current programs: “Anna Karenina,” “Big Toe Radio Show,” “Comedy Monologues”

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Channel: Asian Network

Genre: News, music, discussion, soap operas

Current programs: “Devotional Music,” “Silver Street,” “Film Cafe,” “Weekend Punjabi Show”

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David Colker can be reached via e-mail at technopolis@latimes.com. Previous columns can be found at latimes.com/technopolis.