Finland's Aamun Radio Launches Website

News flash from Finland: Aamun Radio, the morning program at Radio Nova is in rebellion. The show, with 445,000 weekly listeners, is one of the most popular at Finland's No. 1 commercial radio station. "The problem is that we produce so much content that radionova.fi doesn't have the site capacity to handle it," Aamun radio scriptwriter Jupe Tuomola was quoted as saying in a recent press release. "It is frustrating time and time again when, for example, the video material we produced was not seen, because the site crashed almost as soon as our material was downloaded there."

The renegade Aamun Radio has chosen to start its own website, Aamunradio.fi. "Now we'll be able to offer our listeners a full multimedia experience with visuals that our daily guests – artists, actors and others – describe and that our listeners want to see with their own eyes," wrote the show's executive producer Jani Rajalin in the same press release.

The "rebellion" may sound serious, but it's really just Aamun Radio's clever way of letting its listeners know that they are being listened to as well – and they will soon have their own website geared toward what they want to see, read and hear. The website launched last Monday, with a wide range of audio, video, blogs, news and links for site visitors. "The Aamun Radio brand is obviously strong enough to have a life of its own, and we feel we can best reach and serve our listeners this way," says Rajalin. "It's all a matter of defining ourselves within the bigger Radio Nova. And we thought this was a fun way to let everyone know we're pushing the envelope when it comes to radio and the web."