University Radio Exeter

After several enquiries I would like to point out that I no longer work for University Radio Exeter. If you would like to contact the radio station for the University of Exeter then please visit their website.

I joined University Radio Exeter (URE) in October 1998 after seeing their stall at the Fresher’s Fair. After completing the rigorous training program where I learnt how to use all the equipment in the studio, including how to press the on-air button, I went on to produce Jon Fletcher's show on a Friday morning.

February 1999 heralded the start of an RSL (Restricted Service Licence) that meant the radio station could broadcast on FM to the whole of the city of Exeter for a period of two weeks. Jon and I decided to co-present a show together and we came up with the highly original and amusing name for it. 'The Johnny and Dan Show' was born. Every Saturday and Sunday night for the two-week period (ok, so it was only 5 shows) we stunned the city with two hours of music and chat. Our best features included 'Pints to Pee' and 'Sing for your Supper'.

Unfortunately 'Pints to Pee' only ran for one show after the first contestant, James Suckling, suffered from mild headache and dizzy spells. 'Sing for your Supper' was far more successful. This contest involved us ringing up a student hall of residence somewhere in the world and getting whoever answered to sing a nursery rhyme in return for a £5 cheque.

After FM '99 Johnny and I went our separate ways. Jon continued to present a Friday morning show until he graduated in the summer of '99. I, being a lazy bastard, got a Thursday evening slot. For lack of any show concept I decided to name it 'The Dan Durrans Radio Show'. The show stank, I will admit that now. Without any features or competitions all I had was music and me. I therefore played mainly music and kept the talking at a minimum.

September '99. Fresher’s week hits the University of Exeter. I was assigned the 5pm till 7pm slot for every week day evening. I even had a competition. I offered listeners the chance of winning a million if only they would ring in and answer a simple question. No one phoned in. I decided that I had no listeners and that drastic measures were needed to save the show. I resorted to phoning people at random and offering them a million. Still little response. Granted it was only 1 million Turkish lira with an approximate value of £1.60.

With the abysmal failure of my Fresher’s week show I decided that what I really needed was a co-presenter / producer to help me out in my time of need. As luck would have it two of my friends had become interested in joining the station.

After Fresher’s week I returned to my usual Thursday evening slot on 963am. However this time I had two new producers to tempt the listeners with. James Seward and Damian Lee had joined the show. I now had a crew. I decided not to change the name of the show for fear of loosing any regular listeners. With mindless jabbering from James and Damian, and random bits of music from me we thought the show would be a sure fire success.

By March 2000 we still didn't think we had any listeners. We needed a new angle, a new concept, and more importantly a new audience. Being computer scientists we turned to the one thing in which we trusted. The Internet. With millions of people connected to the Internet every day we were convinced that we could find a listener or two to make our lives worthwhile.

After a few trial runs of broadcasting onto the Internet we were ready to re-launch our show. We contacted all the people we could think of and told them where they had to go to listen. All we could do then was go to the studio and do the show. There was no way of telling if our masterstroke of genius had worked until after we had finished. We pressed the on-air button.

We broadcast to the world. Muwahahahahahahahahhahahaha. About half way through the show the phone rang. An unfamiliar voice said "Hey Dan". I responded with hello. After a few minutes of confusion I worked out that it was our friend Kim from Canada. We had international listeners. Our show had gone global!

Thanks to my Linux machine and some help from James and Damian University Radio Exeter is now broadcasting on the Internet. The stream was mp3 encoded and broadcast using the shoutcast server program. The server could handle up to 50 concurrent users.

During the middle of the autumn term of my 3rd year I decided that we should rename the show. James was to co-present and we ended up calling it "BackSlash". The show ran until the middle of the spring term when we had to give up and study for our final and finish off our computer science coursework. My interest in radio continues however it is very much on the back-burner.