Purple Radio

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**Purple Radio**

Broadcast area	Global (online only), broadcast from UK
First air date	Original airdate unknown
Frequency	n/a(Internet)
Format	Contemporary and Talk
Owner	Durham Students' Union
Website	www.purple.dsu.org.uk

Purple Radio is Durham University's student radio station. Purple broadcasts online at www.purple.dsu.org.uk [1] from 10am till 11pm Monday-Thursday and 10am till 10pm Friday-Sunday [2]. It only broadcasts during term time, from October till June. It does not broadcast during the student holidays over Christmas, Easter, and Summer.

The station features a mixture of talk and music shows. Talk programmes generally air from 5.30pm to 6pm on weekdays, and at breakfast and lunch during weekends. They cover news, sports and current affairs, as well as a selection of comedy shows and light entertainment. Specialist music shows cover a wide range of genres including blues, electronic, indie, rock, folk, dance, and house music - these air every evening from about 6pm onwards. During the daytime a playlist (composed of around twenty songs on an 'A' and 'B' list) is rotated and presenters are also free to play their own choice of new and old music. Tracks from the week's playlist are voted for by listeners via the website and these votes are announced on the station's Chart Show on Sunday afternoons from 5pm-6.

Purple Radio is the succesor to earlier Durham student radio stations. Purple FM was previously launced in the 1980s and was based in a small studio at Van Mildert College. It is known to have operated a number of 4 week 'Restricted Service Licence' broadcasts from there in the late 1990s on 107MHz. In the summer of 2002 the station moved into the Durham Students Union building, Dunelm House. The first broadcast to be made from the new studio was another 4 week FM broadcast in October of that year on the same frequency as previous licences. A further such FM broadcast followed in November/December 2003, before the station re-branded itself as Purple Radio in late 2004 in order to launch a 24 hour internet service via its website; this decision was taken due to the increasing popularity of the internet as a broadcast medium for student radio and the very high costs of broadcasting on FM. The first internet-based broadcast [3] began on the first day of Epiphany term 2005, but was forced off air in late February after heavy snow storms leaked into the studio [4] and damaged much of the station's equipment. After a studio re-build and a change of executive, the station was re-launched a year later on January 16, 2006 [5] and successfully completed its longest period of continuous broadcasting on Friday 23rd June. At the end of the Easter Term, two presenters undertook a 24-hour show in order to raise money for charity [6], and it is expected that this will become a regular end-of-exams event each June. Purple Radio began its 2006/2007 broadcast in Michaelmas Term on Saturday 14th October at 10am.

The station is run by a Station Manager (SM), who is elected in Epiphany Term by the Council of the students' union. The SM selects an executive committee (exec), whose job it is to assist the manager run the station. Posts on the exec include Head Of Music (who additionally consults with a music team to formulate general music policy, and review albums and gigs), Programme Controller (who is responsible for overall output and content, training DJs, and implementing the schedule), Head of Speech, Head of IT and Systems, and Website Administrator.

Members of the radio station pay a nominal fee in order to pay for studio maintenance, promotions and projects. All presenters must be members of the station, and all members are encouraged to present shows. The number of DJs involved in broadcasting has increased vastly in recent years and is now in excess of 100 students. In addition to presenters, the station has a dedicated music team, which writes comprehensive reviews for the many CDs that are sent from record companies. The station's website is updated regularly with these, in addition to gig reviews.