Nick Swanson wants to give you an earful. When the Australian former disc jockey turned commercial airline pilot landed in Hong Kong three years ago, one of the first things he did was turn on the radio. He was disappointed with what he heard: 'There was no music, just a lot of talk,' he says.
So Swanson swung into action. Last July he opened HKGFM, the city's first internet radio station to stream three nonstop channels of western rock: Today's Mix (of contemporary Top 40 hits), Awesome 80s and Classics Rewind. Today the site claims it has a quarter of a million visitors who've tuned in from 156 countries and casual listeners in local bars and restaurants.
The station's set-up took a 'long time and a lot of work', says Swanson, who worked for 12 years at Australian stations such as Sun FM and 3GG. He spent more than two years putting together playlists, contacting record companies and working out royalty programmes with the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong.
Swanson also recruited an internet server in Sheung Wan, a programmer in India and a graphic artist and recording engineer in Australia to make the station look and sound presentable. He says HKGFM doesn't need a licence from the Broadcast Authority as its content is streamed over the internet rather than broadcast.
Swanson says he works on HKGFM between flights, choosing and uploading all songs from his Central apartment to the server. If there are problems with the stream, he can phone his programmer 24 hours a day, he says. Now he's planning HKGFM's expansion with the launch next month of Asia Hitz, a new station playing Cantonese, Putonghua, Japanese and Korean Top 40 sounds.
Such internet start-ups are the future of radio, says Asia Hitz producer Andy Leung Lai-bon, a 10-year veteran of MTV and Channel V in Hong Kong. 'I don't see a lot of young people sitting down to watch TV any more,' he says. 'When they're home they spend time online. It's a medium that has been hyped for several years now and it's a good way to take Asian music to an international audience.'