Best in Kyiv

What's Kyiv's best FM radio station?

www.proaudio.com
Post readers say they look for professionalism in their DJs.

Choosing a favorite radio station is never easy.

The vast majority go wrong in at least one of several areas. Many play a small rotation of only the most popular saccharine?sweet pop songs, feature loud?mouth morning DJs with questionable senses of humor, start pounding out the commercials once the station gets successful or simply have a penchant for county music.

So, it’s a rare and worthy find when you come across a station that pleases you more than annoys you. After all, it really shouldn’t be that hard. Listeners are forced to endure advertisements and hence become brainwashed customers of the station and its sponsors – and the customer is always right, isn’t he?

Well, the Post’s customers have spoken, and named Radio Prosto (102.5 on your FM dial) as Kyiv’s best station ? by the narrowest margin over Radio Nostalgie (99.0). They must be right.

Now, it could have something to do with the nature of listening to the radio (i.e. passive listening), but readers kept their comments to a minimum on this particular topic. Among the most reticent of the lot were the victorious Prosto listeners, who evidently thought the station’s tune selection spoke for itself.

“Prosto Radio,” wrote one such fan, is “‘prosto’ funny.”

One Prosto promoter did elaborate. She said it’s the “professionalism” of its on?air personalities that makes Prosto tops, adding, “I am sure of the right answer, and it will hurt me if I see Gala Radio on the first place.”

A disgruntled former employee, perhaps? Well, she needn’t have worried, since it was Radio Nostalgie, not Gala (100.0), that posed Prosto’s biggest threat. Nostalgie finished a mere half point behind Prosto, and admittedly elicited a more sophisticated range of reader responses.

“Wonderful, pleasant, nostalgic, eternal music,” one listener opined. “There are no irritating advertisements, no bum?bum hits or crazy blah?blah?blah DJs.”

Nostalgie was also hailed as suitable for both home and office and, with its mix of Western and Soviet classics, as representing a compromise choice for “mixed” expat?Ukrainian couples.

Radio Luks may have received only a handful of votes but its backers seemed fiercely loyal.

“They are the only FM station in Kyiv which does not abuse listeners with tons of low?quality Russian pop music!” said one, while another added in an equally patriotic vein, “They are the only station in this country which does not have a complex about being Ukrainian!”

Pleasing people is, after all, a complex business.

– Daniel MacIsaac

RESULTS:

1. Prosto
2. Nostalgie
3. Kontinent
4. Gala (Tie) Luks
6. Roks
7. Supernova

Others receiving votes: Euro; Dovirya; Music Radio; Nart; Promin.