From pirate on Veronica to Radio Norba passing through Noel Coutisson’s RMC, 105, RTL 102.5 and many other stations. After the farewell to listeners that took place on December 29, 2024, FM-world decided to contact Federico L’Olandese Volante to talk about radio between past, present and future.

The interview/conversation took place on Tuesday January 7, 2025; the original audio is available by clicking HERE.

The Interview

FM-World (Marco Hugo Barsotti): You came to Italy quite young, around 22 years old, as Wikipedia reports. Actually, you arrived in Monaco. How was Monte Carlo in those times?

Federico l’Olandese Volante (F.OV.): Much earlier, because my father was Dutch consul in Milan in the ’50s, right after World War II. Then he retired very early from diplomatic service and when he was in Italy he fell in love with Lake Garda, where he bought land in Riva del Garda (Torbole, Ed. Note) and where he then built a hotel.

Lido blu in Torbole

Basically we arrived with the family in Italy in ’58, I was 8 years old at the time and I’m from ’50. My brothers also went to school in Italy, then for various reasons my father sold the hotel and we returned to Holland when I was 16 years old. There I finished high school and enrolled in architecture and started working in ’68 for Radio Veronica which was an offshore radio that broadcast from an old rusty fishing boat outside territorial waters. In medium waves we covered practically all of northern Europe because it’s all flat there, there are no mountains.

Radio Veronica with its 192 meters you could receive it in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, a audience of more or less 30 million people. It was very interesting also because national radios at the time had monopoly limits and didn’t do much advertising. But there was advertising potential… companies that were pushing products for young people like jeans, Coca-Cola and other things and that absolutely couldn’t find space. Therefore offshore radios were also a huge business especially for advertising. Being in international waters they could also advertise cigarettes which at the time were very popular. We also did it at RMC, I don’t know if you remember…

FM-world: Yes, I remember, “Muratti Ambassadorrrrr“…

F.O.V.: Yes, Herbert Pagani, the program was even called “Fumorama“.

205 meters

FM-World: Tell us about Coutisson, about how it was working at Radio Monte Carlo in those distant times.

F.OV.: Coutison is a half genius, even though he had a couple of big flaws, one was appreciating good French wine.

After 5 in the afternoon you couldn’t talk to him anymore because he was busy with his Pernod. But he invented a lot of games, radio situations, he invented the radio clock.

He came from France Inter and then was hired at Radio Monte Carlo to make this frequency profitable (205 meters, 1466 Kc). To exploit this right that the Principality had to broadcast in Italy.

The problem was advertising, so Coutisson solved it by going to Sipra, which was RAI’s official advertising agency, also taking the advertising concession for Radio Monte Carlo.

Sipra was very happy, it was a DC fiefdom at the time, so they said “Radio Monte Carlo cannot broadcast in Italy… imagine, we sell the advertising“. So he had solved all problems. And so we were the first Italian private radio, so to speak. When I left we had 8 million listeners.

Modernizing broadcasting… in 1978

Coutisson wanted someone to modernize the speaker park, since they were all too traditional, Italians who were inspired by Boncompagni and RAI. Or by Supersonic: too official a style.

I translated the Anglo-Saxon style, the DJ… the one who keeps talking contained – even within the limits of records – the one who does his own direction, sends jingles, makes a very lively broadcast.

And, in the following years, in private radios I heard many little “Federicos”, someone who was partly inspired by me.

Union technicians

FM-World: At RMC did you have a director or did you do it yourselves?

F.OV.: In Monte Carlo we had the director because in the Principality there is a very strong union, French, that requires all speakers to have a director.

Even when we went out for example to do interviews – I went several times to London to interview Pink Floyd – they required you to bring along the technician with the recorder. With the Nagra.

You couldn’t record by yourself, you needed the technician and it was precisely the union that imposed this thing.

And still today the union requires for example the publisher of Radio Monte Carlo, first Hazan then RadioMediaset, to keep an office open in the Principality. With some technicians – at least 3 or 4 French – even if they don’t broadcast.

I believe there are only one or two speakers who do something on the weekend, everything else is Milan, but you must have someone in the Principality, if not you can’t call it Radio Monte Carlo, this is the condition of the contract itself.

105

FM-World: According to Wikipedia again then you went to help Hazan precisely to structure 105. How was working with Hazan?

F.OV.: It wasn’t easy. We must say first of all that he came from a rich family, his father was Khashoggi’s partner (Adnan, not Jamal, Ed. Note), one of the world’s largest arms dealers who had his yacht (Nabila, the current “Trump Princess” Ed. Note) in the port of Monte Carlo where he had his office.
Note: FM-world could not verify from other sources this association between Alberto Hazan’s father and Khashoggi.

Audiola

So Alberto invested… he already had Audiola, a company that produced car radios and to advertise his Audiola he set up a radio. Then he saw the business and so went looking for someone who could help him and took Cecchetto and me. We two practically set up the radio with criteria that at the time no one who did radio had.

Free radio in Italy was such an abstract thing where every guy who had some records at home brought them, blabbered on the microphone and put his records on, but there was no form, no organization.

Then slowly came radios like Milano International, like Deejay, like us, but actually we much before Deejay. He had also taken a couple of American radio experts who fixed all the schedule for him. This on the advice of his American wife. So 105 was born like this. I arrived in Milan in ’78, from Monte Carlo I was doing a show also on Radio2 and I started working with Hazan which was a happy collaboration that lasted 12 years.

Half Clock

FM-World: Did you have the clock?

F.OV.: No, not at the beginning, but then the Americans came who immediately put in the famous clock.

Before we had half clock at our disposal with tracks of our choice, but approved by programming and then the other half was imposed programming, that is, already written.

So I had my playlist sheet that was empty halfway and I could put five, six records and the other six were instead those that they had already put in, because the radio had to sound in a certain way. Still today if you listen to 105 you understand it’s her, she has her sound, her music.

Radio with a template

FM-World: If you follow FM-world’s Talkmedia group you’ll know that the criticism that many readers make is that radios, networks tend to be very similar. It seems something similar to what you said in a famous statement just before leaving R101…

F.OV.: I still share it and I left radio and programs also for that. Also because I don’t find myself much with that music now, not that I’m someone who is fanatic only about the past, but I want a bit more space.

Then after fifty years that you do a program, always from five to seven or from three to five, every time punctual, perfect, professional, at some point you also get fed up. I now decided to retire in Tunisia, where I bought a house by the sea, I get the pension and taxes are reasonable.

I have my studio, RTL called me for example, many radios called me, for example Radio Rock in Rome that want me to make podcasts about music history and other things. So let’s see about carrying forward the discourse… no more with live programs, but with podcasts where I bring out my know-how from the past, the interviews I did, the history of various bands.

FM-World: Today what do you listen to? Do you listen to BBC Radio One? Veronica?

F.OV.: Some international radios, with the app, you know… but not only: some Radio Deejay, Virgin, Radio Rock from Rome, some local radios. But not the “popular” radios.

FM-World: Nothing in Dutch, to say?

F.OV.: Yes, sometimes I also listened to Radio Veronica, which has now become a national radio no longer pirate, they gave licenses and they are still appreciated.

DJ, anyone?

FM-World: Going back to today’s radios… if we look at the courses offered by various radio schools, you find them for host, for sound technician – which moreover is a word that seems from the last century – and there isn’t a course for DJ. Johnny Walker of the BBC recently passed away, I listened to his entire podcast (available by clicking HERE), a kind of autobiography. He defined himself as aDJ, even at his advanced age.

F.OV.: The DJ in my opinion in Italy we have completely divided between radio speaker and disco DJ and the two categories don’t touch. Claudio Cecchetto at the time called his radio DJ (Deejay) because precisely his speakers were DJs, then everything changed, now they no longer consider themselves DJs, but rather radio speakers or radio animators or radio journalists.

But we in RMC times always had headphones on, we listened to the music.

At the time I had a medium wave return in headphones, with that fading that was really maddening, but yes, we listened to the music.

Starvation wages

But today, the profession of radio speaker is no longer like it used to be. And then today there are starvation wages.

I earned a lot of money in the 80s-90s, I was well paid. But now to young people, if they’re lucky, they give 2,500 euros per month, which cannot be enough to live in Milan or Rome. It’s not a job where you can say “I become rich”, while we at the time did evening events, we were record producers, we were speakers. I at RTL at the time earned really well (cf. podcast, Ed. Note). They paid you based on your quality, your professionalism.

FM-World: The last thing I wanted to ask you is this: you have lived in your country, then in Monte Carlo, then in Milan and finally in the South. How do you see us Italians, how do you see Italy?

F.OV.: There are several different Italias. I arrived here in the south in 2015, Puglia is very beautiful, you live well, I have lots of friends here, but at the beginning it was a provincial reality.

Then in these 10 years it has developed a lot, Puglia and the Radio. Norba with the Battiti story has made a sensation, it has replaced the old Festivalbar. They have made giant steps, there’s nothing to say. It’s no longer “a Southern radio”: it’s an Italian radio, just like those of the North.

Latest news

As we had suspected, when a DJ says they’re “hanging up the headphones”, it always turns out to be provisional: here’s here some nice news that arrived as a surprise today directly from RTL 102.5 and that will surely please everyone. (M.H.B. for FM-world)