AirZen, the 100% positive waves radio station will start broadcasting in Lyon on Tuesday
Through Nathan Lautier
Published on
What if, instead of a classic news flash in the morning in the car or in the metro, you heard 4 minutes of positive information?
This is what offers you AirZen, which is launched on the airwaves Tuesday, October 12, 2021. The CSA gave the green light for this new radio station, with a national vocation.
Technical novelty: it will not be broadcast on the FMs that we are used to using but on DAB +, the new technology destined to replace the first mentioned. A sort of TNT radio.
Anne-Marie de Couvreur, founding president of the project, answered our questions to present the concept.
“Well-being, better-consuming, better-acting, better-working”
And if the president is delighted to be able to boast of having obtained this niche, it is not for nothing: “It is the only new national radio in DAB +. There was only one place, and we got it, ”she congratulates herself. Before describing the project, which is divided into three “verticals”:
- “Well-being”: programs on yoga, meditation, etc.
- “Better consumer”: talking about organic products, short circuits, etc.
- “Better action”: programs concerning, for example, ecology
- “Better work”: proposing new types, for example, of management
All in “loops to France Info with short contents of 2, 4 or 8 minutes”, which will be “chronicles and positive news flashes. There will be six a day, ”explains Anne-Marie de Couvreur.
With small musical breaks… They are also positive: “they will be songs with emotion, which broadcast positive waves, such as ‘Here Come the Sun'” promises the president. However, it will be above all “a talk radio, with 70% spoken program and 30% music”.
Who is behind AirZen?
Behind the radio, a big fish from corporate media. The project is launched by the MediaMeeting group.
The bulk of the group’s business comes from corporate radios. “We have 50% of the CAC40 in our customers” explains the president. They also produce 24-hour news flash, which has returned to 220 radio stations, since the takeover of APPRL, the old equivalent of AFP but for radio.
A bubble of well-being
By landing on the airwaves, AirZen intends to stand out from other radios. Pour as much, Anne-Marie de Couvreur does not see competition. “We are a complementary radio” she assures, before insisting: “We are a bubble of well-being”.
In addition to the chronicles and musical breaks, interspersed with a little advertising (4 minutes per hour, two thirty-second announcements four times an hour), there will be a program every evening at 7 p.m.
And the people in the animation are sometimes quite famous:
- Natasha St-Pier who will talk about yoga (she is a yoga teacher), and will receive guests around this theme
- Julie obispo who, once a week, is going to hold a program where she will talk to a person she has met and who inspired her. Her first guest will be… Her husband, Pascal Obispo
- Aurélie Godefroy who will hold a “more spiritual” program
The radio does not want to fall into the promotion of “Fakemeds” (alternative medicines that promote alternative care such as homeopathy, the best known example).
For that, AirZen was formed around an experienced editorial staff, made up of a dozen journalists (including one who will be established directly in Lyon).
An “experienced editorial staff, which will be vigilant and will make its own choices” according to the president, but which will also have the support of an ethics committee.
This will be made up of professionals concerned by the broadcasts: “Doctor, psychologist, sociologist, entrepreneurs…”. The committee will make regular reports and answer questions if necessary from the editorial staff.
Anne-Marie de Couvreur illustrates: “For example, if the idea comes from a program on shamanism, the committee can submit a file on the presence or absence of a risk of talking about this kind of subject”.
Podcasts in addition
In addition to this radio, available on the phone or on the most recent cars (vehicles dating from 2021 necessarily have the DAB + option in addition to FM, some other recent cars also have it), AirZen will offer podcasts.
“We want to produce 320 podcasts per week »Says the president. We will be able to find there reports, interviews, testimonies… The goal is “to show that there are many positive initiatives which work, things which are better and better in our country”.
And to specify: “We wanted to create a positive media, there is positive in the new world, but it is more complex to apprehend it. We must accompany the French in this new world. And the notion of positive, central in our project, can help it. We’re not going to teach a lesson. We just say to ourselves that the French people are people who need proof, and we are going to show them that there is something positive ”.
To produce this content, AirZen has surrounded itself with a team of 50 people, including 12 journalists and around 20 correspondents in France.
Beginning of the broadcasts this Tuesday, therefore. Ready for a dose of good news?
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