Who is Annie Nightingale?

I've always trusted the BBC for comprehensive, independent, and exclusive coverage of a whole range of content from breaking news and politics to art and music. BBC.co.uk boasts some of the highest traffic counts anywhere on the web, and has garnered critical acclaim from around the globe.

Back in 2000, when I was preparing to study in the UK, I started listening to Radio 1 to get an up on what's hot across the pond and stumbled upon a little show called 'Late Junction.' In those days streaming media was a relatively new-fangled technology riddled with low bitrates, interruptions, and outright audio distortion. But even from its digital nascence the BBC offered high bandwidth, free content and proved that the public media could [and ultimately would] set industry standards. 'Late Junction' with Verity Sharpe had an sampling of everything from Jazz and Electronica to World Beats and New Classical with a bonus offering of White Label and unsigned artists that no commerical free-to-air digital content provider could match.

Over the past eight years BBC Radio online has pioneered its format and continues to connect a global audience with both the hottest commerical artists and White Label artists just breaking the scence.

A recent favorite of mine is Annie Nightingale's broadcast on BBC's Radio 1 with Dirty Breaks, Grime, and unsigned Electronic performers from around the world. Nightingale represents a lot of what's unique to the BBC [or perhaps at least to public service broadcasters on the whole]: content which is independent of commercial obligation, free-of-charge, and almost universally accessible. Nightingale, like the BBC, is somewhat of a legend herself: born in 1942, she is one of the eldest DJ's on internet radio. By most accounts, she's a couple decades past her prime for the Gen-x/y-oriented Electronica market; but public service broadcasters don't operate in terms of market appeal, because they aren't selling anything.

And so as a function of her uniqueness to both her genre and its generation, Nightingale has come to represent to many what public broadcasting is capable of offering. For Americans used to the singular fare of most National Public Radio affiliates, the BBC offers an astounding array of both spoken and muscial content that more than rivals commercial media conglomerates with operating budgets ten times the BBC's.

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Annie Nightingale