Dubai 92, now a dance music wasteland, had then a virtual monopoly on the big-name radio shows, with trance kingpins Judge Jules and Armin Van Burren soundtracking the weekend, alongside occasional guest mixes from Armand Van Helden. It wasn’t just the big name syndicates that controlled the airwaves on the weekend though. Upfront funky house and trance came via David Newsum’s Conception shows, while Dubai’s very own answer to Mr. Scruff, Martin Metcalfe, played a resolutely odd-ball but often brilliant collection of tunes during his live Saturday Sanctuary broadcast.

So why have we seen a massive decline in specialist shows over the last few years? What’s next for radio broadcasting in the UAE? Isn’t it about time we did something about it? Yes! Of course it is! Over recent years specialist shows have ceased to breathe, seemingly suffocated by a cash fi lled cushion. Of the four main stations, Dubai 92, Virgin Radio, Channel 4 and Radio 1, only the latter currently features specialist dance music shows. It seems that the commercial pressures that come with running a mainstream radio station are too much for some frequencies. Programming heads are more worried about pleasing their sponsors and advertisers than they are about playing relevant and serious music, a sentiment echoed by Radio 1 head John Hipper; ‘Commercial Radio in the UAE has become very competitive, so whatever the format, no station can afford to play tracks that don’t have mass appeal’.

Dubai 92, now with a better (ahem) mix features a day-time playlist that would send a seasoned raver to sleep, while their evening output isn’t much better. When we asked them questions about the demise of specialist shows their answers mirrored their hollow content and self-promoting stance. They managed to get ‘On the New Dubai 92’ into their answers 3 times and the phrase ‘a better mix’ twice. Good work, but we all know it’s not the truth - it’s a terrible mix. It’s not even a mix, it’s a hard-drive with selector software. And the reasoning they gave as to why they dropped the specialist shows and now pump out more production-line pop? ‘This is what the majority of our listeners and advertisers want and this is what we are doing’. Virgin Radio, which is operated by the same bods as 92, play a very disputable 10 hits in a row and the nocturna  vibe is all about Rhianna and David Guetta. Their format is virtually identical to 92; even their websites are exactly the same. So it comes down to Radio 1 to save the night with specialist dance music shows on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday evenings, with Greg Stainer, Dany Neville, Simon Reid and Mr. Mr on the turntables and microphones respectively. Big props to Radio 1 for sticking with these shows and allowing dance music to fl ourish on a regular basis, but we still can’t but help think there is something missing. 

Take a look at the music being played by Radio 1. Deep and jackin’ house, R & B, Hip-Hop and some more deep and jackin’ house. Whilst we salute Radio 1 for keeping it real we do think that a heavy dose of dubstep, a sizeable portion of psy-trance and a wheel-barrow full of D’n’B would go down a treat. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. Hop-skip and a jump back to the UK and you can fi nd almost any specialist dance-music radio show on the FM dials. Annie Mac and recent Dubai offender Zane Lowe are on mash-up duty with Radio One shows dedicated to just about anything electronic and a quick look at Kiss FM’s list of DJs shows how seriously they take dance music. UK Hip-Hop, Leftfi eld, UK Funky, Drum and Bass, Garage, Grime, Electro & Bashment are all represented by a mix of international and underground DJ’s including Jon Digweed, Hatcha, Sinden, The Loose Cannons and Logan Sama. A bit closer to home we have Beirut. Anyone who has got low in The Basement, or has worked up a sweat in BO-18 would have probably done so under the patronage of one of the dance-orientated radio stations that operates out of Lebanon’s capital. Stations such as Mix FM & NRJ regularly promote large-scale events in the city, the latter recently bringing Nick Warren, Hernan Catteneo and Danny Tenaglia to the city. 

This source of revenue can sometimes be more fruitful than advertising fees and perhaps is a good clue as to why there is so much dance-music in the clubs and on the radio in Beirut. When the sun goes down on Friday nights, the 4/4 beats roll in with long-serving shows on Mix FM such as Club Frequency (notable show run by our man on the ground in Beirut, Madjam) and Electrotown, playing deep-house, electro, tech and progressive respectively. Trance also features strongly with international syndicates from Armin Van Burren and Paul Van Dyk being complimented by local reach for the laser talent Amadeus. The hardest working duo in dance music today, Ronin and Nesta, kick things off on Saturdays with their show that plays tough, tech-heavy tunes followed by BO-18 residents Gunther and Stamina who like to delve a little darker. Whilst Beirut champions a host of genres, there is still no evidence of any shows that play and promote the new and exciting styles that are rocking the clubs all over the world. Moody dubstep is still MIA, disco is AWOL and the epileptic sounds of fi dget, wonky and global bass have yet to emerge from barracks onto battlefield.

With all this delicious night-time ear candy across the world why does Dubai and the UAE seem to be going backwards? The fi rst point to comment on is the relatively short period of time that Western music radio stations have been around in the UAE. The industry as a whole has learning diffi culties. Experienced radio producers and presenters will only be tempted by the large wages, while there is no feeder program for budding DJs. You either sink or swim on air. The second point to look at revolves around an American term known as the salad bowl (American and salad in the same sentence, weird). Name any race or culture and you can bet your bottom dirham it’s present and correct in the UAE. The trouble is we are all still very distinct from each other, in the same area but not truly integrating. If the Brits are pieces of cucumber, the local Arabs are like juicy chunks of tomato. With the mix of communities that Dubai in particular harbors, it is no wonder that the main radio stations fi nd it diffi cult to please everybody, all of the time. All of the stations in Dubai are commercial stations, which mean they are funded by advertising. So in order to attract and keep advertisers the stations play music that appeals to the masses, and this usually transpires as processed pop, saturated rock and soul-less R&B. But isn’t dance music - more than any other form – truly international? Look out at Sanctuary/Quantum/Chi’s dancefl oor, and you’ll fi nd over 20 different nationalities all dancing to the same beat. 

And have you ever noticed just how many stations there are on the FM frequency. Imagine Sheikh Zayed road is the FM wavelength, now picture all of the car wrecks you have ever seen on said road, now imagine that every wreck represents a different radio station on the dial. It’s quite a lot, isn’t it? OK so that was a rhetorical question, but automobile related metaphors aside, there isn’t much room for a new cutting-edge niche-music radio station if we wanted one. Whilst we talk about the lack of credible dance-music on the radio we also have to look at another very important factor that shapes audiences and keeps people coming back. The presenters... The discjockeys... The reassuring voices that we gather all manner of information from. Terry Wogan, at the point of stepping down from his Radio 2 breakfast show attracted 8.1 million listeners every morning, a feat only surpassed by Chris Evans, who took over his slot. Is it because Wogan drops Erol Alkan mash-ups, or the latest single from Black Dogs? No, it’s because he’s got a voice like velvet, it’s because he would stay calm and give you a time-check in the midst of an earthquake where the epicenter is the BBC studios. 

Zane Lowe just won a Sony award for Radio Broadcaster of the year whilst also receiving a separate gong for Best Specialist Music Programme and rightly so. His show is energetic, he has a dynamic fl ow as a presenter and he champions new, exciting music. Lowe, in presenting terms, is the polar opposite to Wogan but both are successful for the same reason; they connect with the listener. Radio 1’s Schooly - one of the city’s stand-out talents - cites the lack of real radio professionals in the UAE as a major stumbling block when it comes to the progression of  the scene in Dubai, ‘As far as I’m concerned we have some of the best future world class DJs here in the UAE but few Radio Ambassadors, until we get that we’re at a bit of a stale mate.’ It’s fair to say that the most successful radio presenters are the ones that have been, or had been, around for a while (RIP Sir John Peel). Wogan, Evans, Radcliffe, Moyles, Tong, Nightengale…the list goes on.

So when we examine the young radio scene of Dubai it is not surprising to fi nd that most of the presenters are themselves fairly new to the job or not that experienced. Good presenters can talk for ten minutes without receiving a text message telling them to play a song (see Steve Lamacq on the under-threat yet brilliant BBC Radio 6), imagine if you had to listen to Cat-Boy talk for a whole, uninterrupted ten minutes…10 seconds is punishment enough. John Osbourne, in his superbly dry debut book, Radio Head, says it best when he writes ‘Radio works when you have either excellent out-put, or an engaging presenter’. If we take this statement as gospel it is not hard to see why Dubai’s radio scene is so bland and the niche-music scene almost non-existent.

Unfortunately, we lack both excellent out-put and engaging presenters. As long as commercial radio stations rely on their advertising revenues over anything else we will always have poor radio in the UAE, which is a shame because the advertisers bring the most horrendously bad adverts with them. The apparent options are for radio stations to get involved in more events, thus creating revenue that does not depend on advertising, which could allow them to play more specialist music and in turn generate more revenue for their shows. Another option would be to get a rich benefactor hooked on dubstep/UK funky/ghetto bass and ask him to fund a station dedicated to dance music, which is probably not going to happen. So if the FM dial is unlikely, then let’s look online.

When done well this medium could be the savior for dance-music accessibility on the radio in the UAE. It is agreed that the specialist music scene in Dubai is not moving forward, I don’t think it’s going anywhere, that’s for sure’ says Mr Mr, ‘To be honest as we don’t really have one’, adds Schooly. So in the words of Mike Skinner, let’s push things forward… Online radio is like legal pirate radio. Anyone can do it and you can play what you like. But whilst Radio Caroline in the 1960s reached out to the discerning youth of that era by playing progressive rock from Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the online radio stations of today cover just about every cultural nook and reach out to just about everybody (if they bothered to look). There are so many digital stations that actually sifting through them and fi nding one you like could be a tedious task, and until people are digitally connected 24/7, the likelihood of these stations attracting and maintaining a substantial and regular listener base remain low. However, the early American and British pirates were successful because they were playing songs that no other land-based stations were playing. In corporate terminology there was a gap in the market. There was an audience that needed to be targeted by torpedoes of niche destruction. Word of mouth quickly ensured that the pirate radio stations amassed a loyal fan-base, albeit of a certain demographic.

Flash-forward 50 years and sail approximately 3000 miles due south-east to Dubai, the UAE. As discussed, there is only one commercial station playing dance-music on a regular basis and the genres within that are fairly limited. Online radio in the region is still in its infancy. And yet the club scene is ever growing and as vibrant as ever. There is a gap in the market; there is a chance for somebody to step up and start something (relatively) radical. The international syndicated shows that used to broadcast once upon time were guilty of not being geographically relevant or socially pertinent to Dubai. But instead of refreshing the slots with locally produced specialists shows the radio bosses axed them altogether and plumped for the easy option.

Wouldn’t it be nice to tune into a radio station knowing that you will be hearing fresh, new and decent dance music, presented by DJs who know the local scene and who are not afraid to play the latest upfront offerings from producers like Tim Green and Redlight, Trus’me and Joker? We for one, think it would be very nice indeed…so keep your ears to the sand and if you’re interested in supporting this revolution, get in touch. Viva La Radio!