FM Radio Lists in Romania

Recently I've donated a vintage boombox with AM, FM, SW radio (among many other facilities). Of all the features it had, it was radio that I'll miss the most.

Varianta în limba română pe FaṭăCarte Meta.

• I prefer smartphones with FM radio.
• No need to make a list of stations, it’s been done
• Looking at a few FM radio stations

After Nokia, I jumped straight into an iPhone (3GS if I remember correctly). My Nokia had FM Radio but no iPhone ever did. I got tired of that and other shortcomings, and since, I switched to Android phones with FM, such as Asus and Motorola. I particularly liked about Moto’s FM app (pictured) the ability to record to the SD card.

It reminds me of an old “dublu radiocasetofon” (more like double tape player) which I recently donated on OLX. It had that feature too (recording of FM to mix tape), but my OLX donations and their associated drama warrant a separate article.

To finish the smartphone saga, the last phones I purchased were Pixels (3 and 4a 5g) for their ability to save photos to Google Photos 4evah, 4free. But just like iPhones, Pixels don’t have SD cards or FM radio.

FM radio is important to me because I occasionally find myself in “internet access challenged” situations, and when that happens, I can’t quite use Audials, as I usually do, to listen to Soma FM. Such a situation happened recently, while in Iasi. I don’t have WiFi, and used up my otherwise generous Data allowance (close to 100GB) in a week or so. Luckily, I had my Moto smartphone with me; I plugged in the microphone part of a pair of headphones long broken, to be used as antenna, and proceeded to find a good radio station.

I prefer Radio Romania Actualitati, but I find RFI to also be long on commentary (aka “journalism”) and light on commercials: they both play commercials only 2-3 minutes before the hour (i.e., ##:00), which doesn’t really bother me. I even find RFI to be more consistent with music that doesn’t annoy me and even longer/better commentary.

I keep a Buntz clock radio in the kitchen, and an Akai CD/MP3 radio player in the living room.  There’s also a more advanced “audio combo” in the bedroom. I therefore found myself needing a guide for the stations, especially given that the Moto app had the Toronto presets, which I don’t intend to change.

I thus started a document to list all these stations, only to find shortly thereafter the lists on Wikipedia (wiki-is, wiki-b).

What’s left is to write some quick impressions about each.

• RR actualitati – market leader in Bucharest, lots of oldies, music otherwise annoying (living room, next to my desk)
• RFI – focus on Romania but also French news as well as French music; overall, a less annoying mix
• Europa FM – I’ve been following Petreanu on his blog but mostly on TikTok, which made me curious about his radio station, but have yet to get around to listen to it

I’d also like to give the following a chance: RR Iasi, ZU, Pro, Digi. Maybe I will, and if I do, I’ll update here.

Sources / More info: wiki-roposten, wiki-ropostro, rrr, wiki-fmont

zamo, phone OLD, #phone, smartphone OLD, #smartphone, radio OLD, #radio, fm radio OLD, #fm radio, ultrascurte OLD, #ultrascurte, internet radio OLD, #internet radio (Tags)