From the beginnings of the top tennis star to youth violence to the chemical disaster in Schweizerhalle: The Regional Journal Basel broadcasts historical radio reports and prepares them with the people involved at the time.
Roger Federer leaves the family. The boy managed to get accepted into the national training center in Ecublens. French is spoken there, he says in an interview with the Basel regional journal at the beginning of 1996.
Legend: Roger Federer often cried on the tennis court as a young player – when he won and when he lost. Pictured: 2009 after losing the Australian Open final match against Rafael Nadal. EPA/OLIVER WEIKEN
Luckily, his host mother came from eastern Switzerland and spoke German to him, said the then 14-year-old.
The young talent was already hoping for more than just improvements to his own game. Roger wants to win: “My next goals now are simply to make progress in tennis. But with success: It’s not enough to simply play better. I have to win too.”
Listening journey into the recent past
When the international tennis world was not yet involved in Federer’s life, Swiss media were already reporting on the young talent Roger. Conversations like the one with the now world-famous star and his mother are stored in the SRF archive.
In addition to Roger Federer’s childlike voice, there are also articles on moving catastrophes and sporting events in the archive of the Regional Journal Basel. Around 3,000 hours of contributions from 1982 to 2007 have now been digitally prepared.
Historical articles can be found by everyone
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Manuel Meyer, co-head of research and archives at SRF, has invested many hours in the archive: “In this project, all programs that had been stored on physical media since the regional journal Basel Baselland began broadcasting were digitized and recorded www.srf.ch/audio published.»
The audience can research and listen to over 24,000 contributions. Just digitizing the physical carriers took a good half a year of work. “It took even longer to index the shipments. By this we mean the recording of content information about the individual programs in our archive system.”
Meyer believes that this great effort is appropriate: “SRF is striving to make as many of its historical programs as possible available to the audience again.” All the content was created thanks to fees from the public.
The regional journal Basel uses this for a series. Among other things, the chemical disaster in Schweizerhalle is brought to life acoustically. In a second part, the editor at the time reflects on his work and how chemical companies deal with the media and the public.
Or we listen to young people who fought a real gang war in the Steinenvorstadt nightlife area in Basel in the 1980s.
In another post, FC Basel fans worry about whether the atmosphere in the new football stadium will continue to be as good as it was when St. Jakob Park did not yet exist.
