Youth and the radio: the Grup Flaix experience

Abstract

With two radio stations in operation (Flaix FM and Ràdio Flaixback), Grup Flaix has been broadcasting entirely in Catalan since 1992. Thanks to its lively, natural and colloquial language, and with the support of new technologies, it has succeeded in drawing a daily audience of over 600,000 listeners, a large part of whom are young Spanish-speakers.
This paper describes the group’s characteristics, its creation of a linguistic model based on the Diccionari del català col·loquial, and how it has enlivened and promoted the radio offering in the Catalan language for the youth of Catalonia.

Key words: social use of Catalan, youth, communication media, radio, cultural consumption.