BRUSSELS — In February, the popular Fun Radio show “Bruno dans la radio” (“Bruno on the Radio”) broadcast live from the Atomium landmark building in Brussels, where 150 Belgian Fun Radio listeners got the chance to attend the event.
“Bruno dans la radio” is Fun Radio’s prime morning drive show, airing from 6–9 a.m. on the airwaves of both Fun Radio France and, since August 2016, Fun Radio Belgique.
Hosted by Bruno Guillon, the show attracts a cumulative audience of 1,700,000 listeners in France (250 frequencies), and more than 100,000 in Belgium, where Fun Radio broadcasts on 20 frequencies in Brussels and the French speaking region.
TECHNICAL SETUP
“Bruno is one of the top hosts on the Belgian Fun Radio roster,” said Antoine Fleurus, press officer with Fun Radio Belgique. “In less than three years, he has become a main Belgian brand through as well.”
“We transferred a complete on-air studio to the Atomium, an exact copy of the studio Bruno uses in Paris,” explained Bruno Fonfrede, broadcast manager for Fun Radio France.
“The configuration consists of a Studer Vista 1 digital broadcast console, six UHF-R Shure HF presenter microphones, a Netia Air-DDO playout system and an Adeuxi hot key player. Bruno has been collecting soundbites for many years and keeps them in a sound bank sampler for easy access during the show. Three Sony C300 and two Panasonic HE130 cameras for Fun Vision complete the setup.”
Fun Radio’s engineers in the Atomium studio use Vista’s internal compression and EQ with additional sound optimization coming from Fun Radio engineers in Paris. “The audio was routed by internet streaming to the Fun Radio studio in Paris and the video signal is channeled from the Atomium presentation studio down to Fun Radio France owner M6’s production truck for transmission via satellite,” added Fonfrede. “The whole show is produced in Brussels.
The Netia playout software playlist includes 25 tracks picked by the show’s music programmer. Commercials and news-bulletins for the French and Belgian markets are inserted in Paris, and displayed on the on-air studio screens in Brussels.”
Alongside Guillon and his three co-hosts Christina Guilloton, Gregory Vacher and Elliot Chemlekh, the on-air team included three extra presenters for the program’s three “Journal Pas en Images” (“News Without Pictures”) comedy news-bulletins, two telephone operators, a community manager for social media, two audio producers, a video director and two video engineers.
“In total, we had 25 people travel to Brussels to facilitate the three-hour broadcast,” said Fonfrede. On Thursday, Feb. 7, the Fun Radio crew started preparations at the Atomium site with final audio rehearsal taking place between 3–4 p.m.
The “Bruno dans la radio” playlist included dedicated Belgian-produced tracks and featured interviews with local guests like Willart Pascal who runs chip shop Maison Antoine in Brussels, Elena Castro Suarez (Miss Belgium 2019) and weather presenter Cécile Djunga.
“It is a pleasure to welcome Bruno and his team to Belgium in the Atomium, an emblematic site, the ‘Belgian Eiffel tower,’ a true milestone location for an international radio production,” added Gregory Finn, manager of Fun Radio Belgique. “It’s also the first time we have Bruno presenting a show live in Belgium.”
