60 North Radio60 North Radio

It began as one man's technical experiment in the dial-up years, chasing the handful of internet stations you could find through Usenet on a 14.4k modem. By 2005 it had become something licensed and real: six low-power FM transmitters scattered across Shetland — Unst, Eshaness, Brae, Walls, Bressay, Sumburgh Head — carrying local musicians and local information on 87.7. Storms took them back. Lightning and surges picked the sites off one by one until 2014, when the antenna at Unst snapped in a gale and was never found.

What survived moved indoors and online, first to a studio at Mareel and later to Market Street in Lerwick. The programming is built around the light rather than the clock: Darkening Hours for the Shetland sunset, Northern Skies for dark-sky watching, Sea Breeze and High Tide through the day. Shetland fiddle sits beside indie and americana, and Tom Morton's Beatcroft Social is archived with everything else.