The best radio in the world? Fip. Only female speakers at the mic.

Parisian traffic along the Champs-Élysées, the most famous avenue in the world, the car radio tuned to 105.1 MHz, Radio Fip , and jazz notes in the background. At a certain point the music stops and Susana's voice takes listeners on a discovery of the most famous Hollywood musicals. And once Susana 's segment is over , there are exclusive interviews with Emilie , the latest news on the international music scene revealed by Sonya , Jane and Charlotte and live concerts presented by Stéphanie . Intelligent and ironic women who, together with the other speakers who have taken turns over time, for over 40 years, have enlivened the broadcasts of the public music station Fip (France Inter Paris), defined by the founder of the former Twitter, Jack Dorsey, as the " best radio in the world ".

But what makes Fip , a small network within the Radio France group, so special ? First of all, the fact that since 1971, it has exclusively featured female presenters.

Born from the somewhat crazy idea of ​​two radio producers, Pierre Codou and Jean Garetto, Radio Fip featured, and still features, an almost exclusively musical, eclectic, and high-quality programming, commercial-free, alternating with short segments of cultural information and current affairs delivered by exclusively female voices . The decision to place only female speakers at the microphone is an important gesture and signal, especially in a country like Italy where it is still so difficult to be a woman and work.

Initially, the casting calls for the speakers were even held in the dark , without seeing the candidate's face, so as to evaluate only the timbre of her voice —calm and slow—and her ability to address a large audience in a witty yet glamorous and entertaining manner. The Fipettes , as the speakers are affectionately known, write their own lyrics and have complete freedom of expression when they are at the microphone. A fundamental requirement: they must all have the same tone . Initially, the speakers never revealed their names, which gave listeners the impression that it was always the same person behind the microphone.

The “Fip Voice”

The " fip voice " in France has become an icon of trust and a guarantee of success . For over thirty years, French railway announcements, for example, have been made by a fipette: Simone Hérault.

Radio Fip is a big family: more than 300 listeners tune in every day, and the radio receives countless resumes every day. Becoming a Fipette is a dream come true for many candidates.

Manual music programming

And that's not all: there's another strength that makes Fip a unique radio station. In an era of great digital innovation, Fip is one of the last radio stations to offer manual programming . Every three hours, a director-programmer carefully decides how to organize the music playlist, mixing different genres and offering ample space for emerging artists. This is an aspect much appreciated by listeners, who thus have the opportunity to expand their musical knowledge.

A job that requires not only technical skills but also creativity : every day the director, connecting the various titles together, decides which story to tell and develops it, just like a writer facing a blank page. All without the use of specialized software.

"When I get there in the morning, I never know what I'll be programming for the next few days. It could be something I've been listening to at home, a record that's on my desk... Then one piece leads to another," Luc Hornet, one of FIP's six director-programmers, explained to Slate magazine . Each piece is never broadcast more than once in the same day, and two songs are always followed by an instrumental composition.

" There's a whole vocabulary that doesn't belong to our radio. We work with the tools of the modern world but doing crafts ," as actress Jane Villenet told Slate.

Radio Fip today enjoys an almost legendary image , and not just in France . Constantly under pressure from budget cuts by the Radio France Group, Fip enjoys strong support from its listeners, who, in 2000, even started a petition for the survival of several local Fip stations, gathering up to 90 signatures.

Photo credit: Facebook

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