Since my youth I liked wireless and radio. As wireless telecommunication - but also as media, where the jocks were playing interesting records and sometimes telling even more interesting tales about the featured artists with them.

Regarding the media however the liking was one-sided: I realized quite soon, that radio does not offer much to the common DJ - competition is big as it is seen as a dream job (-> girls waiting in line to date you... ;-) and thus not well paid. Also working at the first private stations coming from sunny Italy was not really fun due to the bosses. Finally, my voice does not really show radio qualities - I speak as unclear as I write which does not bother me so much as I do it for the music, but the stations bother. So I decided to do something serious, made my engineering degree in telecommunications and wireless technology and decided to do wireless without the radio part. Later, the media came back in though, as I went into technical journalism, so it now was magazins instead of radio.

I had closed the radio chapter by then. But unluckily radio was not done with me yet: In spring of 2000 Westdeutscher Rundfunk from Cologne, a name cousin for many years (I had the nickname "WDR" due to my initials since I was 12) sued me in the middle of a move from one end of Germany to the other. They had a brand name on those three letters and thus suddenly wanted my internet address including all connected email addresses - if private, family or for the office - within 48 hours.

Da As I had told all friends and family to stay in touch via the net until the move was done I did not want to give in and honestly did not see any reason that that station needed to get all my personal email. Big mistake, commercial interests go over private interests in Germany, I was sued over 500.000 marks ($ 250.000, 170.000 UK pounds) and the court forbid me to further have any "journalistic and artistic material" on my website and also forbid to have any contact information (which is normally required for every German website!), as all this would harm the brand of the named radio station. Even my former job as a product manager for cell phones at Cellway Germany from 1995 to 1997 was seen as competitive by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, as I had written a chapter for a book about wireless and mobile telephones, as well as my hobby amateur radio, about which I had written a book as well. As the boss of Westdeutscher Rundfunk had written (or had someone write it for him, to be honest) a book as well, he even saw a commercial competition in that, even though you rarely make any money with books.

To do radio was not forbidden though - for the simple reason I had nothing going on with radio in 2000. And as the German public radio sees me as one of their biggest enemies by now anyway, even though I never wanted to be that, I decided to at least have some fun, make my old dream come true and actually do a radio show.

Radio Caroline is run by a lot of idealistic people like me - the shows are done for the fun of it, there is no kind of salary paid. The opposite: we pay the airtime, the listeners send money on a voluntary membership base. So Radio Caroline is a noncommercial music radio - although you can book ads on Caroline of course (for German Caroline those and the listeners contributions are coordinated by Peter Och, Hauptstraße 15, 07366 Blankenstein, Phone +49-36642-22334, Fax +49-36642-22593, Email: ra.och@arcor.de), this is not why the station is there. Instead it was founded in 1964, as the radio stations available then like BBC and Radio Luxemburg did not give new groups any airplay. Music is the main topic on Radio Caroline till today.

Talk radio is too distracting for me, same with TV, so I almost always listen to music radio. But not the "German doodle". Wolf D. Rock stands for fun with music and not for commerce!

-> Have fun!