We have anihilated all risk. We have nullified, liquidated it, and if it were not for unexpected circumstances, our lives would be totally rendered uniform.
We have weather forecasts, insurance cover for every event, total vaccination. We are not just content to know the sex of our unborn children, we want also to decide each and every particular genetic characteristic along the way.
We have the unhealthy idea that to keep pace with progress, we have to be light, and thus we free ourselves from that which at first sight would be considered heavy, in order to be able to go ever more in haste, and to ever more superficial.
And thus ever more controlled by fear.
Our lives are full of clonations, you've noticed, right?
All the cars resemble one another, and clothes, publications, and food, all follow the law of the conveyer belt. Copying has become research, market analysis. The word "copy" is not used, it isn't cool to say that. It has been substituted by "Take inspiration from" and it has given birth to marketing policy.
No-one dares to suggest his own ideas, because that would risk failure, and instead it is deemed better to rely on the commonplace, copying that which has already been done, posing as the unique objective the emulation of a competitor's product, already confirmed by the consumer.
However, be careful: by anihilating risk, you also suffocate creativity.
Even the advertising men, who are brimming with inventivity, are constrained to follow the line of their colleagues ideas, who work for clients who merely tamper with global formats.
And today, do reality shows still really interest us? Because these are the mainstay of all tv schedules. It is increasingly difficult to find a book, a music cd, or anything else that is not conditioned by "special effects" at all costs.
I know women who some time back didn't want to go around with shoes which were too pointed, and who today have great difficulty in finding shoes which aren't shaped like a ship's prow.
However, here at Imago, we love this type of risk.
And this is how Imago was born - out of risk, and the desire to create a radio which was different from all the others, from its editorial content to its choice of music.
We don't limit ourselves to entertainment, we don't try to keep you smiling all the time. Other radios are already very good at this. We won't always try to keep things "light", because of contractual obligations, or because this is normally expected from a radio.
We have no intention of being an "easy" listening radio.