Surround sound. Images. Animation. Interactivity. Hyperlinks. The potentials, and challenges, for radio producers have come a long way in just a few short years.

In the fall of 2001, Swedish National Public Radio started seven new channels exclusively for DAB and the Internet. The most experimental and interesting is SRc (in which the 'c' stands for "see"). It is perhaps most easily described as a cultural affairs audio periodical, where staff producers and independents, as well as painters and musicians, have an outlet for audio and visual stories of virtually any length, shape and form.

The magazine show airs live, but via the Internet the listener can also create his or her own show by choosing what stories to watch and listen to.

So far the desire for experiments has focused on the audio stories themselves, although there are many noticeable attempts of expanding into imagery and interactivity. Take Asa Stahl's "Tape Salad." Over the years she has been collecting tossed-away audiocassette tape--the tiny magnetic strips sometimes found entangled around lamppost and tree branches.

Visit http://www.sr.se/P1/SRc/andrasidan/andrasidan.html, and click on "andra sedan" (which means "the other side"). In the next window, move the pointer to the second item from the bottom of the page--the entry called "bandsallad." Click on it, and you will see seven of Asa's bags of audiocassette tape. Click on one of the bags, and next to the jotted down history of her find, you can move the cursor over the tape. The tape will start playing from that point on--backward or forward, depending on the movement of your cursor.

Another such interactive idea is "Let them sing it for you," where you can write your own lyrics in English and listen to world famous artists sing them.

Every issue of SRc has a theme. One of the early ones was "The City." To navigate around these audiovisual realizations of a metropolis, you can use the interactive map. Go to http://www.sr.se/p1/src/staden/kartan/index.htm. Clicking the boxed words "Klicka Hr" will take you to the map of this composite city. As you move the cursor over the grid of streets and buildings, the various stories will start playing.

Move the cursor to the open square in the middle of town, and you will hear a story that starts out with a telephone call. It is made by one of the hostages at a bank robbery in downtown Stockholm in 1973, from which we got the phrase "The Stockholm Syndrome."

In the English/International section of SRc, there are a number of "sound carpets" from around the globe. Click the "audiovisual" link, and you will find "A Drawer's Plantation," where Nikolina Stllborn has added animation to her carpet. For that same section, Roderick Buchanan has produced a short motion picture Vox pop about the rivalry between Celtics' and Rangers' fans.

In an era when editors ask for shorter and more condensed stories, and at a higher pace, I was particularly attracted to the idea of getting the time and space I craved. An added bonus in my case was that the usual demand for extensive translations was entirely dropped. But after many years of dealing merely in sounds, producing for SRc meant learning about cropping, filtering, manipulating images, as well as the transition of video clips and adding text.

My most recent endeavor originated from a science story I did two years ago about nanotechnology. Researchers at U.C.L.A. had discovered that the tiny mechanical motion inside of a yeast cell could be transformed into sound. And when the cell was heated, cooled, poked or drowned in alcohol, it changed both pitch and frequency--a brilliant topic for a radio story, right?

The SRc editor asked me to skip the science and concentrate on the singing yeast cells. I spent quite a lot of time refining the audio story. When I was done, I foolishly volunteered to produce the visuals as well, which given my inexperience took even longer. It is still available at the SRc site, but for faster access and a version in English, I would recommend my own web site: http://www.nicala.org/yeastcell.htm.

Like for most shows on Swedish NPR, there are no formal pitch guidelines. You simply contact the editor and suggest the story. With the current exchange rate, a ten- to fifteen-minute story for SRc pays a little over $900. If any AIR member would like to produce a story for SRc, I would be happy to be a liaison with the show. Because a Swedish voice-over, or any narration at all for that matter, is not a requisite, I would encourage you to give it a try.

Claes Andreasson has worked at and for Swedish National Public Radio since 1979. For a total of 12 years, he has been an independent radio producer based in Los Angeles. His e-mail address is: claes@nicala.org.