Alla Pugachyova launches her own radio station - Radio Alla

Russia's top pop diva Alla Pugachyova launches her own radio station, Radio Alla, where she will host a show and play her music every hour.

She has already launched a shoe brand, a perfume, a magazine and a line of potato chips, but pop star Alla Pugachyova reckons her fans want more.

From this month, Russia's answer to Madonna will be played every hour, every day, on her new radio station, Radio Alla.

"People are waiting for such a station," said Alexander Varin, head of Prof-Media Broadcasting Corporation, Pugachyova's partner in Radio Alla. "We all remember that popular joke from the Soviet era -- 'Who's that Leonid Brezhnev? A minor political figure in the epoch of Alla Pugachyova."

The singer burst onto the moribund Soviet pop scene in the mid-1970s with her hit "Arlekino." With her luminous voice and playful style, she swiftly became a star and has never relinquished that status. Now, though, her tangled personal life tends to attract more attention than her music.

The station will play a mix of hits from the 1970s onwards, as well as one or two Pugachyova songs per hour. It's being positioned as a girly alternative to stations such as AvtoRadio and Militseiskaya Volna (Police Band), though critics are dubious of the venture's chances.

Her ex-husband, the peacockish pop performer Filipp Kirkorov, said in an interview he was certain of her success.

"Everything that she puts her hand and her creativity to immediately acquires a definite status, a certain quality."

He also proclaimed, a little unexpectedly, his feelings for Pugachyova.

"Irrespective of the presence or absence of a [marriage] stamp in a passport, nothing decides the relationship between people who are connected by God."

Pugachyova is to host her own show and invite famous guests. Listeners will be able to put questions to her on love and life in general, Varin said.

She'll also help decide what tracks are played. There'll be some contemporary pop, although Varin ruled out acts such as pseudo-lesbian group t.A.T.u. "You need songs that correspond in their soul to Pugachyova's songs," he sniffed.

Varin wouldn't confirm how much is being invested in the station, but said a new studio is being built. The radio station does not yet have a definite date for its launch this month on 98.8 FM.

Pugacheva is perhaps the best known musical performer in Russia and she is considered to be the most successful Soviet and Russian performer in terms of record sales and popularity. In 1997, she represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin and finished 15th with the song Primadonna.

Her ex-husband, Filipp Kirkorov- who also represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995 with the song Kolybelnaya dlya vulkana and this year co-wrote the Belarusian entry Work Your Magic, performed by Koldun said also:"Radio is a very good direction for her," Kirkorov purred. "Everything that happens with Alla Pugachyova is successful."

source and photo:The Moscow Times