The very first edition of 3FM Serious Request was in 2004. Radio DJ's Giel Beelen, Wouter van der Goes and Claudia de Breij locked themselves for a week into a glass studio, which was built on the city square Neude in Utrecht, the Netherlands. During that week they did not eat and played requested records . After making a donation to the cause of the fundraiser, everyone could request a track to be played on the Netherlands biggest radio station 3FM. Hence the name, "Serious Request".
In 2004 the slogan was "Jouw druppel op een gloeiende plaat", which could be translated as: "every little bit helps", but please feel free to improve this translation in the comments, since I'm really having trouble translating these Dutch idioms... The cause for the fundraiser was the situation of the refugees from the war in Darfur, Sudan, where almost 3 million people lost their home fleeing from the horrible violence that occured in the conflict in the region.
The total amount that was funded in 2004 was: € 915.955,-, which was really unbelievable at the time. Almost 1 million euro's! I don't think anyone expected that to happen, since after the first day there had been about € 40.000,- euro's in donations and even that was a lot more than expected.
During the week, since everyone can make a request for the DJ's to play a track, sometimes a track really get's requested very often and it becomes the 'Serious Request Anthem'. Whenever I hear this track, I still think of SR2004, the first edition:
As you can clearly see, after a week of being locked up, without eating anything, things can get quite emotional:
Do you want a taste of how it really was? Here's a clip from youtube with some actual footage:
I dedicate all my SBD from August to December 2017 to 3FM Serious Request, see https://steemit.com/sr2017/@fuzztone/announcement-3fm-serious-request-2017