What’s going on at Radio 1?
Either there is some obscure mental condition affecting those in control or it’s really really really time to cull the old people again. They did it once before in the early 90s when they repositioned Radio 1 back to being for da yoof instead of the older listeners it had accidentally drifted into serving.
Well, once again Radio 1 is doing that odd thing of playing less and less new and current music and more and more oldies. The most obscure example of all this is that during the chart show on a Sunday evening we have to take a break from the run down of what’s current and, er, in the charts, to play a 10 minute bunch of oldies. What the fuck is that about?
Before they culled it, the same thing used to happen on ‘Top of the Pops’ on TV. The latest, er, ‘top of the pops’ kept getting interrupted by the random and unexplained showing of 20 to 30 year old videos of songs from a long time ago. Why?
Oh how da yoof would have thought it most strange if in 1967 Top of the Pops included old recordings of Vera Lynn in the middle of a show supposedly highlighting the current top of the pops.
I’m sure if Sunday night’s Alan Freeman chart rundown on Radios 1 and 2, alright, had not played the current pop run down but dropped songs in favour of spending 10 minutes in the company of Gracie Fields, people would have thought it most odd. As odd as a TV news programme randomly including a pop video rather than a news package, or indeed playing a bit of news from many years before.
The oldies on Top of the Pops and on Radio 1’s chart show were the beginning. Slowly oldies have crept into dominating the weekends, and are now peppering all of the weekday mainstream programming. Why?
I don’t mind the odd oldie, pathologically hate most of them, but shouldn’t I be tuning to an old people’s station to hear them, not Radio 1 which is supposed to be playing new music and talking to da yoof.
How long have the people running Radio 1 been there? They must be very old by now. Time to cull the old people running the station, methinks, and get young blood back in control.
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