The great radio implosion

I imagine there are steam engine enthusiasts who sit doughy-eyed believing that one day the steam engine will return and rule the rails.  There are definitely radio enthusiasts (‘anoraks’) who believe that radio will eventually return to a position where it rules the waves.

The ‘anorak’ definition of ‘radio’ is quite a specific one.  Just as the steam engine anorak remembers only the over-romanticised good things about steam engine travel, so too does the radio anorak.  The truth was that steam engine commuting was dirty, uncomfortable, extremely unhealthy and very slow.  That aspect is of course completely forgotten as time makes the memory rose coloured.

“Yes indeedy, I’m your hit spinning DJ of the day, all day every day”

Radio anoraks remember a time when their only access to music was via a radio DJ (who they believed was their friend) played it to them.  There was no internet, no mp3 player, no real choice.  The lack of choice in radio meant that almost everybody would be tuned to the same radio station hanging on and patiently waiting for the moment that part of the output appeared to be in tune with them.  It also meant that the presentation and the selection of records played could be awful, but the listeners had nowhere else to go.

It was in this way that radio ruled.  Everybody heard what the DJ said, and everybody heard the records he played.  Because there was nowhere else, the DJ became a hero, a life-saver, the only person bringing the music to starved ears.

But, things changed.  Today, access to music can be via any number of platforms, with radio being only one of many options.  Today, consumers no longer have to wait through the rubbish, they can skip to something they want to hear.  Listeners are no longer at the mercy of the radio.  With multiple radio stations available, the split second something comes on they don’t want to hear, zap, they’ve pressed the button and zoomed off to a different radio station.  More and more they zap off to their own mp3 player.  They are in control.

Radios rather blinkered response to this is to try to emulate an mp3 player.  Songs will play back to back, DJs will say next to nothing, almost apologising for existing, and anything that might give ‘radio’ a charm over the mp3 player is removed.

Radio doesn’t offer a skip or fast forward function, so it can never win against the mp3 player.  Yet, it still tries. I’ve never understood why.

“All your favourites, honest, please don’t tune away”

As commercial radio started to become more irrelevant, so too it became necessary for it to implode. What were once thriving local commercial radio stations, with one transmitter associated with one set of local studios, marketing department, advertising department, engineering, etc., all disappeared.  The country was left with a collection of radio transmitters all re-broadcasting the same programme from a centralised studio hundreds of miles away.  Local commercial radio, indeed regional commercial radio, died.

Strangely, as the ‘heritage’ radio stations died, there slowly developed a new tier of radio stations filling the gap.  In most ways their output was identical to how the now imploded radio stations had once sounded, the only different was the word ‘community’ replacing the word ‘local’.

Unfairly, these ‘community’ radio stations didn’t operate as simple commercial concerns as the previous tier had been forced to.  By absorbing numerous grants and local money alongside commercial advertising revenue they were able to survive.  Survive for what purpose I’m not too sure.  As was to be expected, nobody really listened to them either.  This fact didn’t really matter as they were ‘guaranteed’ their income regardless of what level of consumers they delivered to their advertisers.

I was always disappointed with what happened, and how the words ‘community radio’ became so abandoned in true meaning.  The idea that ‘community radio’ is just bunches of wannabie DJs playing songs like any other mp3 player might disgusts me.  The potential for ‘community radio’ is enormous.  To my mind, it should be providing seriously local content beyond local people sitting in a studio pressing a ‘Next’ button on a music computer.

There are so many ways that community interest could be generated in listening to radio again.  People would listen to radio for the first time in years if the programming truly was community based and brought them something they couldn’t find on their mp3 player.

However, because of the lack of direction within Ofcom and ‘community radio’ being seen as a cheap way of allowing newcomers to imitate the larger commercial radio stations, we ended up with exactly what we had before.  No going forward and giving radio a new sense of purpose, a new anger, a new place in society as it tries to live together, just radio standing still and leaving things as they are and slowly disappearing all over again once the grants have dried up.  And that’s what’s happening right now.

Shame.