It’s Flashback Friday. Every Friday we bring back a golden oldie article from yesteryear. A chance for you to re-read it and see if it is still relevant today!
I’ve mentioned before my obsession with radio.
I split music radio into two main components, and when asked to describe it, I have said you need to think about a patchwork quilt or blanket. A patchwork blanket is made up from a collection of different chunks or bits that are carefully stitched together in order to create the single larger entity which is a, erm, blanket. Music radio should be a collection of chunks, whether those chunks are the songs, the commercials, the trailers, the news, the travel info, or whatever, they should be stitched together by the presenter into one larger entity – a radio show.
For too long now commercial radio has followed the model of removing the stitching and just laying the patches side by side. There’s no continuity, as they lay side by side with no real thought or cohesion. Indeed, the presenters speak in chunks too. They speak maybe 3 or 4 times an hour, usually to promote the breakfast show, making personality-void announcements more appropriately to if they were announcing platform alterations. So, the station has just a random collection of chunks and nothing to hold them all together.
The listener picks up on this and feels like he’s not part of anything real. True he can listen to the different chunks, but he’s got the radio on to give him something more than the chunks he could have just randomly selected on his iPod. Meanwhile, the radio station is desperately trying to be no different to his iPod.
Radio One successfully broadcasts its daytime shows as a collection of chunks beautifully stitched together by the presenter. That’s what gives it an edge. A listener feels part of something. But, why isn’t the commercial sector able to do this with its listeners?
England's England 