I have been blogging since before the word blogging was invented. Before Google was around, before Facebook, before Youtube, before Myspace, yes, I was blogging. Nothing ever disappears from the internet, and so I was recently able to look back at some of the things I blogged around this time of the year, 15 years ago, back in 1997.
How about five more nuggets:
Anna Raeburn:
Not here, but elsewhere I predicted that Anna Raeburn’s move from Talk Radio (a UK national station) to 963 Liberty (a newish London station) would be a wrong ‘un.
For decades she has hosted a personal, sexual, and emotional problems phone-in show. This was probably at its height on Capital Radio (London) in the 1970s. Every Wednesday evening, queues of guys with pretend problems would fight to get to air to describe anything that would allow them to say the word “penis” on the radio without being cut off. They would be taken seriously be Anna, who would offer unfaltering advice. Compulsive listening.
More recently Anna popped up hosting her show over lunch-times on Talk Radio. Being a national station, this still managed to pull a huge quantity of callers describing the most horrific problems for the country’s voyeurs to laugh or cry about.
Then, at the end of last year, the lure of large quantities of cash took her from a national audience to a limited London one on the new 963 Liberty. They gave her 2pm to 4pm. This was pretty bad scheduling for something that should be either no later than lunch-time, or reserved for evenings. (Why doesn’t anyone ever consult me before they make such terrible scheduling mistakes? You have to know what audience is available before putting your programmes together, y’know!) After many painful weeks of her menuing and menuing (the bit normally at the beginning of a programme setting the scene, and inviting calls), reading out pretend (or otherwise) letters as tasters, and hardly taking a single real call, they introduced records to the show.
Still nobody called inbetween the records. Guests with specialist medical or other problem knowledge came and went. Nobody wanted to call and talk to them either, despite Anna’s pleas.
Now, sadly, the programme seems to have taken a turn for the worst with guests coming on to talk about what’s on at the cinema and theatre, and other such boring trivia. Anna is not the best or most experienced person to be hosting this kind of format, so it still bombs. What next for Anna? Maybe Talk Radio would have her back. She is most suited for that lunchtime slot on Talk Radio now occupied by the ever so wet and dreary Lorraine Kelly. Or, 963 Liberty could put her on in the early evenings, and let her rebuild the original audience lost when she left Capital all those years ago.
Virgin On The Ridiculous:
So, there’s this record that’s gone as high as it’s going to go in the charts and is heading back down. It’s by The Eels. They actually played it on the UK national radio station Virgin Radio this week. I was shocked!
Admittedly, it was after yet another boring segue (playing back to back) of old records. Why is our only national commercial station that can play “pop” music stuck in such a boring time warp and presentation rut? Graham Deane was the guy on the air.
The station goes out on AM throughout the UK and on FM in London. They try to personalise the service in London by doing the craziest things – one old fogey record they churned out the other day was introduced by the deejay saying something like, “Hey, it’s a sunny day in London town, and here on Virgin 105.8 we’re playing ..bla bla..”. Meanwhile a totally different, but equally staid and tedious “link” went out throughout the UK on the AM network. I guess they do so many of these an hour to make out that the London FM service is different to the national service.
Bit boring and unspontaneous having to pre-record two versions of your link into a record. I accept that jingles, commercials, gig guides, travel, and news reads need to be different on the London service to what is heard on the AM service. Fair enough. They are all pre-recorded onto the hard disc and stretched to fit so that the two services can join-up together in time for the deejay to play the next record on his unimaginative rotation list. But, isn’t the obligatory personalised link just a bit too vomit-worthy? Mind you, since the presentation style on Virgin is so safe and akin to wallpaper, I’d guess none of the old fogeys listening would notice!
Anyway, I was going on about The Eels, wasn’t I. Now, remembering that the record has been around for so long that it is already on its way back down the charts, the Virgin deejay introduced it by badly reading from his notes that the group was a brand new 3 piece from the States, and by playing it Virgin was demonstrating its commitment to new music. He also managed to crash the vocals (still talking when the singing has started). At the end of the record he read more or less the same uninformed notes, slipped in a station positioning phrase from a cue-card, and then segued another two or three unadventurous oldies. Sigh.
Why isn’t there any commercial radio competition to BBC Radio One in the UK?
Chris Moyles:
Must say a word or two about Chris Moyles’ Late Bit on Capital 95.8 FM in London. He seems to be there 10pm thru 2am Friday and Saturday nights. Whilst he mainly keeps the music coming, he plays out different sets of near-live callers trying desperately to talk to him about things inane and stupid as only the thick and typical listener can. His quick wit and side-splittingly funny put-down comments make complete and utter fools of these no-brain callers.
Usually they are the type of people who are always so preoccupied with themselves that they have absolutely no idea they are merely fodder for this master of the sharp tongue. They see their involvement in the phone call as being perfectly normal, maybe thinking the guy seems to be saying slightly odd things, but what he is actually saying nearly always goes straight over their head. They always come back for more.
A growing cult audience of those who do actually get what’s going on are now tuning in every weekend. It is another example of how “pop” music radio should be – a mixture of up tempo chart stuff and a fast speaking witty deejay. That is something started by Wolfman Jack in the States nearly 50 years ago, and sadly forgotten by the accountants and blanderisers currently strangling radio development in this country. It is something that cannot be pre-programmed onto a playlisting computer. It is something that holds the listeners’ interest. Well done to Capital for leading the way in breaking the mould.
We need more like Chris Moyles on the air to help bring the edge back that brings the listeners back to commercial radio in the UK. There are plenty out there. When are the radio stations going to start employing them?
Radio One *IS* Wonderful:
I have to congratulate the people behind Radio 1 for Radio 1, the UK’s non-commercial national music network from the BBC. Looking at weekdays, the entire package actually feels like an exciting, modern and vibrant young radio station should. I know you’re waiting for a “but”, but I’m serious.
Presentation is interesting. Although there are a few individuals I do not personally warm to as much as others, the style gives the listener the feeling that he’s not alone listening to some automated juke-box, one of the biggest causes of switch-off in the commercial sector. The humour of Nicky Campbell and Kevin Greening is superb in the afternoon and early evening. The more specialist programmes in the evening are warm and friendly. Mary Anne Hobbs has got to have the best weekday evening show in the world, both in presentation and content. That’s the show I’d highly recommend for weekday evening listening 10-30pm thru 1-00am.
Musically the station has got it right for the moment. The emphasis is on new music, not trawling through old songs from old hereos. I did feel for a while that there was a slight preoccupation with the post-punk Indie era, and the Brit-pop bands that were ripping off the music of the 1960s, but that has now gone. The mix of standard Spice Girl/Boyzone style “pop” alongside the more adventurous things from Cake or the Chemical Brothers is excellent for general format programmes. Most music is drawn from the extensive home market, and they don’t dwell on old stuff or the latest from old fogeys like Phil Collins best suited to the more mature audience of Radio 2. Unlike commercial radio stations, Simply Red are not every third record on the playlist.
I enjoy listening to the Evening Session 6-30pm thru 8-30pm which is on at the right time for that type of format and able to capture a real music loving audience, successfully reflecting the lifestyle and cultural interests they have. I personally have a problem listening to the specialist stuff on Andy Kershaw and John Peel’s 8-30pm thru 10-30pm programmes, but it should be there, and 2 hours of super-specialist stuff is about right for championing the brand new. I can suffer it waiting for that lovely Mary Anne Hobbs. Yum Yum.
Finally, isn’t it nice to hear jingles that don’t mainly consist of American accented voiceover artists telling me that I’m listening to the better whatever. The jingles are exciting, quite unobtrusive, relevant and current. I especially like the ones that slowly slip from a female to male (or male to female) voice during their two seconds or so.
If I have Radio 1 on during the day for a week, then tune to almost any commercial station for a while, I immediately feel like I’ve stepped back in time, and have to retune back. Radio 1 will have to move on to deal with the needs of the new youth cultures and tomorrow’s people. It would be wrong to be sounding exactly like it does now in another 5 years, it must keep re-positioning itself for the youth it is mandated to serve. If they can do that, then they will always be number one.
It’s Pooh, It’s Heart 1-0-6 point 2:
The other day I was forced to listen to the London station that mainly plays old fogey music aimed at women. I don’t think it set out to be like that, but women do prefer melodic songs, or anything lyrical, so the Heart 106.2 format is mainly going to please women.
Heart suffers from the usual bad programming policy of a highly formatted unnatural presentation sound, full of funny rules where records are played two or three in a row, interrupted only by an annoying jingle shouting one of the three different station positioning slogans, usually including some bizarre statement about the music coming “non-stop and with no interruptions, being a better music mix”. Eh? No interruptions? What was the damn jingle then?
Disc Jockeys are not allowed to announce what has been, and are never allowed to say goodbye at the end of their air shift. Every 20 minutes the disc jockey is allowed to gabble on for a bit reading from a “script”, then he plays commercials, someone reads the news, travel, and weather, then it’s more commercials and finally back to the music. On one occasion I counted just under 8 minutes before the next record was underway. If the deejay does speak outside of these assigned blocks, he has to be very accurate and stop talking just as the vocals start on the next song. They are so paranoid about stopping short, I can only guess it must be an instant dismissal offence. Likewise if he doesn’t begin and end his link with the name of the station, and read one of the positioning statements, I think they pull his teeth out.
The most insulting thing is the American accent on all the jingles that shout at you to make you believe how much you are enjoying the special things they are doing for you (whatever they are). It’s insulting that here in the UK’s capital city we have to have jingles from an American, rather than a slick sounding English accent (as used by Capital Radio or Radio 1, for example). I’m sure there are no stations in Washington or New York with English accented jingles, so why should an American voice be heard over here?
Audience research always tells us that people tend to listen to one radio station for about 20 minutes. I can only assume that Heart makes people switch off by starving them of music every 20 minutes. Who in their right mind designs a music radio station to have near-non-stop music followed by huge gaps of 8 minutes of no music? Surely if an hour sweep was looked at properly, and reprogrammed so that there were more or less equal gaps between the records, with all the contents of the 8 minute lumps evenly distributed, people would hang on for longer. They’d be “never more than 90 seconds from music”, rather than being invited to button push to another station every 20 minutes.
The saddest thing of all is that with the limited number of frequencies available in London, no-one seems to want to try anything interesting to build new surprise audiences. They just want to be boring old wallpaper chosen by someone with bad taste.
England's England 