“People just don’t listen to the radio via their TVs!”
That’s something I’m told on a regular basis by people who really need to get out more.
Hey, I’m really sorry about this, but people are listening to the radio via their TVs. OK, maybe people don’t sit down at home in front of their TV whilst the radio is coming through it, but it’s definitely a work-place thing.
Having said that, I do know of two local ladies who listen to radio via their TVs first thing in the mid-morning after dropping the kids off at school and then getting home to clear up. So, maybe it’s not something to be ‘sat’ and listened to, just like radio via a radio isn’t, but the idea of using a telly to listen to the radio doesn’t seem so crazy to everyone.
Now then, regarding work places: My sample is of course, not scientific in any way. It’s just what I see or have seen.
Not that I really frequent cafes a lot or anything, but I know one in North Liverpool that always has Heat Radio filling the quiet from the TV up high on a wall bracket. Strangely, Heat Radio is on in the background of a Fish and Chips shop I know as well, except via a DAB radio instead of a TV. (I’m told nobody listens via DAB radio either, by the way!)
But back to the cafes, and there’s a few chosing Smooth via the TV, and one in Sefton (a Borough north of actual Liverpool) that always listens to Capital (see, I took a picture to prove it).
Interestingly of course, they are oblivious to the fact that the breakfast shows and all the traffic news are (on Capital and Smooth via the telly) London oriented and not even slightly ‘local’. Shouldn’t this fact worry somebody?
As well as the cafes, I recall the shop-bit of a petrol station near Warrington ‘listening’ to radio via the telly, Kerrang always being on at a cafe/takeaway pizza place, and 1Xtra booming out at a newsagent’s. Oh, and recently an all-night takeaway in the heart of Liverpool’s Gay Quarter was relaying Kiss.
I guess there are probably far more premises without radio via the TV than the disproportionately high number I’ve witnessed first hand. Indeed, in that respect, when radios are deployed in order to listen to a radio station, that radio station seems to be Juice FM. Juice FM isn’t on the telly. Yet. I guess that’s why the cafe in Sefton chose the inferior Capital instead.
I wonder if listening to radio via the telly is a North-Western thing, or if it is echoed around the country but just not being acknowledged by those ‘radio people’ who always know better.
England's England 