Too many foreigners with opinions on our media!

So, we just had announced the latest RAJAR figures. RAJAR is the body that gives little paper diaries to random people that are demographically all the same. For a week or two, the recipient has to tick boxes to record what radio station they listened to and for how long. These are collected up, results are fed into a computer, and then the total figures are massaged and mangled up with various weightings and formulae and extrapolated out to represent the entire country of radio listeners.

Yeah, it’s a crap old fashioned system which worked best when all radios sounded the same, but it’s all we’ve got.

The latest figures were released, and so naturally every single radio station’s owner went on record saying how wonderful the figures were, even when they weren’t, and how their brands were on track to take over the planet. Or some such bullshit.

Watching the various conversations on Facebork and other social meeja, I was intrigued that a huge number of opinions were being expressed by people who don’t even live here.

What is it with interfering ex-pats and their constant interest in our media? It’s not for them. It’s for us. British radio is broadcasting to and for those who live in Britain. It’s not broadcasting for those who have made a life choice to settle in a completely different country. Our media has nothing to do with them!

How dare these foreigners speak about our broadcasters. How can they possibly have anything relevant to say? They don’t live here. If they are consuming our media in their home countries, then none of the advertising is relevant to them, none of what is being spoken about is relevant to them. Even the music being played is skewed to British people living in Britain, not people living in foreign lands.

So, why are these interfering outsiders listening to our radio stations when they should be listening to radio stations in their home country?

Is it because they can’t let go? Or is it because they are out of touch busy-bodies with out of touch ideas who hate the country they’ve chosen to live in and so feel the need to meddle in ours?

It would be really interesting to know. But far more interesting if these foreigners just butted out of our affairs.