I’d love to start a campaign of ‘calling out’ people on the radio. Well, on music radio. You can help! (Except you won’t)
We need to call these people out for what they are, even if they are only that way because they are not allowed to be any better, controlled by the men in suits who implement rules that make no sense to any normal radio listener. We need to identify the ‘song listers’
Yeah, the ‘song listers’. ‘Song listers’ are just that. They speak to list the songs. That’s their only job.
I’m told that there are still personalities on the radio, even though there are no longer any actual ‘radio DJs’ like the legendary Tony Blackburn. But, I can’t find them, despite searching the bands and checking all the radio stations in the UK. What I keep hearing are ‘song listers’.
The ‘song listers’ speak a few times an hour (usually for a few moments before a whole load of shouty adverts play) and they list the songs that just played one after the other. They also list the songs that are going to be played.
They never interact with the songs, or have anything to do with them beyond, well, eventually ‘listing’ them.
In the olden days the man or the woman on the radio enthusiastically interacted with the songs, and interacted with the listeners. History has great radio characters who would include bits inbetween the songs in order to help the listener enjoy their listening with an added smile. Nobody is allowed to do that any more. Instead, the songs just play and then the ‘song lister’ just lists them.
So, it might be fun to start tweeting the radio stations employing ‘song listers’ every time you hear a ‘song listing’ going on. It could be a list of songs played, or a list of songs about to be played. Just shout ‘SONG LISTER’ at them. Put the radio station name, the time, and ‘SONG LISTER’.
If hundreds, then thousands, kept doing this then the radio station bosses might realise that employing ‘song listers’ is crap radio.
However, in reality, nobody’s going to bother to call out the ‘song listers’, not even me. People have been drip fed this awful practice for so long that they think it’s normal. Even those doing the ‘song listing’ think it’s perfectly normal. It has bred the apathy all round, making music radio remote and lonely compared to how it once was.
Sadly, the only thing that’ll happen next is that the ‘song listers’ will soon be instructed to not mention the songs at all. The songs will just play one after the other with no mention of what they were or what they will be. Some radio stations have started this procedure already, especially the ones that keep playing the same hundred or so songs over and over again.
But, for those who loved and remember proper music radio before ‘song listers’ we can all but live in hope for a return to proper and captivating music radio!
England's England 