Are you all ready for single channel radio?

['LIVEWIRE?']

Over the years, as most people will know, some great stations with varied outputs have been lost, among them, BRMB , Saga, Severn Sound and Brunel Radio. These all used to broadcast a wide variety of music and features, including much of interest to older listeners, but I guess Paul has hit the nail on the head about the advertisers target audience being mainly young women. Another point is that few people listen to the radio any more, they simply hear it, often as background accompaniment to whatever they're doing.

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

Advertisers are primarily interested in reaching females in the 16-30 age group

I doubt many of them are listening to Classic FM.

The older generation buy goods and services and respond to advertising - in fact they frequently have far more disposable income - but it is a different market and not as trendy and fad-driven.

Commercial radio stations chase the Radio 1 and Radio 2 audiences because these are the stations with the most listeners and the programming for these audiences is cheaper to produce.

The BBC has a particular responsibility here, but they argue that the over 40s are being served by BBC local radio.

The BBC are pushing local radio 'younger' too.

It is my guess that the BBC feel they need fight off the pseudo-national commercials to keep up their listening figures and thus justify the licence fee.

[paulsherwin]

Classic FM is highly constrained by the regulator. They boxed themselves into a corner with the original 'classical' pitch - I don't doubt that they would prefer to relaunch as a chart/AOR station given half a chance. CFM shows what can be done if the regulator doesn't just roll over though.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

Over 40 here. Nope. The pirates are doing a better job of local radio here in London

And the ones in Bristol/Swindon are offering me some interesting 'short-haul DX' challenges, of the "this is S9++ on the car-radio at Membury; will I still be able to hear it on the big radio and antenna when I get home?" kind.

[Radio Wrangler]

So the independent local stations are being subsumed into default national networks produced in London and a playlist of only a few dozen tracks. The BBC have changed their age profile and left a lot of their listeners behind with nothing left worth listening to.

It sounds like the pirates are once again the saviours of the airwaves! Caroline needs the full power of Orford Ness.

David

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

Classic FM is highly constrained by the regulator. They boxed themselves into a corner with the original 'classical' pitch - I don't doubt that they would prefer to relaunch as a chart/AOR station given half a chance. CFM shows what can be done if the regulator doesn't just roll over though.

Indeed.

And CFM has 5 million listeners and has been going nearly 27 years. I don't think anyone would have predicted that.

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

It sounds like the pirates are once again the saviours of the airwaves! Caroline needs the full power of Orford Ness.

"Generation ignored by the BBC tunes to Radio Caroline"

Oh the irony! History repeats itself and I was there.

A dedicated Caroline listener in the 1960s, the Carolines are the only 'pop' stations I listen to regularly these days.

[evingar]

Over 50s refugee from the "Smashy and Nicey" era radio 1 (247 meters etc) here.

I dropped R1 like a stone when they shifted towards the "teeny boppers" I have toyed with R2 - some of the night time offerings are OK - I quite like Lisa Tarbuck and Paul O'Grady but it's now pretty dire during the day especially now Simon Mayo has slung his hook.

Local radio doesn't do a lot for me and the oldie stations seems to stick to well worn standards and the repetitive ads boil your brain after a while. I stick a USB stick into the car and go my own way these days, which is where I do most of my daytime listening

[Sideband]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

It sounds like the pirates are once again the saviours of the airwaves! Caroline needs the full power of Orford Ness.

No longer a pirate but here in the London area is legendary Radio Jackie that was a very popular MW pirate of the late 60's right through to the late 80's I think. Local news around the Surrey area lots of charity work until they were fined out of existence when one of the newly franchised commercial stations decided that they (Radio Jackie) were stealing their target audience and affecting their advertising. Eventually the management of defunct Radio Jackie made a bid for an ailing local station who's licence was up for grabs and won the bid.

The result?....a lively and refreshing sound right at the end of the FM dial on 107.8 with a very good mix of music spanning 60's through to modern, local news and information in and around the Surrey area particularly useful when driving home and their local traffic reports are often covering roads that I actually use. Their advertising is for local companies and they don't seem to have a fixed playlist of a couple of dozen records.....

I too have stopped listening (mostly) to R2 which was my preferred station. The only exception is Saturday mornings when I tune in to Sounds of the 60's although this has now been moved forward to 6am - 8am which is less convenient than the original 8 - 10am slot.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

And CFM has 5 million listeners and has been going nearly 27 years. I don't think anyone would have predicted that.

Indeed.

Though many music-purists complain about CFM's "top-300" playlist [and the recurrent ads: trust me, you will never see me in a Honda Jazz unless I'm thoroughly dead-and-cremated] they _do_ occasionally have some good stuff at weekends - their "High Score" games-music program with Jessica Curry [who's won a BAFTA for her efforts] is really appreciated by us middle-aged gamer-types. You'd never get such avant-garde stuff on Beeb3!

[trsomian]

From my limited listening to local radio I can't think it will make much difference, most of the time they have inane speech and music from pretty much the same play lists already

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

You'd never get such avant-garde stuff on Beeb3!

Well you'd be surprised what crops up on Late Junction but having said that I would prefer radio to be complementary rather than a competition. If Classic FM devotes time to an area R3 doesn't then that's fine and it's genuine choice for the listener. I listen a fair amount to both stations. My default is R3 as it broadcasts live concerts, plays more complete symphonies, etc., and the programmes like breakfast and morning, although they play movements, go more off the beaten track than CFM. However, some of the discussion programmes go right over the head of a simple bloke like me but I am pleased that they are there because they will be stimulating for some listeners. At this point I will disappear elsewhere. There is an overlap between CFM and R3 but they do serve different audiences and this is how it should be. It will be interesting to see what impact Bauer's Scala Radio which starts on Monday has in this area.

I do not expect expect to hear the same sort of programme content with the same sort of presentation 24/7, though it's clear many of today's listening population do. That is my problem with Smooths and the Magics and indeed many of the previous but more recent local commercial stations. I packed in Radio 1 except for selected evening shows during the teeny-weeny-bopper Bay City Rollers era. I listened to the local commercials but once away from home in an area with no ILR my default became Radio 2 supplemented by Caroline and AFN at night. I liked the variety of programmes on Radio 2 and though some were a turn-off for me I got introduced to jazz and folk and country and brass bands and I preferred the more grown up presentation and discussions over the vacuous banality of Smashy and Nicey. I wasn't afraid to turn the dial or if there was nothing on then I played a record!

The problem with advertising is rather like much of the content of commercial stations: repetitive. What advertisers don't understand - or rather their agencies who ought to know better - is that saturation advertising has the power to alienate the potential customer, as proven above re the Honda Jazz. My current irritation is the pseudo-four minute warning ad for a Vauxhall car; and that LV Insurance ad with the screaming banshee rock band has reappeared on Classic FM. Utterly out of place. You'd think the ad agency would have the gumption to produce an ad more suitable to the style of the media booked - this is how it used to be. Sorry LV, I've just renewed my car insurance and it wasn't with you. There have been times when an ad, played every other break, has irritated me so much that I have elected to stay away from Classic FM for a week or two until the campaign was over. A case of ad nauseam one might say?

[RobRusbridge]

Once a month I do a job which entails working on a computer all day from 9am to 10pm, and the highlight of that day is at 5pm when they turn off Heart, which will by then have been drivelling along all day. The catch is that the hall involved has poor radio reception, and either one of two Hearts may be tuned in. I've never found it possible to tell which one we've got without referring to the tuning dial on the radio. The loss of the local content is only really going to be noticed by the hundreds of presenters who lose their jobs, and the many thousands of students coming out with "media" qualifications and no hope of a job in even the most mediocre local radio.

Perhaps I'm not the right one to comment. I'm all over the place for radio station demographics. When I was at school (aged 13) I used to get out of bed bright and early to fire up my 1950 Pye valve radio and listen to Ray Moore on Radio 2 (433 metres Medium Wave). As he would hand over to Wogan, I would reflect that one day I'd look back on this golden era of broadcasting and be glad I listened to it. I was right. On the other hand, I don't miss Manuel and the Music of the Mountains. Radio 2 has wandered into the wilderness before (remember Derek Jameson in the morning and David Jacobs at lunch?) and it's always proven to be reasonably cyclical. If you think the Cox and Ball era is a load of old BallCox something might turn up. The cycles are to do with the way it's run. It's extremely badly run at the moment. Simon Mayo was set up to lose, and he did, so he left. Why? Because the boss had a bee in the bonnet about needing more women presenting daytime shows but no vacant daytime shows for them to present. A little more patience would have seen Chris Evans bog off and solve the problem without the need for cloak and dagger stuff. Next week will bring new priorities and they'll be squeezing someone else out in favour of someone more racially or culturally diverse. Soon there won't be any old white guys left in the media and Alan Partridge will be ready and able to resuscitate his career. Oh, wait, too late...

[Refugee]

I agree about the repetitive adverts.
The phrase "Nescafee fatigue" comes to mind.
A few years ago you could change the adverts by tuning to another local station.
The playlist was always the same.

[dglcomp]

We're sort of lucky here in Dorset that as well as a few community radio stations (although not my cup of tea) we do have a proper local radio station Wessex FM, yes it's owned by a larger group but 100% of it's output is made at their studios in Dorchester.

And yes I remember stations like 2CR, Orchard, Galaxy, IVEL/Vale/Midwest, and Palm 105.5, but sadly all gone and consumed into networked radio stations that are a shadow of their former self.

[Radio Wrangler]

I find saturation advertising a big big biig turnoff. It makes the firms involved sound desperate. The inevitable shouty voice makes then seem more desperate still, and their insistence on higher level modulation than the surrounding programme material completes the job of making me think they're trying to fight off going bust.

My real hate is grammerly. Are they paying for Youtube in its entirety? I don't need it. I 'got an education' which included English lessons. I don't want straitjacketed prose with my name attached to it. In every copy of the ARRL handbook sold from 1995 onwards there's about a novel's-worth of my words, so I must be doing well in the published non-fiction total wordcount stakes.

Perhaps, for a bit of fun, we ought to campaign that the MANAGEMENT of the BBC ought to reflect the minority status of its presenters?

Sauce for the goose........

David

[Scimitar]

I sorted all these issues a year ago...

R2 for Sounds of the Sixties and Sounds of the Seventies, sometimes Paul O'Grady. The rest of the time it is Solid Gold Gem AM. No adverts, sensible, grown up presenters and an enormous playlist selected by the presenter.

Radio 2 lost me weekdays when Wogan was replaced by the Ginger Whinger. Sundays I used to listen all day, then we got Elaine Paige, that delightful creature who savaged Susan Boyle and cackles throughout the program.

[mark2collection]

I'm glad it's not just me who's noticed the shouting presenters, adverts telling me 'what I think', & a playlist of seemingly only 6 tracks, repeated (sometimes) at random every 12 minutes.

Retuning to a different frequency/multiplex being of no real improvement these days. Add into the equation monologues initiated by 'So' or 'Like' and off the set goes.

My own music collection has seen a recent revival/airing through my vintage sets.

No talking over the first & last 45 seconds of a track, no adverts and certainly no shouting.

Though I must confess, when hearing an advert about a product, and the huuuuuge savings of 'X' amount in discount for a limited period, I often chuckle at the humongous savings I've just made, by not actually buying the product in the first place!

Parts of the web are now wearing thin for me too, constant nags about privacy etc, but there we are.

Mark

[bigtoe19]

A classic example of the tail wagging the dog I think!

[SteveCG]

Re post no. 32.

I agree about BBC R3's 'Late Junction'. Indeed, for even more wackier stuff, 'Hear and Now' will rearrange your brain...

But there again, tastes in music are as varied as the numbers of listeners, which is why the rush for 'more stations playing less variety' is somewhat puzzling. I suspect running costs determine all.