Room 101 #1 - Commercial Radio
Life's too short to get hung up on silly prejudices and irritants, but sometimes ......
I hate commercial radio with a passion, I never ever ever listen to any local or national commercial radio stations and hopefully never will do. If I want double glazing, I'll look in the Yellow Pages, thank-you very much.
It's the repetitious adverts placing 'earworms' in your head. I can still quote the phone number for 'Heatshield' windows, from the days when my cheap transistor could only pick up Radio Trent, and that was 20 odd years ago.
Radio Trent have changed their own advertising to incorporate their frequency, so they are now '96 Trent FM'. Their frequency, though, is 96.2FM, presumably the average Radio Trent listener can't be expected to remember three digits.
Virgin Radio claim to not repeat records during the day (more of that irritant in a minute). That's a great idea, so long as you then don't repeat adverts every 10 minutes, or maybe the fact that the adverts are repeated but the records aren't gives the brain more opportunity to store the chaff and discard the wheat.
So what's the alternative ?
Well, in the UK we have the good old BBC.
Radio 1 used to be my music partner of choice, but increasingly, this is on the wane. It could be an age thing, but I haven't yet moved the dial to Radio 2, or heaven forbid, Radio 4.
No, the problem is repetition. You could listen to Radio 1 from 7am to 7pm, and only hear 12 songs, all repeated show after show after show. Not too much of a problem if you happen to like these 12 songs, but sometimes they don't half play some c**p.
However, now they've lost me completely.
This week is the Brits. A bit of a music industry love-in / booze-up / back-slapping session, but also an excuse for Radio 1 to only play British music from the last 40 years. Not overly concerned about the British angle of the situation, but a chance to listen to songs from outside the strict Radio 1 play-lists. Fantastic. What happens ? Driving to work, Bittersweet Sympathy by the Verve, driving home, Bittersweet Sympathy by the Verve. Not a bad record, but even I wasn't at work long enough for Radio 1 to have played the entire back catalogue of every single British artist.
My DAB at home is tuned almost exclusively to BBC 6 music, but on the drive to and from work, my MP3 player will now be plugged into my car stereo.
So from now on, no more Radio 1. I should tell Chris Moyles, he can add it to his next jingle.
I hate commercial radio with a passion, I never ever ever listen to any local or national commercial radio stations and hopefully never will do. If I want double glazing, I'll look in the Yellow Pages, thank-you very much.
It's the repetitious adverts placing 'earworms' in your head. I can still quote the phone number for 'Heatshield' windows, from the days when my cheap transistor could only pick up Radio Trent, and that was 20 odd years ago.
Radio Trent have changed their own advertising to incorporate their frequency, so they are now '96 Trent FM'. Their frequency, though, is 96.2FM, presumably the average Radio Trent listener can't be expected to remember three digits.
Virgin Radio claim to not repeat records during the day (more of that irritant in a minute). That's a great idea, so long as you then don't repeat adverts every 10 minutes, or maybe the fact that the adverts are repeated but the records aren't gives the brain more opportunity to store the chaff and discard the wheat.
So what's the alternative ?
Well, in the UK we have the good old BBC.
Radio 1 used to be my music partner of choice, but increasingly, this is on the wane. It could be an age thing, but I haven't yet moved the dial to Radio 2, or heaven forbid, Radio 4.
No, the problem is repetition. You could listen to Radio 1 from 7am to 7pm, and only hear 12 songs, all repeated show after show after show. Not too much of a problem if you happen to like these 12 songs, but sometimes they don't half play some c**p.
However, now they've lost me completely.
This week is the Brits. A bit of a music industry love-in / booze-up / back-slapping session, but also an excuse for Radio 1 to only play British music from the last 40 years. Not overly concerned about the British angle of the situation, but a chance to listen to songs from outside the strict Radio 1 play-lists. Fantastic. What happens ? Driving to work, Bittersweet Sympathy by the Verve, driving home, Bittersweet Sympathy by the Verve. Not a bad record, but even I wasn't at work long enough for Radio 1 to have played the entire back catalogue of every single British artist.
My DAB at home is tuned almost exclusively to BBC 6 music, but on the drive to and from work, my MP3 player will now be plugged into my car stereo.
So from now on, no more Radio 1. I should tell Chris Moyles, he can add it to his next jingle.
posted by Lucky Col at
4:14 PM
1 Comments:
The OneMusic slot on R1 is at least bareable, but not much to show for an entire station. R6 however is much better. Except when it turns into Trent FM (without the ads), as it did over New Year.
By
Lisa Rullsenberg, at 2:00 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home