We’re so spoilt for choice these days. If we can’t find what we want on the FM dial, we can go to our iPods and mobile devices, SKY Radio Channels, Web Radio etc. Personal media devices open up a wider choice of music and programmes for us. By listening to commercial radio we’re forced to endure the same music play lists over and over just in a different order, which is apparently “More music variety”.
It is easy to program that sort of output though – you just push the ‘Schedule’ button, then when someone changes one of the songs during their show you get indignant and shout about how a lot of time and effort goes into it – you big fake, what are you like? Commercial radio is technically “Spam” and this spam is delivered to your ears. If you’ve ever watched the Monty Python sketch Spam Café you will know what I mean. It’s not variety if on Monday you have Pie, Chips and Peas and then on Tuesday have Peas, Pie and Chips. It’s the same content just in a different order. With this in mind; and also that I’ve discussed technology already; we’re now going to look at human nature and the listening behaviour associated in this time of growth.
If we wobble ourselves in a comical time travel style back to the 40s we see the entire family gathered round the huge art deco style radio set listening to it, much like today as we gather round the TV open mouthed and eyes watering. On the radio that clipped BBC accent would delight for hours about rickets and buzz bombs.
Even into the 50s we still largely focused on the radio as a means of entertainment as TVs where still quite sparse, programmes still came from Crystal Palace featuring a bloke dancing or warbling woman singing and the X-Factor was still half a century away.
In the 60s when the pirate stations were in full throw youths would go to bed with a transistor radio and a torch under the sheets so they could tune in to Radio Luxembourg. Their parents wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing themselves, but then they had huge bakelite sets. Technology made it accessible to hide in bed with a radio set. Listening behaviour was beginning to change - and with it so was radio’s audience. The clipped accent of auntie was being over thrown by a mid Atlantic voiced coup d’etat. Tony Blackburne launched Radio 1 and Jimmy Saville along with Alan Freeman would soon follow.
In the 80s BBC Radio 1 was the station of youth. It still is today, but most of the listeners from my day have migrated to BBC Radio 2. Not because Steve Wright moved there or because of what happened in the early 90s with Matthew Banister and Trevor Dann. It is because of the music. Radio 2 today plays the same music that Radio 1 did in the 90s. Believe it or not in the 90s Radio 2 was playing music you listened to in the 70s on Radio 1. Funnily enough recently I was listening to Radio 1 one afternoon and the presenter, I forget their name, was running a feature where you have something like 10 seconds to text in the name of a song you want to hear. He then spent the next 5 minutes searching on the Radio 1 play out system for the top three songs that they didn’t have.
To be continued…..
The History of Radio: part 15
by Chris Oakley
chris.oakley@coldcommunications.com