So Keith Richards has saved 'oldies' station Angel Radio from going to the wall. Meanwhile, Ronnie Wood is the saviour of Absolute Radio with his new show that is raking in record listeners. Bob Dylan's on Radio 2 - what next, Weird Al Yankovich's all-hit breakfast show on Radio Lollipop?!
Seriously though, it's great that our elderly statesmen of rock are taking to the airwaves - well, I suppose if your new album's no longer deemed worthy of airplay on our national stations, why not take over a show, so you can play whatever you want?
But I'd like to see a bit of a shake-up in the way the music we hear on our national stations is chosen. I'm specifically thinking about Radio 1 here.
Radio 2 is a brilliant station these days with an eclectic playlist, whose transformation was masterminded by former controller Lesley Douglas and continues to develop through inventive programming, excellent documentaries and superb live sessions and shows.
Other national stations, Magic, Heart and the bigger commercial stations are followers rather than leaders when it comes to choosing the music they play.
Radio 1 however seems to have got caught in a self-obsessive spiral in much the same way as it did in the 90s, when its output turned the station into a pirate radio-sounding wind tunnel of repetitive and faceless dance music that was almost unlistenable (and I say that as fan of the genre, having grown up with house music as my teenage soundtrack).
Radio 1 has once again become too cool for school and ghettoized, caught in a rut where the playlist is dominated by same-sounding dubstep pop, which barring one or two exceptions such as the superb Chase & Status and Nero, is back to its mid-nineties low point.
What I think we need are more representative and varied playlists at radio, where there's a chance for all of these genres to shine and share the airwaves. As it stands at Radio 1 - or so I'm informed by the leading radio pluggers in the industry - everything has to be championed by a tastemaker or come from a particular scene (currently dubstep) to stand a chance of airplay support.
Consequently, daytime output is deluged with one generic sound and all the other genres are locked out until a chink in the armour appears wide enough for a band (or a singer or a duo etc) who've mustered enough support to break through.
For the last two years the talk in the industry has been about how things are going to shift back towards guitar bands. But so far, this has not materialised, because labels can't get the support from producers because all they want to play is dubstep because they think that's what the kids want and are listening to.
If they only went out to gigs and festivals as much as I do and saw the range of acts and types of music that young 16-24 year olds are really into, then our national airwaves would sound drastically different. Young people out there love folk, they love acoustic singer-songwriters, they love reggae, pop, guitar bands, female singers, duos, boy bands and girl bands and they love them all the time.
What do you think happens to all the fans of guitar bands or singer songwriters or soul singers when that genre of music isn't given national airplay, during times of mono-sonic doldrums? They don't just cease to exist. They're still out there, but they don't have any exposure to the acts that satisfy their tastes, which is a massive missed opportunity for radio stations eager to improve their reach.
You may argue that that's where 6 Music shines, but I think that all radio stations should have open minds rather than limited focus. BBC's Introducing is an excellent and well-executed conduit for music, but in this digital age where it could be easier to make and distribute music, the problem is still exposure.
One ray of light nationally is the superb Amazing Radio, which is innovatively taking the BBC's Introducing format one step further and featuring music from their amazingtunes.com site. Fans choosing the music effectively, moderated by a team of established music industry presenters such as the effervescent Gill Mills, with her new music show and Jim Gellately up in Scotland, as well as the Guardian's music man Paul Lester.
Another excellent platform that has emerged is the British Council's Selector Radio show. Recently nominated for a BT Digital Music Award for Best Show and fronted by Goldierocks, the show promotes British music globally.
The show currently goes out on FM in more than 30 countries worldwide to an audience of more than three million. Bands such as Dinosaur Pile Up and artist Jamie Woon, whose music has been played on the non-playlist constrained show, have found new audiences in countries as far apart as Mexico and Kazakhstan.
Dinosaur Pile Up received so much interest in Mexico City that they ended up going out there and playing to a sell out crowd of more than 3,000 people in a country they'd never previously been to.
We need more platforms like this. Open minded, anything-goes radio for all.
Follow Paul Carey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/themusicmanage
Paul Carey: What Happened to the Sound of 2011?
1) It's simply not true that Radio 2 has an eclectic playlist. For instance, you'd be hard done by to hear heavy metal or hip hop / gansta rap on Radio 2, both genres are at least 20 years old as well, so it has nothing to do with the age of the music.
2) Radio 1 isn't dubstep centric at all. I regularly listen to Zane Lowe, and recently he's been championing Ed Sheeran, he's been talking up the return of Foo Fighters, RHCP and Blink 182. Y you're as likely to hear Radiohead, Metallica or A Tribe Called Quest during his 'versus' sessions as well.
I've been listening to Radio 1 for years, and it's a lot healthier at the moment then it was at the height of indie.
I think the problem with the idea of guitar music making a return is that the industry championed guitar bands, such as Teh Vaccines and Brother, are pretty unoriginal and sound like the indie landfill types we've been putting up with for ages.
Grant Goddard
http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/
I'm just curious to know why, especially when it's such a stark contrast to listener supported non-commercial radio in the US.
It sounds similar to the moribund condition of commercial FM radio in the US, but not the listener supported part of the industry.
Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, the UK media regulator, announced on 6 July 2011 that it would pursue a policy for FM radio that "offered a solution that could safeguard the interests of the [existing] radio industry by making it less likely that [FM] was backfilled with new commercial and pirate radio stations."
This statement merely solidified Ofcom's existing unwritten policy for radio under which: concentration of ownership has increased markedly, radio station formats have been allowed to
converge, new entrants have been discouraged and consumer choice has been narrowed.
Instead, Ofcom has licensed several hundred tiny community radio stations whose legislative framework is so interventionist that many stations have already gone out of business due to their complete dependence upon public funding. These stations had only been licensed because they pose absolutely no threat to the existing BBC/commercial radio infrastructure in terms of either audiences or revenues.
In essence, the existing BBC/commercial radio system is being preserved in aspic. Why? Because the station owners like nothing better than knowing they will have no new competitors. And our regulator and legislators have allowed that wish to be realised, against the best interests of UK consumers/listeners.
Yours,
Grant Goddard
http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/
Yes. This is exactly the problem.
Radio 1 is based on the "wicked, innit?" culture now. It's not a mainstream radio station anymore.
As I read this article in Philadelphia, I am listening to a radio program recorded this past Saturday morning in San Francisco at a non-commercial radio station. Folks far from SF listen to this and pther programs by streaming them live or from the archive, or downloading podcasts.
The Americans I know who really love RADIO do the same, stream stuff in from far and wide, because listening to radio no longer requires a radio. It's live streams, programs from the day's archives, podcasts. From a local radio station, from stations across the country, stations in other nations. Every conceivable genre of music, news or information.
Do folks in the UK ages 16-24 even listen to a radio? By turning on and tuning in a radio??
I don't know any Americans 16-24 who listen to an actual radio. Typically, they don't even own a radio, unless it's their older brother's CD boom box and even then they don't use the radio component. Radio is a technology that 16-24 year olds don't even think about, unless the content is streaming online or downloadable.
Is the situation in the UK really that different from in the US?
I don't mind local radio but surely it's about time it was sold off?
In the US, all AM stations and most FM stations are total travesties, and they achieve that low status without state support. Commercial radio is a black abyss, a festering boil that has been steadily dying at a fairly rapid pace.
The only aspect of broadcast radio that has enjoyed any growth is listener-supported, non-commercial radio. Our National Public Radio (NPR) programs, stations, and listener audiences have grown at a crazy pace. Almost all public and listener-supported stations receive at least some small amount of government support, directly or indirectly.
So I'm a fan, even if one particular station or system somewhere has a cr@ppy playlist it's working from.