Are there any good radio stations?

[Eric Mc]

redtwin said:

Smooth Radio when Wife starts to object to my choice of music on the ipod otherwise I wouldn't have the radio on at all.

The poor state of radio was one of the first things I noticed when I first visited this fair country 10 years ago and it hasn't gotten any better since.

Don't you listen to radio 4?

I assume you are from the USA (the "gotten" kind of gives it away).

The US has hundreds of stations because it is a huge country - with room for lots of specialist broadcasters. The UK is a lot smaller by comparison so will not have the ability to sustain such a vasr range of stations. I think there are probably too many in the UK as it is.

[zapbrannigan]

Radio Caroline:

http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html

Great music; minimal chat by presenters; hardly any adverts. Ticks all the boxes for me.

[Funk]

One of the things I loved about the US was the massive range of radio choice. Over here, they're all playing broadly the same thing, and they're all playing broadly st stuff. I never listen to the radio at all these days.

[Larry Dickman]

Eric Mc said:

redtwin said:

Smooth Radio when Wife starts to object to my choice of music on the ipod otherwise I wouldn't have the radio on at all.

The poor state of radio was one of the first things I noticed when I first visited this fair country 10 years ago and it hasn't gotten any better since.

Don't you listen to radio 4?

I assume you are from the USA (the "gotten" kind of gives it away).

The US has hundreds of stations because it is a huge country - with room for lots of specialist broadcasters. The UK is a lot smaller by comparison so will not have the ability to sustain such a vasr range of stations. I think there are probably too many in the UK as it is.

The problem is that only BBC stations are available country wide. I can just about listen to Absolute but the problem is I lose it twenty miles north of London which is no good if I'm going to Aberdeen.

[Eric Mc]

Don't Americans have the same problem with their local stations?

[Larry Dickman]

Yes I can imagine they do. But the difference is that they will still have choice when searching for stations in another area, we don't. All I ever seem to find apart from the odd one or two are BBC Cambridge, BBC Northamptonshire, etc. Then the problem is that they really do only last for a handful of miles before you find yourself retuning again which is a pain in the arse.

The only ones that actually tune themselves in country wide are the main BBC stations, & as someone else has already mentioned most of the stations in this country seem to follow the same dismal format.

I don't think there are enough stations in the U.K. & there certainly isn't much choice as to different formats. If you are lucky enough to find something a little different you can bet that it will be gone in a short period of time & you'll soon be back with the normal dross.

[shirt]

i just wish the specialist or late night radio 2 programs - mark lamarr's reggae show, radcliffe & maconie, the blues and folk hours etc., were aired during commuter hours.

[thinfourth2]

Part of me wishes that 6 music would move onto FM as it is DAB only

But if it got more popular they would have to cater for the masses

[Larry Dickman]

shirt said:

i just wish the specialist or late night radio 2 programs - mark lamarr's reggae show, radcliffe & maconie, the blues and folk hours etc., were aired during commuter hours.

I put anything worth listening to like Lamarr on cd. Then listen to it instead of the normal daytime rubbish.

[redtwin]

Eric Mc said:

redtwin said:

Smooth Radio when Wife starts to object to my choice of music on the ipod otherwise I wouldn't have the radio on at all.

The poor state of radio was one of the first things I noticed when I first visited this fair country 10 years ago and it hasn't gotten any better since.

Don't you listen to radio 4?

I assume you are from the USA (the "gotten" kind of gives it away).

The US has hundreds of stations because it is a huge country - with room for lots of specialist broadcasters. The UK is a lot smaller by comparison so will not have the ability to sustain such a vasr range of stations. I think there are probably too many in the UK as it is.

I have never listened to Radio 4. In my car I do an auto-tune search and Radio 4 has never been tuned in/picked up. Assuming there is a Radio 3 (and they haven't jumped from Radio 2 to 4) I don't get that either.

As an immigrant, I am very mindful of comparing things here to the US as that tends to get people's backs up, so I don't want to claim that US radio is "better", but I found I had more choice of music there. For some people, increased choice would be a bad thing.

The key difference is that many US stations tend to be of a particular genre. So depending on what sort of music you want to listen to such as Classic Rock, Pop, Country, R&B, Rap, Jazz etc there will usually be a radio station catering to that particular type of music.

Radio stations here seem to play any and everything, some even cover all the genres mentioned above within an hour or less.

[Funk]

redtwin said:

The key difference is that many US stations tend to be of a particular genre. So depending on what sort of music you want to listen to such as Classic Rock, Pop, Country, R&B, Rap, Jazz etc there will usually be a radio station catering to that particular type of music.

Radio stations here seem to play any and everything, some even cover all the genres mentioned above within an hour or less.

It was genre-specific stations that I loved. There seemed to be fewer adverts too.

[Eric Mc]

redtwin said:

Eric Mc said:

redtwin said:

Smooth Radio when Wife starts to object to my choice of music on the ipod otherwise I wouldn't have the radio on at all.

The poor state of radio was one of the first things I noticed when I first visited this fair country 10 years ago and it hasn't gotten any better since.

Don't you listen to radio 4?

I assume you are from the USA (the "gotten" kind of gives it away).

The US has hundreds of stations because it is a huge country - with room for lots of specialist broadcasters. The UK is a lot smaller by comparison so will not have the ability to sustain such a vasr range of stations. I think there are probably too many in the UK as it is.

I have never listened to Radio 4. In my car I do an auto-tune search and Radio 4 has never been tuned in/picked up. Assuming there is a Radio 3 (and they haven't jumped from Radio 2 to 4) I don't get that either.

As an immigrant, I am very mindful of comparing things here to the US as that tends to get people's backs up, so I don't want to claim that US radio is "better", but I found I had more choice of music there. For some people, increased choice would be a bad thing.

The key difference is that many US stations tend to be of a particular genre. So depending on what sort of music you want to listen to such as Classic Rock, Pop, Country, R&B, Rap, Jazz etc there will usually be a radio station catering to that particular type of music.

Radio stations here seem to play any and everything, some even cover all the genres mentioned above within an hour or less.

It's a function of history and size. The US had commercial radio from the earliest days of broadcasting. Radio also had to cover a vast area and a large population, often with diverse cultures and widely varying musical tastes and styles. That encouraged the growth of hundreds of local, commercially funded stations broadcasting to niche audiences (although a niche audience in the US is as large as some national audiences in Europe).

The UK has a very different radio history. From the 1920s up until 1967, there was only one legal broadcaster, the BBC, and it only had two channels, the Home Service and the Light Programme. The Home Service was mainly what we would call today "Talk Radio" with news, current affairs, quizzes , plays and discussions. The Light Programme provided light entertainment (music, comedy, sport). By the mid 1960s it was recognised that a large chunk of the under 25s were not listening to either of these channels but instead were listening to illegal "pirate" pop stations which broadcast non-stop pop, often from ramshackle ships in the North Sea or the English Channel - Radio Caroline being the most famous.

To counter the situation, in 1967 the BBC was restructured in that the old stations were abolished and a new pop channel, BBC Radio 1, being set up, the Light Programme being rebranded BBC Radio 2, a new classical music channel, BBC Radio 3, and the old Home Service being rebranded BBC Radio 4. Radios 2 and 4 did not initially stray too much from their old Light and Home Service brief but over the years since then have amended their output somewhat. In 1991, BBC Radio 5 was set up and all of BBC's sport content shifted over to that.

Another change ion 1967 was the establishemt of BBC Local Radio stations, the first local radio in the UK. This was done on a region by region basis and still exists, in modified form, today. These local channels are a mixture of local news and sport, chat and music.

Commercially run, private stations only came to the UK in the 1970s, 50 years after the US, so they have not got a long history in this country. Because people were so used to the publically funded, ad free style of the BBC, many find commercially funded stations, with their ads and jingles, rather annoying - although most of the big ones, like Classic FM, Jazz FM, Capital and Virgin Radio, have been fairly successful over the years. However, they really need to be national to survive because being too local and niche would mean too few listeners and therefore insufficient advertising attractiveness - so they have to be as broad in content as their remit allows.

Edited by Eric Mc on Friday 29th October 08:29

[redtwin]

Our local BBC affiliate is pretty dire. On the odd occasion someone has the work radio tuned in to it (we can only receive 3 stations at work), I find there is far too much nattering about things that don't interest me at all. It also seems to suffer from trying to be all things to all people with their choice of music. I imagine that as a public funded station they are instructed to be that varied.

Most of the other private stations you mentioned I cannot receive. I do get classic FM, but again that will lose out to having my own choice of music via ipod etc.

I really wanted DAB to be the answer, hoping for it to be comparable to satellite radio such as Sirius, with regards to reception and choice, but there are just too many people complaining about lack of reception or stations dropping out when driving.

You seem quite knowledgeable about radio, Eric, do you work in broadcasting?.

Edited by redtwin on Friday 29th October 08:47

[Eric Mc]

redtwin said:

Our local BBC affiliate is pretty dire. On the odd occasion someone has the work radio tuned in to it (we can only receive 3 stations at work), I find there is far too much nattering about things that don't interest me at all. It also seems to suffer from trying to be all things to all people with their choice of music. I imagine that as a public funded station they are instructed to be that varied.

Most of the other private stations you mentioned I cannot receive. I do get classic FM, but again that will lose out to having my own choice of music via ipod etc.

I really wanted DAB to be the answer, hoping for it to be comparable to satellite radio such as Sirius, with regards to reception and choice, but there are just too many people complaining about lack of reception or stations dropping out when driving.

You seem quite knowledgeable about radio, Eric, do you work in broadcasting?.

Edited by redtwin on Friday 29th October 08:47

Not at all. I'm old enough to remember the massive changes in British broadcasting in the 1960s and listening to the pirates at that time. The one channel I didn't mention was Radio Luxembourg, which existed from the 1940s and which provided British youngsters with a an opportunity to listen to popular jazz and later rock and pop - especially from the mid 1950s - without the stuffiness and primness of the BBC of the day. Many of the DJs who went on to be big names in early BBC pop radio began with Radio Luxembourg - Jimmy Saville, Alan Freeman, David Jacobs etc.

Edited by Eric Mc on Friday 29th October 09:27

[Funk]

What's interesting is that it's therefore piracy that was responsible for a massive change (for the better) in how music was listened to (what, where and when). Strange that internet piracy is seen as 'evil' where it should be forcing organisations to once again change how, what, where and when we listen to music.

Without piracy, we'd possibly still have only a handful of stations, all supplied by the BBC.

[Larry Dickman]

Nice history lesson Eric I actually remember listening to some of those pirate stations my self, but I was very young at the time.

The fact still remains that radio for a lot of people in this country is terrible. I can only hope that when and if FM is switched off & it goes digital there will be more choice.

[anonymous-user]

Best thing I ever bought for the car was a head unit that had an iPod jack. Radio bores the tits off me generally, not because of the music but I just can't stand any of the presenters (Radcliffe & Maconie were the only ones I've ever enjoyed listening to). On holiday in the USA a few years ago I found a fantastic classic rock station that made two promises:

• They'd never talk over a song
• They would always tell you the artist and title of a song after it had played

And that was it. The presenters didn't try to be funny, didn't presume that listeners cared about what they ate for breakfast, didn't have any mundane phone-in's, didn't try any social comentary, nothing. They just played music, traffic every 20 mins and news on the hour.

It was bloody awesome.

[prand]

Larry Dickman said:

Nice history lesson Eric I actually remember listening to some of those pirate stations my self, but I was very young at the time.

The fact still remains that radio for a lot of people in this country is terrible. I can only hope that when and if FM is switched off & it goes digital there will be more choice.

Me too - but does anyone know if the DAB signal will get boosted when this happens? I have to have my DAB radio in an odd corner of the kitchen because that's the only place you can get a good signal. I dread to think what it's like in a car.

[Eric Mc]

Larry Dickman said:

Nice history lesson Eric I actually remember listening to some of those pirate stations my self, but I was very young at the time.

The fact still remains that radio for a lot of people in this country is terrible. I can only hope that when and if FM is switched off & it goes digital there will be more choice.

I just think the UK is far too small to support hundreds of stations. Even though technically the digital switchover could provide the space for hundreds of new broadcasters, I very mnuch doubt that they could be sustained.

Even though I like music, I don't listen to an awful lot of it on radio any more. I mainly use radio to listen to discussion, debate, news, current affairs etc. That's why I have become an inveterate Radio 4 listener, with occasional (but increasingly rare) forays over to Radio 5. I also listen to Irish RTE Radio 1 which, at times, can almost be as intelligent as Radio 4 - but with commercials - unfortunately.

[SwanJack]

I work from home and listed to US radio stations without too much difficulty over the internet. The choice is vast (K Rock from NY is my current favourite). We also have a Pure in car DAB that works quite well now that the windscreen aerial has been ditched for an external one.