Thursday 29 October 2009

The Radio Age

More progress (ha!) on the retroprogressive front, with the latest radio listening figures showing that 45.7 million people listen every week - that's very nearly 90 percent of the population. Surely television, the shiny new medium, was supposed to sweep radio listening into the margins, a quaint survival in an age of wraparound visual entertainment. Well happily it hasn't worked out that way. The trouble with any form of visual entertainment is that it necessarily has a static source - whether TV or computer (mobile phones are really not an option) - and therefore requires rather a lot of focused attention. Radio, on the other hand, being nothing more than sounds in the air, can follow you anywhere, and you can get the minimal equipment you need in totally portable form. 'Perfect for today's busy lifestyle.' (In the early days of radio, it was, oddly, more like TV, in that the family would assemble round the only set in the house, essentially a large item of furniture, and focus their attention on it, even staring at it as if there was something to see. Hence the decorative fretboard over the speaker.) Radio listening is a wholly different experience from TV watching - more human, more intimate, more like being with another person. It has a stronger emotional hold than television, is more like 'company'. And, of course, there's an awful lot of good stuff on, especially on Radios 3 and 4 - both showing good increases in listeners in the latest figures. This very morning I was listening to Melvyn and co discussing Schopenhauer on Radio 4 (admittedly this would be followed in due course by Woman's Hour and You and Yours, but it's an imperfect world). This is the Radio Age - forward to the past!

14 comments:

  1. Yes indeed, though Wogan being replaced by Chris Evans on the top rated show is a serious blow to the medium's credibility.

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  2. Our lives were hugely improved by our decision to stop listening to Radio 4 in the morning.

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  3. What on earth are you doing instead, Dearieme?

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  4. I find what with my newspapers, my online newspapers, my 50 or so blogs, my social networking sites and the hour or two of reading that I do before bed, I don't have time or brainspace for much radio anymore, especially not a lot of the crap that seems to be on radio 4 these days. I heard some 'comedy' with Lenny Henry on it last night - it was about as funny as a prolapsed rectum, although the loud laughter track was trying to prove otherwise

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  5. It's just a shame the particular advantages of radio are soon going to disappear. That is once we've all gone digital. No more radio in the car, on the phone (kept me sane in hospital), on cheap little trannies pretending to be teddy bears or sitting at the bottom of builders' ladders. No, we'll be have to rely on heavy, expensive sets that only work in remote corners of the house (but then I do live in the remote wilds of Islington).

    Now that's what I call progress.

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  6. Dare I mention the pirates? when I lived in Kent, early / mid sixties sixties, Caroline was hitting the airwaves, groundbreaking at the time, the very opposite of BBC stuffiness, now just seems, sort of naff really.

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  7. 50 or so blogs, Worm? Do you comment so prolifically on all of them?

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  8. Btw - is the Lenny Henry thing Rudy's Rare Records? I went to uni with the writers, two chaps called Dan. They've done well but not quite well enough to invite jealousy. Whereas the other one of the trio, Marcus Brigstocke, has done inexplicably well.

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  9. I was going to say that Radio 4 is my best friend, but that makes me sound like a sad loner... probably a result of too much early morning and late night blogging. Whenever I listen to Melvyn's 'not' In Our Time, I find myself counting how many times he uses the 'e' word (epistemology). Wonderfully informative stuff, though I much prefer the News Quiz - and anything with Clive James, or David Attenborough. I think Channel 4 news is the biz and try to make a special effort to see it, but usually +1. Meantime my (other) arty friends are raving about BBC Four. Does anyone else never seem to find time to watch TV or the programmes they've recorded? Shame X Factor isn't on the radio.

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  10. PS Forgot to mention Jazz FM (http://shopcurious.blogspot.com/2009/04/jazz-age.html) - though sadly not available in car

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  11. Nige, this whole retroprogressive movement is the most exciting thing since the Luddites. Can the return of silent movies with player-piano accompaniment be far away? But we, too, should have our techno-geeks and advertising gurus to help us package it all for the modern, price-conscious consumer. How about we try flogging a new, integrated news and entertainment system--the travelling minstrel?

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  12. I've actually side-stepped the whole mp3 player thing and got myself a portable one man band.

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  13. Peter, that is a capital idea! (if perhaps a little ahead of, i.e. behind, its time)...

    Malty, I always preferred the oddly named pirate station Radio London - used to get the best stuff from the States, things you never heard anywhere else. Dave Dennis was the man - aaaah memories...

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