I’ve tumblrd away

I love WordPress, but the nature of my needs are now more suited to tumblr.com so I’ve moved there.

Please come on over to my new place, have a read and a chatter. (Don’t chatter here)

I’ll leave the archive of stuff here rather than try to export it or whatever, but as of November 2008, I’m officially blogging here: http://christopherengland.tumblr.com which should also be mapped to by http://www.christopherengland.com which you should learn off by heart and visit at least once a day!  It’ll change your life…

I love Ken

Politically, I hate Ken Livingstone. When the lovely Boris ousted him from control of London, I was a happy man. Be gone, creep, I thought.

Then he got a programme on LBC. Yes, he still uses it to try to settle scores or blame everything from global warming to broken fingernails on Margaret Thatcher, but actually it now sounds really good. I don’t know if this is down to his Producer, but Ken sounds confident and like a real talk radio presenter. I’m impressed.

However, I hang my head in shame at having to come out and admit this in public.

Lordy, I hope I’m not turning into a loony leftie.

KCR-FM (East Liverpool)

I’ve been listening online to this station for a little while now ( http://www.kcrfm.co.uk ), after finding out it’s no longer called The Rocket – D’oh! – and I was pleasantly surprised by the human touch.

The presenters actually speak to their listeners as if they are people rather than resorting to standard commercial radio links. None of that silly shouty voice and outrageous telegraphing of commercial breaks with formula phrases. Sung jingles too! None of the constipated / I’ve just wet myself annoying voice-over man/woman liners you’d normally endure between each song either.

I’m not sure about the music policy. It does seem quite adventurous and broadly playlisted with regard to the ‘oldies’ and has a fair selection from ‘today’. I’m not sure that it works for getting listeners. The only thing that pulls ‘em in is playing 30 songs on high rotation.

But hey, it got me listening to oldies without wanting to kill myself!

Years ago, commercial radio was more human and less full of formula and cliches and had listeners. The most listened to music radio today (Radios 1 and 2) still has that human touch some might consider ‘old fashioned’. So, there must be something in it that these critics are missing.

RNI – wtf is it about?

I titled this “RNI – wtf is it about?” because I want to say a few words about Garrrry Stevens’s’s internet radio stream RNI (more details: http://www.garrystevens.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rni ).

So, I’ve been listening on and off for a while and I’ve just had to smile, but there’s a couple of things I just don’t get. Firstly, if anoraks are all around the same age, and part of anoraking was to get away from the crass and novelty records on the legal radio at the time, then why is RNI focusing on all that’s awful on the novelty front?

Equally, there’s a heck of a lot of oldies from before most anoraks were even born. Again, this was music that anoraks rejected in their need for the music of the day. So, why are anoraks suddenly into all this crap they used to hate?

Secondly, I think the stream is addictive and a brilliant anorak listen, although for me this is mainly for the jingles, since I mainly hate oldies (Why doesn’t it play some modern stuff too?).

Loving the Tony Allen impressions and the cut-up and chopping of various stables of jingles from lord knows which eras, sometimes merged and montaged together in a way that’s embarrassing yet kinda works. Now and again a novelty tune will kick off, especially the old TV themes, and whilst I’m sure that they get boring when listening over a long period when they come around again and again, for now they are brilliant.

So, highly recommended anorak listening: RNI. Anybody else listening?

Radio Caroline Maidstone needs a new spare bedroom

It seems that the idea of inviting a bunch of folk into your home in order to maintain a version of Radio Caroline was not necessarily a good one.

Apart from all the naughty DJs coming in at all hours and playing their rock’n'roll and crazy guitar hero type beats at full volume and keeping the old lady in the next bedroom awake, there’s the issue of who keeps things running and dealing with the automation when it frequently falls over.

Well, in typical Caroline Maidstone style of course, this’ll be down to the poor fellow who let them into to his home in the first place, even though he didn’t realise this would be the case when he helpfully invited them in after they were thrown out of their previous squat.

I’m hearing that enough is enough and Caroline Maidstone has been given its marching orders. It has to relocate within the next 10 weeks or quite fairly the plug will just be pulled on its operation. The Caroline countdown is on.

So, the quest is on for a new sucker, erm, I meant a new volunteer to let the radio station inhabit his or her spare bedroom. Can you help?

If you are near Maidstone (because we wouldn’t want the nurses that drive the volunteers having to drive too far now, would we) maybe you’d like to offer your facilities to this legendary bedroom radio station.

I certainly would if I lived south of the Thames. But I don’t, so I can’t. If they want to move operations up to East London I’d certainly welcome them with open arms. Or is that fully loaded arms with the safety catch off. I’m never sure.

Can you help Caroline Mattress bounce back?

And finally: Why are the presenters not allowed to mention that they are looking for a new bedroom? Apparently they’ll be thrown off the station if they mention it on air or are caught discussing it with ‘enemies of the station’ or on message boards, and will never be allowed onto Caroline Maidstone again (unless they prove themselves by attacking me, the usual pre-requisite for being welcomed back into the fold).

They’ve been told that the vast majority of their listeners aren’t actually interested in where the studio is, and that’s the reason it must remain secret. Interesting. If the vast majority of listeners don’t care where the studio is, why does Caroline Maidstone try to live off the fact that the unlicensed free radio station Radio Caroline had its studios on a boat in the North Sea? Hmmm?

Absolute Radio hears Christopher England

Despite my moaning about aspects of them, look at this written by the Brand Director of Absolute Radio.  Look mum, I’m famous!

http://onegoldensquare.com/2008/09/absolute-beginners-no-longer-by-chris-lawson/

On that note, I have been impressed by the whole ‘openness’ of the One Golden Square blog thing and the way they’ve scouted around the more credible radio fora (such as Anorak Nation) and challenged what people are saying or explained what they are doing.

That has got to be a first in radio, and it is truly worth giving those Absolute folk a round of applause for. They didn’t have to do any of that.

If they persist with their openness and apparent honesty with regard to ‘involving’ listeners in decisions, then I can see them building a tight-knit cult following which can only go on to reflect very positively in their RAJAR.

As Simon Cowell would say (or did he get it from me?), Good for them!

Absolutely annoying (repeatedly)

This new Absolute Radio, right. It promises you ain’t gonna hear the same thing between 10am and 5pm, all part of the ‘no repeat workday’, right.

So how come all I hear repeated again and again is that I mustn’t miss the breakfast show tomorrow morning? Oh, and constant repeating of the fact that it’s a no repeat work day!

Don’t tell us about it, just do it!

(The music’s quite a broader range for now though. Cool!)

Absolute Jacking

Is it me or is the all new Absolute Radio (“used to be known as Virgin Radio”) going the way of Jack FM?

Jack FM in Oxford (owned by Absolute) boringly has no presenters except on the breakfast show or when they halt the music and do their sports commentary. Instead it has pre-recorded automated drops that are side-spittingly funny, not, and recorded in their mass by voice artist Paul Darrow (who used to be in Blake’s Seven on the telly). The only difference between Jack FM and an iPod (or preferably one of the better and cheaper generic mp3 players) is that when something comes on that you don’t want to hear, you can’t step on to the next allegedly random track.

Anyway, for Absolute Radio the Absolute people have come up with an absolutely side-splittingly funny idea. They have little voice drops inbetween the songs – in fact, the DJs are not being allowed to say much apart from speaking just before a whole bunch of commercials, in order that the hilarious voice drops are given maximum exposure. The voice drops are not quite recorded by Paul Darrow but David Meyer, although they might as well have been Mr Darrow. They sound the same, or maybe it’s the same scripts. Sigh. Whatever happened to the idea of allowing the DJs and normal presenters develop themselves? Obviously not!

Virgin became Absolute Radio today

‘Absolute Radio’, that was the name they settled on after months of debate about what should succeed ‘Virgin Radio’.  They looked at their letterheads or the name of the company on the door that they were walking into every morning and suddenly had a lightbulb moment!

I think it’s a really good name. The bit I didn’t ‘get’ was why none of the pundits sussed that it was the most obvious name to give the station, as that was the name of the company!

If it’s really true that the format is changing to a more realistic one (larger number of songs, personality presenters, less highly structured and restrictive links), then that’s also got to be good news, surely?

I’d assume that the whole music and presentation format will slowly bend towards the new style over the coming weeks even though I hear there’ll be an official end of Virgin and new beginning for Absolute, rather than a slow morphing from one name to the other.

Hmmm. Radio stations closing down and opening up, an anorak’s dream! I might even listen.

Apparently it’ll have a ‘no repeat workday’ section (10am thru 5pm) when songs won’t be played more than once.

Hey, Absolute: Here’s a request for you: Please don’t have the DJs or stupid liner-men constantly telling people it’s a ‘no repeat workday’ or constant flagging up of such things about the format.

Just get on and do it without telegraphing it.

The excitement of radio should be that things bubble away and happen without the mechanics of what’s happening being effectively explained on air. I think of it as being like a scenic coach journey – you want the driver to be using the PA system to tell you what great and interesting stuff is outside, you don’t want him telling you every time he changes gear or where the petrol gauge is pointing, do you?

Google Chrome just works!

I use (in business) Google Apps for Domains, have been playing extensively with Google Gears, and generally find that things Google just work. Compare and contrast things Microsoft. Why buy MS Office when Google Documents is free! Why use IE8 when it takes so long to clunk and click to resolve webpages? And Firefox is resource heavy, and slows right down when fully loaded with add-ons.

Google Chrome just works.

Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio

I dipped in to about 20 minutes of ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ and to my amazement found that, apart from the obligatory and annoying constant bigging-up of the breakfast show (and, hey, since breakfast shows have more listeners, shouldn’t they be the ones bigging up other dayparts? It’s all the wrong way round!), every 20 seconds I was being told I was listening to ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’. Man, oh Man, relentless ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ followed by ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’. Why would anybody listen for more than 10 minutes let alone for the entire ‘no repeat 9 to 5 workday’ when all that’s being said is the phrase ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’?

It’s really annoying to keep hearing ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ followed by a few words and then ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ again, isn’t it? It’s tedious enough just reading me going on about ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ so how bad must it be for ordinary folk listening to ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ eh?

Have I made my point about ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’? No wonder the figures for ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ indicate that people only listen for 10 minutes! The constant working of ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ three times into every link is maddening.

This is the kind of thing that MUST STOP if ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ is really really really going to try to be exciting and different.

And that’s without me going on about the annoyingly pitched liner voices. Blimey. Why do liners have to be recorded in silly voices? I mean if somebody came up to you in a pub, or anywhere in ‘real life’, and put on the silly throaty radio liner voice, you’d think they were mad and call the police or punch them. Normal folk and friends don’t speak to each other like that, so if you want ‘Virgin-Radio-soon-to-be-known-as-Absolute-Radio’ to be my friend, get your liner lady (Leona?) and liner man to talk to me as a friend not some scary robot with a throat infection!

Make it sound like you’re real people and you’ll attract real listeners!

Where’s Christopher England?

Christopher England is a kinda personality or persona of another Chris, and mainly nothing like him.

That other Chris is sooooooo damn busy being himself that he hasn’t had much time of late to be Christopher England.

The other Chris, if you know how and where to find him, is still very active on t’internet and in media, but not as Christopher England.

Things may change and Christopher England may return with his witty and cuttingly sharp observations about life, the universe and everything radio-ish.

But…

At the moment not even the other Chris knows what’s what.

If you really want to follow the man behind Christopher England, just ask.

Background radio versus Foreground radio

Here’s my take on a couple of things RAJAR.

Music radio: I’m convinced that “music radio” falls into two main styles, but hasn’t previously been examined properly to identify the needs of the potential listener.

So, there’s music radio that people want on in the background and there’s music radio that people want on in the foreground. With me so far?

Radio 1, for example, is not designed to be on in the background. It is playing music that has an immediate and current following and is ‘loved’ by enthusiasts of the bands or artists being played, and its listeners are people who passionately want to know more about what’s being played.

Heart (or Smooth or Magic), for another example, is designed to be on in the background. It is playing music that doesn’t have that immediacy of interest about it. People already know the music, they’ve heard it a thousand times before. It’s heritage music (a polite way of saying bland). Therefore they don’t need to know more about it in the way people want to know more about fresh new music.

So a format of presenters not saying much apart from an occasional piece sounding like a railway station platform change announcement along with 300 tracks rotating around back to back, will become popular when those 300 tracks are heritage tracks. We, as radio anoraks, can see to our horror examples of these bland wallpaper stations scoring good RAJAR.

On the other hand, we see stations like XFM that aren’t playing all the bland stuff plummet in RAJAR. At first this really doesn’t make sense. Can it really be true that the only radio working in the UK (outside of the untouchable BBC) is bland?

No. I put it to you that the type of modern up front music being played on XFM is the type of music that requires lively informed presentation as part of its hook. However, what GCap did was the complete opposite. They removed all daytime presenters just leaving XFM to burble away in the style of a bland jukebox station.

No, no, no, no. Wrong move. Like Radio 1, XFM is not designed to be on in the background. Its music is foreground music, so it needs to be presented, not just segued. Radio 1 shows this to be true.

And what do we now see as the master-plan to try to save XFM? That’s right, they’re going to bring the presenters back! They might even be allowed to show a tiny bit of personality too. But, sadly they are going to remove any localness in the music by networking these newly formed presented shows across all of the XFMs in the UK. Where XFM (done properly) may have had an edge over Radio 1 would have been on ‘localness’. However, this is now not to be.

Commercial radio’s real danger is from these thick programmers who are in charge of these stations yet just don’t get it, despite it being their job to. Rather than fix the stations they are breaking because they really don’t understand the music radio listener, they dream up some next wild madcap scheme to further alienate the listener. Why oh why are these mad people still employed, still there to further break things, when in any other type of business they’d have been chucked out the back door as quickly as possible?

Foreground radio is so damn simple to programme because it is so immediate. Employ up front presenters who know the audience (and not just because they’ve been on the telly. Telly presenters don’t automatically make good radio presenters – GCap should have learnt this by now from the disaster that is their Capital breakfast show), share the audience’s love of the particular style of music, and can communicate with them. Like the old days of commercial radio. Like the now days of Radios 1 and 2. Then you’ve grown yourself a radio station people want to listen to. Full stop.

Britain’s Naff Talent

I don’t watch much TV overall, although there’s some pretty hot and interesting stuff on Channel 4 now and again, but I did watch Britain’s Got Talent tonight by mistake.

Hmmm. Another programme with three judges and an act being thrown off each week by the public (although one being saveable by the judges). What a fantastic concept for a programme. Not. When will this ever end? Why is everything on TV this format?

Yes, I realise the whole thing is really just a vehicle for finding another recording star (‘cos the finalist is always going to be a singer and never a juggler) for Simon Cowell’s record company to make Simon Cowell Billions of Dollars out of, but there’s a bit I don’t get…

Why do we have to have the sob stories? People are either bullied at school, had their entire family eaten by termites, or, as in tonight’s programme, have some how been forced to leave their children in the Philippines whilst they seek work over here as a club singer in order to send money back to them.

Oh, come on. Stop it with the bloody sob stories. Why didn’t this women bring her kids over with her? Everybody else does! And why didn’t she try to get a real job instead of thinking the answer to her financial problems would be to audition for singing contests? (OK, it’s not officially a singing contest, although we all know it is.) She could have got some training and maybe got a reasonably well-paid office job or something, got a little flat and lived quite securely with her kids. But no. She wants to do the sobbing on a talent show bit instead. And worse, singing bloody annoying Whitney Houston songs to boot.

Here’s a slightly better format for this winning formula programme: As soon as somebody has a sob story they should immediately hear three buzzing noises, the stage trapdoor should open, they plummet down ending their obvious misery in life, and we never ever see or hear of them again. They should then be replaced by a contestant who wants to use only their talent to win the show, not emotional blackmail.

Stupid programming ideas #807732: Cristo on LBC

Ok, so there’s this ’showbiz’ show on the talking station LBC in London, presented by ‘Cristo’ in the weekend early evenings. Despite his constant menuing and barkering, nobody calls in.

Now then. The mainstay feature of the programme is that he and his guests actually watch whatever current Simon Cowell-esque talent show (you know the one: the judges comment, the public votes, one ‘act’ goes each week) that’s live on TV right at that moment and they talk about it as its broadcast and debate it. They even play just captured short clips from it.

WTF?

Hello? Mr LBC Programme Controller? Surely, anybody remotely interested in who’s going to be in Oliver, skate well, ballroom dance well, or has got laugh out loud fun fun fun talent, is going to be, erm, watching it on TV! Those that are not watching it, but have turned to the radio for entertainment are not watching it for a reason. They hate it. They want something else.

I mean, who in their right mind says to themselves, “Ooh I mustn’t miss lovely Ant and Dec talking to fun fun fun people who can whistle using their armpit. I know what I’ll do I’ll turn my telly off and listen to the radio for some people jibber-jabbering away like old people in an old people’s home about the show I’ve just deliberately switched off.”

No, it just doesn’t happen. The reason you’re getting no calls Mr Cristo is because the people who are likely to be listening are not likely to be watching or slightly interested in your commentary about a live TV show. Those that might be interested are busy watching it, ffs!

And another thing. If you’re listening to the radio and the presenter and guests are ‘talking up’ a programme that’s on TV right now, making it sound exciting and interesting, what are you going to do? That’s right, switch the radio off and go and watch the TV! Even more reasons why nobody’s calling in. Pathetic.

Somebody sack the producer and put something sensible on instead. Stuff aimed at people who have chosen not to watch the current TV ‘talent’ finding programme!