Image by CTD2005
I like all kinds of radio. I really admire great networks like Radio 2, with their top production and great presenters. Their stuff is brimming with imagination (sometimes) and confidence (pretty much all the time). But I’m also a huge fan of localness, with its raw edges. I like arriving somewhere and getting the feel of a place through its radio stations. You don’t get that from a national network.
When I was working in the US in the 70s, as a baby Rock DJ, I was tuning around the dial. It was midnight on the East Coast, but the station time check I heard was for 11 pm. That meant the signal had to be the central time zone. AM signals travel further after dark, remember? I had stumbled across an outfit from New Orleans. I was SO excited… You see, I was hoping for some local flavour: a little bit of Allen Toussaint, some Ernie K Doe or Fats Domino, or even some Doctor John, depending on the format.
Fat chance.
It was the same Top 40 repertoire I heard all day from my FM rocker’s sister AM station. Maybe I should have expected this. But back in the early 70s, it was still possible to define a place through its music: think Motown, or Mersey Beat, or Philly Soul, or Stax/Volt, or Chicago blues. I could go on. And that’s why I was hoping for a bit of Louisiana magic.
We don’t have anything like that these days. All that localness has largely been swept away as the record industry, and radio, has become more corporate. But we do have music making everywhere, and that’s a good thing. Unsigned Musicians’ end-products have got much much better as technology has become cheaper. Ideas can come from anywhere and go anywhere. Our global superstars, on the other hand, are increasingly branded, increasingly ubiquitous, and perversely, increasingly remote. So, back in Radio, how can we measure this stuff and use it? Tricky. Record sales are no longer creditable – if they ever were – as a barometer of popularity. Think chart fixes and collapsing sales. Think how music gets bluetoothed from phone to phone.
Things have changed, and Radio hasn’t picked up the ball. A lot of the old certainties are gone, and Radio is no longer the go-to place for hot new stuff. Like everyone else, Radio is scrabbling around to find some new anchors. I think we’re missing a big trick.
More in the next post.