Category: Audio
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A Celebration of Radio Comedy
Earlier this evening, the Radio Academy had one of its regular events – this one was a celebration of radio comedy. Jon Holmes hosted the evening, speaking to two excellent proponents of comedy on radio: Barry Cryer and Steve Punt. Barry Cryer picked some his “desert island” comedy classics and we were treated to excerpts.…
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Secondary Ticketing Redux
The other day I was talking about secondary ticketing and my despising of the general dishonesty of it all. Well now Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has explained the situation from a band’s side of things. He doesn’t like secondary ticketers, or “re-sellers” as they’re known. Like me, he considers them touts, or scalpers…
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Bad Ads
As I mentioned the other day, the Radio Sales documentary on Radio 4 on Saturday ended with the infamous “Superscreen” ad. OK. Here it is: In recent days there was another really annoying advert. A certain major soap opera was advertising a major event that took place in last Friday’s episodes. Radio advertising is the…
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Multimedia Meets Radio
I was invited to present at the EBU conference Multimedia Meets Radio conference in Prague. More alert readers might realise that the EBU is a union of public service broadcasters and wonder why someone who works for a commercial radio station would present there. But we’re all radio services and there’s always plenty to learn…
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Martin Kelner on 6Music
Kelner is always worth a read: [Lesley Douglas’s campaign] a central plank of which was the replacement of Gideon Coe with the supposedly more female-friendly George Lamb, ranks in success somewhere between Balaclava and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
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Ofcom v Global
Perhaps that heading is a little misleading, but that’s what it feels like at the moment. On Friday, Ofcom gave GWR FM (Bristol and Bath) a yellow card for not operating within its format. GWR has a format which states (All stations’ format can be found on the Ofcom website). The format for GWR FM…
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Ane Brun
For some reason – two weeks after I went to see the gig, I haven’t mentioned that I saw Ane Brun at the always wonderful Union Chapel. It was absolutely superb – it’s really hard to explain how wonderful the sound was. Brun has a recent album out, possibly re-released recently with a couple of…
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Radio Sales
This evening’s Archive on 4 documentary was a terrific piece based around radio advertising in the UK through the ages. Presented by, the much missed Brian Hayes, it started with ads way before LBC and Capital Radio became the first legitimate UK commercial radio stations in 1973. Listen to it on the iPlayer, or catch…
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Secondary Ticketing
What a foul expression “secondary ticketing” is. It’s the terminology used to refer to those sites that let the “fans” resell their tickets. Sites such as Seatwave and Viagogo allow you to buy and sell tickets safely and securely. They’ve grown out from the eBay ticket selling business. But are they really for the “fans”?…
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David Mitchell on Digital Radio
Last Monday’s Just A Minute included a round on the subject of digital radio. David Mitchell isn’t a fan… Listen again to the whole show on the BBC iPlayer (by next Monday).
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YouTube and PRS
Wherever music collection agencies and internet sites exist, there are problems. The latest disagreement is the very public falling out between Google, owners of YouTube and PRS the UK collection agency. And when that story reaches the Ten O’Clock News, you know that it’s a significant one. When thousands of music videos start to disappear…
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6 Music and RAJAR
A week or so ago, Media Guardian got very excited about some RAJAR figures. They had the half hour figures for some BBC 6Music programmes. These figures showed that the peak listening for the “controversial” George Lamb was 40,000 while Adam and Joe on a Saturday morning peaked at 69,000 – the highest of the…
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TV Formats
Have you seen the new ITV gameshow presented by Chris Tarrant yet? It’s called The Colour of Money and has nothing to do with the Terry Pratchett novel of the same name. ITV’s clearly very excited by it. It’s presenter comes from the global phenomenom that was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and the…