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Category: Radio

  • Copyright On YouTube

    So David Lloyd is leaving Virgin (soon to be Absolute) Radio today, and in the time honoured fashion, we made a leaving video. The video was edited to a couple of copyright songs – It’s Getting Better by Mama Cass and We’ve Only Just Begun by The Carpenters. I uploaded the video to YouTube. Now…

  • Steve Penk On Managing Listeners’ Expectations

    As Oldham’s Revolution changes format, owner and breakfast show host, Steve Penk tells anyone unhappy with the changes to try Xfm: “What I don’t want to deal with every day is a bunch of wining whingeing moaning morons clogging up my voicemail because we no longer play alternative music.” They’d be your listeners Steve. Good…

  • Radio Stuff And Nonsense

    It’s all getting very lively over at my “other place“. Radio 3 has some interesting new drama coming this autumn. Of course, it’s always easier to think “I must listen to that three adaptation of the Duchess of Malfi,” than actually sit down and listen to it. Radio 4’s new season sounds intriguing. I’m less…

  • Scary Thought About Setanta Football Issue

    As the Setanta issue rumbles on with no terrestrial highlights likely to be available for a terrestrial service for the Croatia away game for England on Wednesday, I’ve just had a scary thought. Essentially Setanta purchased both live coverage and highlights of the fixture. But they’ve declined to sell on those highlight rights. The radio…

  • Alcohol And The Media

    There’s a widely reported story today about a report examining how alcohol is covered in the media. In particular the perceived glamourisation of excessive drinking by radio DJs such as Chris Moyles. You can read coverage at the BBC News site, and in all the papers (here are links to the story in The Guardian…

  • Radio Pop

    Radio Pop was something I first saw at last year’s Radio At The Edge conference. It describes itself as “social radio listening.” Once logged in (and it uses Open ID – which might be good if it was ever made clear to the broader public how it should be used), you start listening to a…

  • Various Bits and Pieces

    I’ve always liked DJ Andy Kershaw, so it’s tragic to read about his recent problems with both the law and his broken relationship in an interview in today’s Independent. I can’t say I’m exactly in tears at the news that Wippit has shut down. Just ask Danny Baker what he thinks about them. Albion has…

  • How NOT To Rebrand Your Radio Station

    There’s an entertaining blog on Media Guardian that compares the route that my employers have taken in rebranding Virgin Radio as Absolute Radio compared with the route taken by Revolution in Oldham: For years the station bucked the trend of better music mixes and instead served up alternative indie and rock, making presenters out of…

  • Just How Artificial Is Dragon’s Den?

    Last night I was sitting at home tinkering with this blog (it will have its five-year overhaul soon), when my brother called me to say that there was someone from Virgin Radio on Dragons’ Den. I flipped on the TV and saw that the person being called “Christian” was Robin Banks, a DJ who used…

  • Martin Kelner in Media Guardian

    Martin Kelner’s been penning some very honest pieces about radio over the last few months, and today’s is as true as any of them. Talking about Kenny Everett is possibly a little hackneyed – sorry if that sounds heretical. But in essence, what he says is true. It seems to be TV personalities only who…

  • Radio News

    What a lot of things have been happening in the radio world in the last week or so: The Global takeover of GCap has finally been given the all clear by the OFT, with the full text of their decision being published. Many of the programming savings have already been made, but it’s now the…

  • Old Virgin Radio TV Ads 2

    Here’s an ad that I’m 99.999% certain that you haven’t seen. It’s a Russ and Jono ad for Virgin Radio that was never actually aired. This is a rough cut without final graphics or sound, but it still gives you a good idea of what they were trying to do.

  • The Launch of DAB Digital Radio

    Today there are over seven million DAB digital radios in use in the UK, although it’s future still has a few question marks hanging over it rightly or wrongly. But it’s fascinating to go back and see how the system was first launched. So amongst some of the videos I’ve recently been going through at…