Saturday, 9 June 2007

Quoting a previous Hans . contribution:-

In fact people are interested because of he fact that the project might
lead to a station that could broadcast something they could be
interested in, like music they like or chat about things they would be
remotely familiar with.

Sadly though, I suspect this 'people' that are interested is going to be limited to anoraks only. We are almost in the odd situation where there are now too many radio stations to go round. There's a general apathy about radio, so I can't see it building an audience if it plans to just emulate the conventional music radio concept.

Maybe if it's there to relay one of the other anorak stations (Caroline Maidstone or Big L Frinton), it will cover costs, or if it can hit on the magic format that nobody else is doing. And by 'magic format' I don't think the solution is 'presented music radio' with a shuffled way it's presented is going to be 'magic' enough to pull in people. It's going to have to be very highly specialist in nature, and the only national outlet with anything remotely like whatever format it settles on.

My top choice for this has always been that it should provide an Islamic service. Second, was a sort of national Spectrum 558 type service (or at least how it once was when it had loads of different groups using it). Third, an arty farty sort of national access service with slots paid for by various arty farty grants.

My personal choice, that I'd actually listen to (maybe even on Long Wave, whatever that is), would be a national talk station (with no bloody sport) that was free from the conventional ideas about what talking radio has to be, and was able to bring new ideas, challenges and exchanges to the nation. But, I suspect this would then suffer from the inability to raise initial sponsorship and advertising. Now that, I think, would be due more to not being in bed with any of the bread and butter national advertisers, than to the actual format.

Of course the commercial viability of it all would be, erm, something
else.

That's not seemed to worry Caroline Maidstone or Big L Frinton, of course, both of which are not commercially viable, yet use the models of a) voluntary subscription and b) being propped up by individuals with money to burn and no desire for returns.

So, either of those commercial models, or a hybrid, might be a possibility for sustaining something which would otherwise not be commercially viable in the usual sense, and get yet another station on air to keep anoraks happy.
—
* Christopher England just said that *

From http://twitter.com/wnkr/statuses/86026572:

Dave Martin: I won 28 pints of Abbot ale last W/E & was then given 9 pint of Youngs special + 9 Bombardiers,£110.40 of beer,no show from me this week!

Did Mr Martin die after this excess or is he not allowed to post updates from his bed in the drying out clinic?

:-)
—* Christopher England just said that, innit *