Christopher England <(Address removed)> said:

Horses for courses. Thank goodness we are not all the same. I'd agree
about the reading out of show prep rubbish. Hate it. That, and the
safe old music is why I can't listen to most of the BBC 'locals'. But,
I think the 'magic' is when you are listening to a witty and intelligent
fun person saying their own stuff inbetween the songs, even if it's
trivia, it's their own trivia, a bit like it was on the ships 'back in
the day'. Dare I say it, but these fun links are what keeps me
listening to Radio 1 by day (and the lack of oldies).

You are so right Christopher about anarak pirate stations just playing basically at nostalgia and yes , all that most people listening want to hear is the Dj links between the records in case they say something interesting about anaraky and techie stuff. Personally i really only listen to speech based programming on radio these days as if i want to hear music i will play my own exactly to the format i like.If i listen to radio which tends to be mainly in the car , i want to learn something interesting or be informed about whats going on in the world so Radio 4 or my BBC local are common listens and sometimes BBC world service, but generally only for short periods.For music radio its a tiny bit of a mixture of Heart colchester , Garrison FM colchester and Dream 100, until the ad breaks make me reach for the presets.Most anaraks have an idea in their head of what an ideal radio station should sound like but if they had to construct an actual format for a real station would probably struggle to come up with something that people would actually want to listen to for any period of time.