Radio .. killed the radio star

An advantage of having a blog is having the chance to grumble and, to prove I don’t always talk about politics, the subject of my grumble today is radio stations.

Now I like listening to music while I’m driving or typing or whatever, but I always play my own CDs rather than put the radio on. The reason – radio stations NEVER PLAY ANY MUSIC! I can understand that smaller stations need the income from advertising but it is all the other bits that I object to.

For example: let’s take an example of a 30 minute car journey where I got the below.

- The second half of a Kylie song as I switched on

- The DJ giving me a long list of people I am ‘about to hear’

- An advert on car insurance

- The DJ: ‘what are you doing right now?’ (driving a car actually)
- ‘Do you want to tell us what you are doing?’ (no, not really)
- ‘If so, ring us on .. or email us on .. or text us on .. or tweet us on our Twitter page which is .. or leave a message on our wall on Facebook’ (I’ve forgotten the question now) or send a pigeon to .. (OK, I made that bit up)

- An advert on windows

- A trailer for the news (!) ‘ coming up you can hear about .. and .. and ..’ (well, I don’t need to hear about them, you’ve just told me)

- The weather, ‘today it is sunny’ (I know, I have windows)
- ‘It is raining in Scotland’ (I don’t care, I’m in Kent)
- ‘Do you want to know tomorrow’s weather?’ (All right then)
- ‘Well. I’ll tell you in 15 minutes’ (Oh the suspense)

- An advert for the next show after this one

- Travel news: ‘on the M2 it is fine, on the M20 it is fine, on the A249 it is fine ‘ etc etc ‘moving into Essex, on this road it is fine, no problems on that road’ etc etc (wouldn’t it be quicker just to say which roads do have problems?)
- ‘The trains also have no problems and neither do the ferries. No point me being here really’. (You took the words right out of my thoughts).

- An advert on holidays

- ‘Who do we have on line 1?’
- ‘It’s Stella. I’m so excited’
- ‘And where are you calling from, Stella?’
- (pause) ‘from my living room’
- ‘Er, right, and what are you doing right now?’
- (pause) ‘talking on the phone’
(I’ll spare you the rest of this conversation)

Eventually I did get to hear a song before arriving at which point they started to go round again - so a Scissors Sisters tune and half a Kylie in return for 30 minutes seems a poor return. Plan B, flicking through channels, just gives you all the above in a different order. I am sure this just adds to road rage as you are eventually BEGGING them to put a record on.

If someone would like to introduce a radio channel that just plays music (I’ll allow the occasional SHORT commercial) please let me know.