Music on special interest stations

Where do you think music fits in on special interest programming?

Special Interest, I guess, means the same thing as Community programming. Feel free to object!

How important is music to community programming? If the community is very broad, the music will be wallpaper to many listeners. Wallpaper is a part of general listening radio, cos it's on all day and you need some breaks. But when you're tuning in once a week for an hour, how much do you want to hear music?

Music can be great on such programmes. "Nostalgia" music can really help define your commununity. But if you are a "special interest" community, chances are you're a small community. And nostalgia for one person might be meaningless for someone just a few years older.

Some nostalgia that works goes back to childhood. As an example, the Ray Darcy Show this morning opened with Caroll Spinney – aka the vocie of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. That's been on TV for nearly 30 years, so it clicks with a lot of people.

Thoughts? Comment me!

Out and about

I've been a busy boy of late. And I've hardly had the chance to listen to the radio. But I've noticed a couple of things, such as:

Around Alexandra Park road, a portable DAB radio'll get a good singal wouthout any aerial at all.
The pure pocketDAB 2000 uses the headphone cable as it's antenna, and without plugging anything in, the signal metre shows a good strong signal, on the residential roads around the Ally Pally TX site. I'd like to see if it works out to Wood Green.

And yes, I understand the pointlessness in seeing if you can get a signal without being able to hear it!


You can see the Crystal Palace mast from the Putney Bridge tube bridge. A nice clear view of it.

The 1296kHz antenna for BBC World Service DRM in Orfordness is like a pair of 3 element beams, stuck into the ground with the boom running along the ground.

No not a good description, but those masts suddenly make sense to an amateur like me once I can visualise that :-)

George Cook – spoof

This is funny, if you know George Hook from Newstalk and rugby on TV