Raw Passion

This post is about a night at the opera. Not the seminal Queen album from 1975, but an evening spent watching Otello.

My regular radio followers should, however, continue reading as there are interesting parallels between an experiment to reach new arts audiences now, with social media, and what we did with arts programmes on Pennine Radio in the early 80s.

Geography Lesson

Two events this past week have shown just how London-centric our supposedly national media remain. One is snow. The other's a bike race. The first might be understandable, for reasons I'll discuss.

The second is unforgivable.

So What Is 'Local' Anyway?

Once upon a time it was so, so simple.

Newspapers were printed in city centres and distributed by an army of semi-itinerant guys shouting 'Eeenin Po' or 'Teeaneh' on street corners. A fleet of Bedford vans carried bundles of papers to outlying communities maybe -oo- five or ten miles away.

Local radio came from musty cupboards of pegboard and wires, with the news often enunciated by bearded men of a theatrical pedigree. Their coverage area was determined by the laws of physics and the accidents of geography.  The signal could frequently get knocked down crossing the road.

Television was generally monochrome, for the better-off garishly coloured, and delivered to ’regions’ which placed Caernarfon in the North of England and King’s Lynn in Yorkshire. Viewers selected from two, three or (amazingly) four channels by pressing big springy buttons on the front of a ‘set’ rented from DER or Rumbelows.

Then the Internet came along and spoiled everything.

Radio England Revisited

This is going to be awkward. Not as awkward as the Mayans trying to explain away January, admittedly, but still difficult.

In October 2011 I wrote a blog entitled 'Why Radio England is a Really Bad Idea'.
That self-same Radio England, now known as the Mark Forrest show, launches on Monday.

None of us knows what it's going to sound like yet, but I'm at least prepared to give it an impartial hearing. Not everyone is. More of that later.

Here's why I've changed my mind.