Is mainstream radio on its way out?

 

The other day, my son Henry took me to Bedford for the pre-assessment for my eye surgery at the end of the month.

I couldn’t help but notice that the music he was playing was pretty much entirely 1970s based. All songs that I’ve grown up loving, I hasten to add.

And it made me wonder why he was playing them, after all, this is the same son that has sent me albums from artists such as, Thundercat, The Arctic Monkeys, Anderson Paak, Jorja Smith and Hayley Smith, all artists from his era that he thought I may be interested in hearing.

On the way back, I said to him, “Are you playing these songs because your old Dad is in here with you?” At the time the song that was playing was Chic’s ‘Good Times,’ which I reminded him was 41 years old, 11 years older than him.

“No,” he replied before going on to say that he listened to them often.

He went on to say that even though he likes a lot of today’s music, he felt that it has no longevity and can’t see any of it being remotely as well-loved, 40 years from now as the music from the 70s is.

In fact, he went as far as much as 90% of the music that’s popular today won’t be stuff he’ll be listening to in five years.

He was saying that he no longer bought albums because it was easier to set up playlists like the one he was playing on Spotify. He pretty much doesn’t bother with albums anymore.

I can’t say I’m surprised though. With Spotify, Deezer, Amazon and all the other ways of getting music these days, it’s no surprise that people would rather spend a tenner a month and just download what they know is familiar to them, which means the music that’s played on Radio One or other stations.

But even that’s getting less and less. In recent week’s, even Radio 2 had decided it’s going to stop playing 60s and 70s music in favour of the music of the 90s and 00s.

They’re going after the Heart audience, 35-40-year-old housewives. Well best of luck to them because they’ve just kicked their loyal audience of 'Baby Boomers' into touch.

I’m from the end of the 'Boomer' generation and I frankly had already stopped listening to Radio 2 and indeed any radio station that can be received on mainstream radio. Why?

Quite simply because they no longer cater to people like me. I don’t need to hear Mark Morrison’s, ‘Return Of The Mac’ ten times a day. I didn’t rate it much when it was new! But that’s what’s happened, the UK’s commercial stations are now run by 2 or 3 companies and the BBC are now going after that same audience.

If you’re over 45, they don’t really want you. They pander to their advertisers who do their market research and think that anyone over 50 spends less money. Which I’m sorry, is rubbish!

You can listen to any radio station and all the presenters sound the same – dull and boring. Personality presenters are pretty much cleared out the was to be replaced by bland celebs like Jamie Theakston, Emma Bunton and the God—awful Ryland...I don’t even know his surname.

And they’re going after the younger audiences who by and large now ask Alexa to play what they want to hear. They’re all in danger of cutting their nose off to spite their face.

Presenters have to repeat the company slogans after each and every song, and it’s the same all day long. Is it any wonder they’re losing listeners?

My son Henry doesn’t listen to the radio anymore. Nor do his friends. It’s either the music off his phone or podcasts. How sad is that?

I’ve loved radio since I was a kid. I was brought up on Tony Blackburn (still the best out there as far as I’m concerned), DLT, Alan Freeman, Johnny Walker, Noel Edmonds and more – all sounding different than the presenter before them or after. All adding a bit of variety in their presenting styles.

Now they’re told what to say. They’re told to express enthusiasm for the playlist as though they picked it themselves (yeah sure!)

Have a read of the presenter style guide for presenters on Bauer Radio, one of the bigger companies in UK radio. And you’ll no longer wonder why it all sounds the same – this is typical of most stations.

When I was doing radio, I applied for radio work on mainstream stations and sent demos in. I had an interview with a local commercial radio station in Essex and I already knew I hadn’t got the job but I’d asked their station manager what I needed to be doing to give myself a better chance of nabbing a job on a commercial station and he invited me to the station for a chat.

I think there was a possibility that I might’ve got a role on the station had I changed my presenting style. The conversation was all about ‘fitting in’ and ‘sounding the same’ as the other presenters, becoming 'the brand' and not straying from the script.

I knew there and then that a role in Mainstream radio wasn’t for me. I wanted to be me on air, I wanted people to know who was on the microphone and most of all, and the main reason I wanted to be a presenter was to play great music, not just the 90 or so songs that the programme controller deemed to be they ‘playlist.’

And at its best, I may be lucky enough to get 10-15,000 listeners per week.

As it was, at the time my shows were being heard in 90+ countries worldwide and in China alone, we were getting 800-900,000 listeners per show.

And what’s more, during my shows alone, I’d play between 4-500 different songs over the course of the month, and as I could choose my own playlist, my aim was only to play a song more than once a month if it was a request, otherwise, it would always be different, providing an eclectic but 95% well-know selection of songs from the 50s onwards. I’ve just compiled a Top 100 ‘new to me oldies’ that I didn’t even know 10 years ago. I could find new 'oldies' for the rest of my life. There are still loads I haven't heard.

Pretty much every day I come across a new ‘oldie’ that I’d never heard before, so why would I want to limit my listening to hits of the 80s 90s 00s and 10s. And then only the same ones day in day out.

Even my son tells me that the music of today doesn’t compare with the music of the past and he’s right in the middle of their demographic.

For me, one of the ‘Boomer’ generation that the mainstream doesn’t want to cater for, online radio is where I spend my listening hours, listening to a wide variety of tunes on stations such as Flower Power Radio, Oldies Online, Wisconsin 106, and The Drive, stations that cater to the likes of me.

And I’m not the only one. More and more people are choosing online radio in my demographic.

Mainstream radio no longer cares about me and my age group. They’re now aiming for the 30-somethings and pretty soon, it’ll be the 20-somethings, the only problem is that they’re not even listening to mainstream radio in the quantities we used to.

I think it’s time for a re-think...otherwise, in just a few short years, they won’t have many people to present their shows to.

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