No Rock And Roll Fun

TONY BLACKBURN THROWN OFF CLIFF: Tony Blackburn has got into trouble for playing too much (i.e. any) Cliff Richard on his Classic Gold Digital breakfast show. There seems to have been a long-running spat between the UBC head of programmes, Paul Baker and Tony. He'd been told not to play Cliff, he carried on, prompting Baker to issue another email. Then Blackburn played more Cliff, and got sent another sniffy email:

We shouldn't be playing Cliff Richard. As I said on Monday, we might carry out research on him, but for now we have a policy decision that he doesn't match our brand values, he's not on the playlist, and you must stop playing him. Requests is [sic] not an excuse."

Blackburn read the email out on air, ripped it up and played We Don't Talk Anymore and Living Doll back to back. Quivering, John Baish, the managing director, sent a 'see me in my office' email:

"Tony, Please call me straight after the show. This is really serious now."

And followed up with:

"You're consistently breaking the station's music policy. We've made our position as clear as we could. I've got no option except to suspend you until the situation can be resolved."

He might make an unlikely rebel, but more power to Tony Blackburn. After all, he's been working in radio for nearly forty years so you'd think they'd give him some credit as to knowing what the audience want to hear. It says a lot about just how straight-jacketed the people in charge of radio are these days that they fly into a squawking rage as soon as someone dares to play something not dictated by the computer print-out. What sort of response is "We might do some research on Cliff Richard?" Good god, grow a pair, why don't you? What are you doing in the radio industry if you can't figure out if your audience will like a song or not without employing some ladies with clipboards to ask questions outside the local Woolworths? And why isn't "requests" a legitimate reason for Blackburn to play something a little different from the churned-out diktat playlist? Don't you think that perhaps someone who's cared enough to seek out Classic Gold Digital and write a letter or an email to ask to hear a particular song - one that does seem to sit with the professed format of "songs that people know and love from the last 40 years" - might deserve to hear the song they've requested. And how can Summer Holiday or We Don't Talk Anymore not fit that format anyway? It's not like Blackburn was trying to sneak The Rasmus or Vivaldi onto the air. Have there been reports of people switching their radios off snarling "I expected to hear some nice middle of the road pop tunes, not Cliff Richard..."? I doubt it. Could the problem actually be that Tony understands the needs of your audience better than you do, because he relies on his instincts and experience rather than choosing records by pie-chart?

On the other hand: A few years back, Billy Butler and Wally Scott were "suspended" from Radio City for playing Cliff Richard against management wishes. Except that turned out to be a publicity stunt in the end.