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XFM hangs the dj
In what isn't, oh no, a cost-cutting exercise in any way, Xfm have announced they're dropping djs from daytime programming. Instead, it'll just be a non-stop cavalcade of music and adverts between 10 and 4.
But what if Xfm plays a song you've never heard before and you want to know what it was? (It could happen.) You'll be stuffed - no back announcements to tell you what that was.
The big idea is that people will send text messages in to choose the next song - so, that's the Arctic Monkeys, then Oasis, forever, then - and Xfm will scrape off the funds without the need for anything as tiresome as paying people to think what to say or play next.
A limited collection of songs, and you choose what comes next, with no additional information or entertainment. Well done, Xfm - you've just invented the iPod, only one you have to share the control wheel for with the whole of the UK.
Xfm have promised that nobody will lose their job as a result of the changes, although managing director Nick Davidson must be looking dodgy.
Oh... and although there won't be any professional presenters, "listeners can record messages to go out on the air". A bit like junior choice, then.
5 comments:
XFM is rly going down the pan though, they play the same 8 records every morning...
It all sounds very noble and democratic, handing control of a station's daytime playlist to the listener. Something like bringing the community/recommend-a-song aspect of sites like last.fm to traditional radio.
That's how it sounds, anyway. But would I be far off the mark in predicting that this will end up with XFM's output being decided by whichever bands' PR team can send out the most mailshots to their databases? Once it was "Don't forget to vote for Phixx in the Smash Hits Poll!". Now I can see the internet groaning under the weight of weekly emails trilling "Text KOOKS to XFM!"
If I wanted the youth of today to choose what I listen to, I'd sit near them on public transport as they played 'Brianstorm' out of the crappy speaker on their Nokia. Bastards.
They still have X-posure though, which is the total flipside of the daytime programming. John Kennedy rocks.
That's the shame of it, isn't it, anon? They have the answer to their problem in their own schedule, but instead ignore it.
There's management sitting around saying 'how can we engage our listeners, offer something distinctive, really connect with a solid core au... could someone go and ask that Kennedy bloke to turn that music down... we're trying to think here. How about we be like The Box, but on radio?'
awful, awful, awful
how can you vote for a new song you've never heard before?
stagnation is here
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