Posts
Radio 1 getting old again
GMG Radio has noticed that the average age of a Radio 1 listener is drifting upwards again, and aren't happy:
Stuart Taylor, chief executive of GMG Radio, said: "The trust has asked them to do something that they are patently not doing. The question is: what happens now?Really, Stuart? Is that what would happen, or - as is more likely - would Radio 1 merely request a change of format, which Ofcom would be minded to approved. You know, like if a Jazz station suddenly started playing Smooth music, that sort of thing?
"If Radio 1 was regulated by Ofcom and not the trust – if we were doing this – then it would be a breach of our licence and we would be taken off air."
GMG claims that the average age of a Radio 1 listener has risen from 29 to 32 over the last three years. Spookily, in that time, a 29 year-old would have become 32.
It looks like the real problem - if you want to see it as a problem - is Chris Moyles, whose audience is larger than others, and also attracts a bunch of older listeners.
However, there is an aspect that Taylor seems to be missing: a lot of breakfast radio listening is done round toasters and on school runs; the price of producing a programme which attracts more teenagers might well be the collateral damage of their parents listening.
2 comments:
Moyles, unlike his colleagues, does have a lot of people listening who've never really got over Ocean Colour Scene not being in the charts anymore - they like his persona and what he stands for culturally, and listen despite, not because of, the current music he plays. That was previously the case with Mayo at the end of his Radio 1 tenure, and Tarrant when he left Capital. The shows had got out of sync with what surrounded them to some extent, and their moving on was necessary.
What I resent is the idea - implicit in the commercial radio attacks on Radio 1's *very existence*, as distinct from someone pointing out Moyles' increasingly anomalous position - that everyone over a certain age will be a bitter, fearful musical reactionary. I'm 31, and I listen to most of 1Xtra's evening output because I feel a greater affinity to it than most of what's out there. The idea - put forward on another forum a while back - that Radio 1 should be "repelling everyone over thirty" reveals a fundamentally Mailite view of humanity, which not all of us fall for.
Did you see this from Tom Gauld the other week?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomgauld/6278984537/in/photostream
Post a Comment
As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.