[IainJohnstonMember]

Fair comment Marc!
On certain radio forums in the UK, people who work for “corporate radio” defend their approach by saying that when anyone tries (within our very constricted, restricted and over-charged commercial licensing system) to “be different”, then such stations fail. Yet so many other countries such as yourselves indeed have very competitive markets (maybe even more so than the UK) yet seem to have viable stations that don’t just churn out the exact same limited focus-group lead/distorted output as all the other staions around them.

Mentioning Radio 2’s former JAM jingles as I did above, seems like a very good excuse to present my following montage on JM-Soundcloud which includes a little “seasonal flavour”; needless to say, all content is from the Jingle Emporium of the excellent Mr J. Wolfert Esq. of Dallas
http://snd.sc/tOT5WH

[loujosephs]

I understand what they are supposed to do on radio 2, but the 7-12 midnight block for the holiday season you could have fun with, the corporate crap we get from clear channel and cumulus is just that crap. If radio 2 was afraid of hacking off the nighttime audience they would give this a try…back when Gary and I did this at WERS everyone thought we had lost it. Funny now looking back we were on to something but we didn’t know it. R 2 is the dominate a/c station in the UK they just don’t act like they are.. and they should..

[loujosephs]

Home for the holidays was a contest where we picked some one who wrote (remember that) into the station, usually with some sob story that touched the heart and then we fly them from anywhere in the world to Boston…how many know people overseas that you’d like to have in the UK for the holiday season….again this is stuff that gets the audience to sit up and take notice…

[IainJohnstonMember]

(…sigh…) “holiday season”… what is it they say…”separated by a common language”…

There was a story on ther NYCRBB a while back about a News Radio station where the (supposedly well-educated) News Director insisted that one of his journalists go and do a BIG write-up on how THANKSGIVING was “celebrated” in other countries around the world…

…it had to be explained to him that this was a purely AMERICAN thing and that nobody else celebrates it but them. Just as only the British “celebrate” Guy Fawks Night; the Brits know knothing of “Karnival” in France or Germany; and so on.

Christmas isn’t a “season” elsewhere – its 2 days – Christmas Day & Boxing Day (do they have “Boxing Day” in the USA?), then New Year’s Day (plus us Scots tend to have Hogmanay the day before, plus a day after to …er… “recover”! I know the rest of us are constantly swamped by American “culture” being foisted upon us, but Lou, you have to get your head around that many things are done differently in different places from the States!

As for R2’s weekdays 7pm to midnight – that is probably THE most ECLECTIC piece of radio on air just about anywhere on the planet on any “popular” radio station – they don’t risk “hacking off the night-time audience” because it IS “minority interest” time and the BEST time to cater for people who actually WANT to hear non-mainstream music etc – becasue all the dumbed-down dim-wits don’t listen to radio at that time – they’re watching TV for their daily fix of soaps, “reality” shows, supposed “talent competitions” and all the rest of the gunge.

“If its not broken, don’t try to fix it”!

[professor1036]

Mentioning Radio 2’s former JAM jingles as I did above, seems like a very good excuse to present my following montage on JM-Soundcloud which includes a little “seasonal flavour”; needless to say, all content is from the Jingle Emporium of the excellent Mr J. Wolfert Esq. of Dallas
http://snd.sc/tOT5WH

Nice montage Ian…I never tire of hearing those Radio 2 jingles from JAM! Makes me want to go out and get a couple of resings!

[IainJohnstonMember]

Thank you!
(…er…its Iain…not Ian…but everyone gets its wrong anyway…!!!)

As so often with big packages, the BBC never used many of the variants of the cuts on-air (or if they did, I must have missed them…e.g. the “long version” of what would be recognised as the 1990 package “news intro”).

“…JAM…Makes me want to go out and get a couple of resings!”
Well, as it happens…. :-bd

[loujosephs]

TV…that’s just radio with pictures..lol… 7-12 mid night it always considered to the a dead zone for radio because of it’s completion with TV. That does not take into account, for example, people who set their clock radios at night, people who listen to radio before bed to relax..so..sooner or later some wise ass programmer is going to figure this out, and attack 2 on this front…and perhaps reap rewards…you have to have the intestinal fortitude to go up against legends.

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