Roland Hulme

Since the regulars love to point out my ignorance and blissful optomism when it comes to all things American, I would actually like to hear your opinions on something I'm still fairly new to.

I worked in the radio industry in the UK (first person to mention any similarity between me and Chris Evans gets cyber-bitchslapped) and have been thinking about continuing it as a career in the states.

My wife thinks English radio sucked the big one - all the commercial radio stations were cheesy and played identical crap (David Grey's Babylon, anybody?)

In America, there was real diversity. Country and western stations. R&B. Pop and talk stations...

What do you guys listen to? What do you make of it? Do you miss the BBC and Radio 1/2?

Working in the commercial world of radio, I think Radio 1 and Radio 2 are ridiculous. How can you have a commercial industry like radio and then pit it up against two government sponsored monsters? No adverts. Monsterous marketing budgets. They simply can't compete.

But then I don't know anything about American radio really. Is it any good?

gruffbrown

If you like listening to the same song at the same time everyday, it's great.

Roland Hulme

Well, at least they're consistant!

It's a bit like that in England, though. I was listening in Portsmouth and got the Pet Shop Boys on WinFM, Ocean FM, Wave 105, The Quay 107 and Isle of White Radio. All playing the same track, all at the same time!

gruffbrown

I hope you like the Beatles and Jimmy Buffet's 'Margaritaville'.

Roland Hulme

Maybe not on repeat.

Which station do you listen to?

gruffbrown

Did. WOGL Philadelphia, well for the first two weeks anyway, then my brain seized up. It's like an Audio Groundhog day. The Eagles "Hotel California" is on, so it must be 4.35pm

gruffbrown

Although before that it was WCKG Chicago, the Steve Dahl show is quite good, more talk than music.

gruffbrown

And heaven forbid you should tune into a sports station. 4 hours of callers discussing whether or not Barry Bonds lucky underpants will get his batting average up this season.

Duncan Roberts

My take on American radio. Each station is targeted so there is no diversity. They either have talking or music, I haven;t found one that has a mix like UK stations. A great deal of the "national" stations like KISS are recorded by the same bloke, in a room in California. For instance one of the shows on KISS Cleveland, even though the host talks anecdotally about things that happened to him in Cleveland the day of and the day before the show, he lives in CA and just records soundbites. Just to back up the same song comment. When I worked in a help desk we had the radio tuned in to one of the popular stations, maybe KISS but I can't remember. Every day for almost a month at about 8:30, give or take a minute, they played Outcast's Hey Ya. I listen to a talk show on the way to work and a 60s & 70s show on the way home, thats it. Even then they are predicable and even though the 60s & 70s station has a lot of songs to choose from, most days on the ride home they must come from a pool of about 30 or 40.

I listen to BBC at work.

Hiro11

What Duncan said...

American commercial radio is unbelievably bad these days. On the music side, the vast majority of stations are owned by just a few companies (notably clear channel and CBS). The "local" stations are generally just reapeater transmitters of some show produced in LA or NYC. The songs they play are rigidly selected to the station's format and repeated over and over again ad nauseum. God forbid they actually play a song that 13 year olds with the attention span of a gnat haven't heard before... It's particularly bad with pop and country radio, both seem to have a 20 song playlist on repeat all day every day.

I basically never listen to music on the radio. I generally get music off the internet these days. I think most people do, judging by the Billboard charts. Albums that 12 year olds, 50 year olds or other less internet-savvy people would like always go to number one because the people buying them don't know any better. Going to a CD store and buying an album (or iTunes for that matter) is sort of ridiculous at this point. I'll bet if they were to track downloading, the charts would look very different.

anotherlimey

You are Chris Evans though aren't you!

I don't think the BBC is "Government sponsored"....

Channels are similar in the UK because it's a small place, comparing it to the entire US is futile.

neil

I couldn't listen to American radio until recently; at least now (around here anyway) there's one station that at least is a little bit different - Jack FM. Maybe things will get better. http://www.ilikejack.com/

If you think American radio is any good ask yourself why people are prepared to pay a monthly subscription for satellite radio. It seems to fit most Americans well because people don't tend to stray out of their music comfort zone. My wife's younger sister has been surprised by some of the stuff I listen to just because it doesn't fit in with the categories of other stuff I like.

britvic

Your a first, never heard a Brit say they like American radio I cant stand it So I tune in to BBC Radio vier the computer and only have CDs on in the car.

DaveC

Most of the channels in DFW are owned by Clear Channel. This means that they're all on commercial break at the same time so it's a waste of time trying to find another song on another channel during the commercials.

We just gave up and got XM Radio for the car. It's the way ahead. There's something for everyone on there - even red haired people.

Roland Hulme

Hey Britvic! I never said I liked American radio. My exact words (to paraphrase) were:

I was actually looking to see what you guys thought of it.

Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 4 dominate things in the UK. Commercial radio is a VERY small animal in most places (except London and major cities.)

However, saying that, all listener figures are based off wildly inaccurate rajar diaries and when it's all measured electronicly (by 2012) I think the whole industry will collapse on it's arse when people realise only a fraction of the estimated people REALLY listen to the radio.