Radio 4-Land
If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I grew up on Radio 4. Apart from that brief and wonderful late 70s period of listening to Radio Caroline, I was more or less 100% Radio 4 until, one day, I just grew sick of the whole thing.
I was lying in bed one morning in 1996 and listening to the radio, and it was one of the endless stream of women's programmes, or arts-that-nobody-cares-about programmes, or some religious crap, and I just thought, fuck it, what's happening in the olympics? And I retuned to Five Live. First voice I heard was Garvey's, she was in an Atlanta bar, and I was hooked.
8 years later, and I've been getting sick of Five's repetition, its jingles, its seeming need to pore over the minutiae of football all the time, instead of widening its remit and talking about something else. I still love the Garvey/Allen team, but find Nicky Campbell in the morning facetious and irritating. Shelagh Fogerty is a wonder, but Victoria Derbyshire is irritatingly obtuse. Simon Mayo in the afternoon can be a revelation - his interviews and panel discussions are excellent. Jo Sale with the travel and her giggle is always a pleasure.
On the other hand, the repetition of the news and sport is a real pain. What annoys me most is when they're giving the same headlines in the evening that they were in the morning. You mean, nothing else has happened all day? Give me strength.
I have a long commute right now, and I've quickly exhausted my interest in my deliberately truncated CD collection. Playing to death is something I've always done, and everything I own is played to death or not worth playing. With the return of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (no, it's not very good), I tuned into Radio 4 for the first time in 8 years.
First thing you notice is the eery silence. Ooh, then someone speaks! FM has got a totally different sound to AM - and I've always preferred the mid-heavy AM band to the fake "warmth and quality" of FM. Still, I've taken to tuning in for the 6.30 comedy/entertainment slot, and on nights when the journey home takes longer, I even hear a bit of The Archers (and immediately recognised most of the voices - except, what happened to Shula?).
Last night, I was very late, and I heard the science strand and then a little bit of Melvyn Bragg on the history of ideas, talking about The Han Synthesis, which was utterly fascinating.
It's odd. It's intolerably smug and highly irritating in its presentation style, but you still end up with your general knowledge being boosted, and a developing interest in something you'd never thought about before. Which can't be bad, can it?
I was lying in bed one morning in 1996 and listening to the radio, and it was one of the endless stream of women's programmes, or arts-that-nobody-cares-about programmes, or some religious crap, and I just thought, fuck it, what's happening in the olympics? And I retuned to Five Live. First voice I heard was Garvey's, she was in an Atlanta bar, and I was hooked.
8 years later, and I've been getting sick of Five's repetition, its jingles, its seeming need to pore over the minutiae of football all the time, instead of widening its remit and talking about something else. I still love the Garvey/Allen team, but find Nicky Campbell in the morning facetious and irritating. Shelagh Fogerty is a wonder, but Victoria Derbyshire is irritatingly obtuse. Simon Mayo in the afternoon can be a revelation - his interviews and panel discussions are excellent. Jo Sale with the travel and her giggle is always a pleasure.
On the other hand, the repetition of the news and sport is a real pain. What annoys me most is when they're giving the same headlines in the evening that they were in the morning. You mean, nothing else has happened all day? Give me strength.
I have a long commute right now, and I've quickly exhausted my interest in my deliberately truncated CD collection. Playing to death is something I've always done, and everything I own is played to death or not worth playing. With the return of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (no, it's not very good), I tuned into Radio 4 for the first time in 8 years.
First thing you notice is the eery silence. Ooh, then someone speaks! FM has got a totally different sound to AM - and I've always preferred the mid-heavy AM band to the fake "warmth and quality" of FM. Still, I've taken to tuning in for the 6.30 comedy/entertainment slot, and on nights when the journey home takes longer, I even hear a bit of The Archers (and immediately recognised most of the voices - except, what happened to Shula?).
Last night, I was very late, and I heard the science strand and then a little bit of Melvyn Bragg on the history of ideas, talking about The Han Synthesis, which was utterly fascinating.
It's odd. It's intolerably smug and highly irritating in its presentation style, but you still end up with your general knowledge being boosted, and a developing interest in something you'd never thought about before. Which can't be bad, can it?
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, October 15, 2004
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