rashbre central: tuning in the shine on the light night dial

Saturday 7 December 2013

tuning in the shine on the light night dial

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Lurking in the garage of rashbre central is an old valve radio. It still gets used from time to time and despite its age it presents a very modern set of programming.

The reason I'm thinking of it right now is that I've been asked to take part in a survey.

I know...on the internet there's a survey every few minutes about things like amazon packaging, print cartridge selection, which mobile phone provider, the quality of the service from that small item retailer a few days ago, preferences in groceries, and so on and on.

I've improved my Spamsieve to the point where most of that stuff just runs straight into the junk folder.

This particular survey was intriguing enough for me to say I'll have a go. It's something to do with radio listening habits and run by Mori. They want to check what kind of stuff gets listened to in a week, both indoors and in the car.

I've completed the initial questionnaire and somehow need to keep track of what I actually listen to, starting on Monday. They have given me a handy logbook as well, although I can already predict parts of it.
  • A fair amount of Radio 4 (on DAB), but never the Archers. Mainly the Today Programme and PM. Various versions of the News and sometimes Parliament. Useful because it's a walking or driving type of programming content. I hardly ever use television for morning news.
  • Radio 6 Music (on DAB), random times of day and driving.
  • LBC (on DAB or FM, in the car): sometimes for news. Some of the chat shows go a bit extreme.
  • BBC World Service: Sometimes late at night.
  • Does Spotify count as radio?
  • Does Last.fm count as radio?
  • KFOG: the fog head station from San Francisco. Easy listening rock. Maybe this one will throw them off the regular stats? I've still got that little internet radio in the home office.
  • Other random internet channels from time to time.
And the one I still miss is Whole Wheat Radio, which used to be streamed from Jim Kloss and Esther Golton's log home in Talkeetna Alaska. I still have some of their live gigs from a variety of musicians recorded into iTunes and they pop up from time to time when I've got iTunes on shuffle.

The survey approach seems to just be interested in traditional channels.

Radio, car radio and 'online radio'. I wonder how it will delve into the mass customisation of music listening and the re-selection of prior programming through iPlayer and podcasts? It doesn't seem to handle that on the setup pages.

I'll have to wait and see.

Considering Kloss and Golton's Whole Wheat was from about 2003-2010, they had already found ways to break from commercial A,B and C list programming, and featured many CDs by emerging independent artists.

Of course, the commercial forces are not too comfortable with this wider and more multi channel listening and so we drop back to the same old stuff on many of the conventional radio channels.

I hope there'll be a few comment boxes when I do this survey.

4 comments:

Doris said...

You listen to a lot of radio. Even in the home? Good on you. There is something more participatory in radio listening than vegging in front of the TV. I am one of the latter and radio is a driving only activity these days.

rashbre said...

Doris Radio has that wonderful quality of not needing to be in one place all the time. Much easier to be doing something else as well.

Nikki - Notes of Life said...

Radio 1 at work (unfortunately!) and Radio 2 in the car.

Our home radio signal leaves a lot to be desired, but I will occassionally stick the TV on a radio channel to listen to.

rashbre said...

Nikki-ann Both R1 and R2 seem to have quite limited play-lists. I'm slightly surprised at the apparent demise of radio listening.

Jim Kloss Thanks for your email. As you say, Whole Wheat flew an excellent flag for independent artists. I hope a sensible operating model can be found somewhere based upon your vanguard work.