Radio for people who hate thinking for themselves

Don't get me wrong, there have been some marvellous pop songs over the years. The problem i have with one particular broadcaster is that they only have a playlist of fifty of them.

Global Radio's "Hot Adult Contemporary" broadcasting arm is commonly known as Heart. One of their gormless slogans is "More Music Variety", which i think is supposed to be ironic. Sadly my workplace has certain areas where Heart can be heard 24/7 which means whenever you need to hear a song by Adele, you can always do it. If its not Adele, it is Kelly Clarkson's current carbon copy of Bruno Mars' "Just The Way You Are" (a Heart staple last year) which is titled "Mr Know-it-all". And if not that, Christina Perri and her wailing "Jar of Farts".

I lost it today during the barrel-scrapingly awful "Time Tunnel" guess-the-year feature, pioneered by Noel Edmonds and Simon Bates on Radio 1 and now copied by every creativity free ILR station in the country. The same six safe, tedious records from each year get trotted out each time. Perhaps it'll be George Michael's "Careless Whisper". Maybe we'll be treated to "Finally" by CeCe Peniston. Or how about another spin of Giorgio Moroder's "Together in Electric Dreams" with Phil Oakey out of off of the Human League. On their own, some of these records are bearable, but I just cannot percieve a point in my life where i would ever want to listen to such a boringly thin playlist. The output of Heart genuinely makes Radio 2's music selection seem edgy and challenging.

Then i start ranting, sometimes even out loud. I'll often comment that "Heart is radio for people who hate music", which i firmly stand by and nobody ever challenges me. It just seems to exist as a conduit for beige audio wallpaper, occasionally punctuated by Toby Anstis plugging some shithouse of a quiz where you have to guess the celebrity talking. You know, like EVERY other ILR has done since time immemorial. And of course the commercials, for the same eight products and services that the commercial department have convinced the managers thereof to purchase airtime.

Heart provides nothing to British radio. They've swallowed up over a dozen locally managed stations, some of which were better than others but they all had an identity that people in the region could understand and relate to. In their place they have provided a tedious, repetitive parade of weak features, repetitive commercials and bland presenters for people who have tedious, repetitive lives that they just want to get over as quickly as possible. So maybe i was wrong about Heart being for people who hate music; perhaps they hate life entirely.