The Death of Music Radio

Friday 27th September 2013 saw Radio 1 reach the conclusion of "Even More Music Month" which has basically seen a lot of hype and more Live Lounge performances than normal. The final day of this hype saw 12 hours (7am - 7pm) of music without any presentation from DJs, who were relegated to Twitter. During this twelve hours, a countdown of the most popular records (as voted online) from a shortlist of the 100 most played songs in the past five years on Radio 1, which is effectively those songs which have spent the longest on R1's underplaylist.

The twelve hours (aside from news broadcasts) were a succession of idents, branding and hype amongst the music, much like the ILR Jack FM does every day after their breakfast show. 

I believe there were two main purposes of this activity. The first was to establish the direction the mainstream music output should be taking on the station, finding out the most popular genres and artists and setting the direction of the station accordingly. 

The second is far more ominous. Bear in mind the constant political pressure on the BBC to reduce their costs and adapt their output, particularly on services which can be accused of being adequately catered for by commercial broadcasters. This was a trial to test the water for Radio 1 (or for that matter 1Xtra) being reduced to a jukebox offering, without the expense of having presenting staff to amuse the listeners between the records. 

You might think i'm being overdramatic, but this is a logical conclusion to the direction that commercial and public radio has been taking in the UK. All commercial radio groups have been reducing their staff numbers, networking shows and in the case of Jack removing presenters altogether. Removing presenters reduces the level of attention that the listener conciously pays to the station and also reduces the likelihood that the listener will turn off due to being annoyed by the presenter.

If you don't believe that commercial radio is moving towards just being a jukebox with adverts, just listen to Heart off peak. Over the course of an hour of the programme presented by Toby Anstis, he speaks for barely two minutes. Occasionally mentioning that you're listening to Heart, the records coming up and the ones he's just played. They are persistently reducing the level of speech heard and would probably remove presenters altogether immediately if Ofcom would allow it.

As such, the BBC has to follow the lead of the commercial broadcasters and at least trial the format which is likely to become widespread the next time Ofcom gets reorganised and the ILRs can make changes without anyone noticing. Because nobody will notice, least of all the listeners...