Hipster Brats

I think i've worked out what is wrong with Radio 1. The management recently made quite a noise about various high profile songs which were not playlisted including the media getting hot under the collar about snubbing Robbie Williams' comeback single "Candy".

Now as somebody who regularly works with Radio 1's target audience (11-18 year olds), they're making a mistake. Radio 1 should be playing almost everything which makes the top ten, regardless of how cool they think it is. Just because a group of hipsters from Shoreditch tells them it isn't relevant to them doesn't mean it isn't relevant to the rest of the country.

Radio 1 is ludicrously London-centric. Aside from live events which tour on a rota basis, ticking each box on the list, the station is heavily influenced by the capital. The presenters talk about London and rattle off anecdotes about capital venues and locations as if we all know where they are. This means very little to the average teenager from outside of the South East. I understand the economies of scale and consistency of product which benefits from having the whole station in one building, but it also makes it focused on one group of people and their tastes.

London is currently very much influenced by post Dubstep urban music and commercial teenybop, thus that forms the lion's share of the station's output. The station's obsession with One Direction leads to torrents of abuse each time they are mentioned on the station's Facebook page. On each week's playlist there will be the token rock or indie record and a couple of token dance records which are there to justify the existence of the daytime offerings against the likes of Capital, but there is no risk taking. New records will be branded as part of the "BBC Introducing" scheme.

The heavy playlisting means that presenters on the station are becoming increasingly less relevant. Listeners loved Chris Moyles because he dared to not follow the company line at times and would call something crap if he thought it was. Scott Mills is the only daytime presenter who will dare to criticise the music he plays and it'll be on a much lower key basis. Everybody else just sounds like a weak Media Studies graduate clone.