Spooky stations
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The unmistakable sound of someone being sick in a toilet.  It’s not the most attractive sound, but one which sensible late night disc jockeys at Nottingham’s Radio Trent claimed to hear in the depths of night, when alone in the station’s 1794 building. That was just one of the odd things reported f…

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What future for the radio news bulletin?
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News bulletins have adopted much the same production recipe since 1922.   Whether the 6.00 immaculately-presented nightly feast on BBC Radio 4 or the hourly juicy snack on much commercial radio, maybe smothered with a funky bed. Arthur Burrows, who delivered the first ever newscasts on a dark Nove…

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How old are the best presenters?
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I was 19, a spotty young presenter with straggly hair and a long duffle coat.  My then Head of Programmes peered over his large desk, before pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and concluding one of our rare coaching sessions with the remark: "You won't be any good as a presen…

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The best radio is a simple one
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I was delighted when RadioPlayer's talented Mike Hill stoodup at the Next Radio conference , armed with a yummy cake his wife had baked for him, to illustrate how complicated the current generation of radios are.  He said what I had thought for some time; but expressed it better. Radios are get…

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I hope one day this will be a fond piece of #radiomoments history. It is the ends of three ads from the same ad break today. Under UK laws and restrictions, ads are currently required to carry all manner of disclaimers. The idea is that they protect consumers. They truly do not. Anyone who unde…

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A Very Good Morning to You
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“And a very good evening to you”.   It’s not a phrase anyone uses in real life.  It’s particularly odd when a major BBC TV news bulletin starts with those words, just after we've witnessed dark images of death and destruction around the World.  It’s even odder when those pictures are as truly a…

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