Domain remove BOOKCHEF

It is as if the seasons have shifted and the cold that would so often have been associated with the beginning of the year is now spread over the land in the sharp glinting sunlight of an earlier dawn.  Large clusters of snowdrops hang their heads under the trees and beside the hedges.  Sporadic daf…

Life without radio would be pretty dull, I reckon.  Thankfully, the research published today by Ofcom, assembled by Kantar, to fuel Government thinking on future commercial radio regulation, suggests much the same thing.   Kantar conducted lengthy focus groups and allied exercises with over 150 pa…

Even WH Smith suddenly seemed alluring today as I whiled away the windy minutes on the platform, awaiting the North-bound HST. Inside, I stared at a towering magazine rack from which I had the intention of purchasing absolutely nothing. I dimly recalled, however, that on one occasion, when trying…

A favourite song cheering a sullen moment in a grey teenage bedroom. This thing called radio. Hoping to hear the name of your school when the snow fell. This thing called radio. That birthday shout-out the day you were spotty sixteen. This thing called radio. The noisy album you won, aged 17, and w…

No no no. Why do so many ad copywriters and producers believe the tinny sound of talkback effects works in a radio ad campaign?  I've said it before - but now this new contagion of ads bearing such effects is getting me very, very annoyed.     I can think of no TV campaign which is similarly ob…

How on earth did this lovely, quietly mumbling man attract an audience of millions?   No teasing.  Little ‘sense of the day’.    No callers.  No stunts.  No giggling sidekick.  Not slick. No crazy competitions.  No showbiz.  Few weather forecasts.  Incestuous talk about his radio team.  Interminabl…

When Christian O’Connell began on breakfast across the UK, 86% of households didn’t have digital radio; the best-selling phone was a Nokia; and Mike Baldwin died. Ten years on breakfast is quite a landmark on any radio station, not least one in the aggressive London and UK market.   Congratulations…

For a while a buzzard has flown down from the nearby trees to stand in the field next to the cottage in which we are currently living.  It stands for some time surrounded by green shoots and surveys the world with sharp inclinations of its head; occasionally it will heavily hop a metre or two to ta…