NOTE 1: This is an updated version of a blogpost I wrote a few years ago, the overall message remains the same, some extra information has been added in parts.

 

NOTE 2: Dex gets a little controversial in this post, please be warned, it might get a little ranty

 

When radio waves vibrated through the air in the 1970s and 1980s, listeners were tuned into a world of music spun from grooves etched in vinyl records, in the 1990's CDs led the charge towards the (then) digital future, and from the 2000's onwards radio is dominated by the now ever present MP3 or digital file.

 

The classic era on radio was marked by a unique warmth and depth in the audio quality that modern digital formats can struggle to reproduce. Yet, the shift from vinyl to digital hasn't only been a tale of technological advancement; it's also been a journey of overcoming challenges.

 

Playing vinyl on radio posed its unique set of obstacles. The most apparent was the physical handling of the records. Vinyl discs are susceptible to damage – scratches could introduce clicks, pops, or cause the record to skip, all things that I like to hear in my vinyl based radio show. Yes, that's right, I present a vinyl music based radio show, radio how it used to be. Whilst its true, surface noise, those little pops and clicks can be guilty of disrupting the broadcast but if you manage your track selections carefully, look after the records, the surface noise will be kept to a minimum.

 

One of the major challenges for playing vinyl on radio was, and still is the time-consuming process involved in cuing records. DJs have to possess a deft hand and sharp ear to cue up tracks correctly, often in rapid succession, a far cry from today's click-to-play convenience.

 

Digital though, has its own set of issues, digital files are ephemeral they can and do, get corrupted, hard disks fail, where ever they are hosted. No matter how good your backup systems are, files can be lost, and for all its convenience and cost-effectiveness, digital music has opened a Pandora's box of audio compression and sound quality debates. While some listeners might not notice, many argue that the rich warmth and subtleties captured in a vinyl groove often get lost in the binary translation.

 

The cost of acquiring music was, and still remains, a significant issue. Vinyl records, even back in the 1970's and 1980's, were pricier than their eventual successors, CDs, and the digital formats of today. It is a burden that has always affected smaller stations and independently produced shows disproportionately, making it difficult for them to offer a diverse range of music to their listeners.

 

However, I believe that visiting and buying from your local independent record retailer, rather than shopping at cut-price marketplaces like Amazon along with the ever growing marketplace for vinyl in the younger audience the price of vinyl will start to drop, as more and more pressing plants are brought back into service, as new modern energy efficient and "green" presses are manufactured by companies like Viryl Technologies Corp. - See the under development "Steamless" Press, and the rise in records that are being pressed from "re-grind", the vinyl that is cut from each record when the overflow is squeezed out, or when records are found to be defective they have the centers where the label is chopped out, and the record is ground to make pellets which go on to be made into new records.  This is a far cry from the 1980's and 1990's when records would be made from ground up other old or unsold records (usually into records that were extremely light, and thus floppy).

 

Over the last few years in the UK, and no doubt in other countries around the world, the commercial radio landscape has radically changed.

 

Local Radio, at least the style of local radio that I remember has all but vanished from the FM and AM airwaves, and with a DAB license being so expensive, and listenership being unreliably trackable, the real local stations don't really exist there either, so where has it gone? The answer is online! Online Radio Stations and independant show productions on Twitch.

 

Before the early 2000's the vast majority of local radio programming, truly was local, by local people, for local people, the main exception to this was the weekly Top-40 Chart, which was produced centrally or pre recorded segment by segment and distributed for broadcast.

 

Throughout the early 2000's I noticed that the station programming started to subtly change, it would become more and more "Network" and more Voice Tracked, (I'll explain Voice Tracking in a moment, read on). It would start with Breakfast, and DriveTime, these shows would generally become a Regional show, so multiple stations in Manchester, West Yorkshire, Birmingham, etc would have the same program, but with the station's own branding, or more often, it would be a Generic branding exercise for example "Your Local Breakfast Show" whilst this isn't too bad, at least from a listeners point of view, as traffic news and local news would generally be still relevant, I believe the acceptance of this by the listeners was the start of a very slippery slope towards where we find ourselves now. With the advent of the MP3 file (or digital formats in particular), and digital technology I suppose that the march towards centralised content was made easier, but I do feel that it has gone too far. Now some networks have "One presenter, Many stations", type Breakfast, or Drive Time shows, or "Breakfast with X and Y" and "DriveTime with A and B" and the presenters have to repeat what they say many times between tracks or miss sections out completely to keep to timings for news etc, these type of show are not radio, there's no spontaneity to it, and from time to time, you hear it in the presentation.

 

Local Radio was the breeding ground for New Presenters often in the "unpopular" or "graveyard" shifts but to a young DJ, that would never be a problem (I know if I had been lucky enough to have been offered one of these shifts in my youth, or even now if I'm honest, I wouldn't say no). These new presenters would then either disappear, or climb the ladder of shows, either in the same station, or move on to other stations, and occasionally even to one of the National radio stations, either BBC or Commercial.

 

Your local station used to be the go-to for local news and traffic information. Driving around the country, there are still many brown road signs, that say "Local Radio tune to xx.x FM" or "Local Traffic and Travel tune to xx.x FM" or something similar. I'm not crazy enough to say that ALL these stations have gone away, but I can say from experience that a vast majority of them have.

 

A little more about Voice Tracking ....

 

Voice Tracking is, without getting too technical, a procedure where a presenter effectively records the spoken sections of a radio show, and sends them to a radio station, with a list of tracks to play, and the station/s put the show together using the music in their libraries or even a centralised music library, shared by a network of stations.

 

So, I hear you asking "How did this happen?" well as far as I can see, from the outside, a few large conglomerates started buying local radio stations, for one reason or another, and with these acquisitions, they started wanting to bring the "Group Style" to the broadcasts, and creating a pseudo-national station.  Sadly, very sadly over time, these wonderful local radio stations, have been absorbed into a "Brand". I can see 2 major players in this market, and yes I know there are more, Bauer Media (Rayo), and Global Radio as far as I can tell are the 2 largest, certainly by weekly listener figures.

 

Why has it happened? In my opinion, this has happened for one reason and one reason alone. MONEY! The likes of Bauer, Global, and the other conglomerates that own many stations, want to save as much as possible and spend as little as possible. Every station that is in the local area requires a few things, and they all cost money but at what cost? we are losing our local radio landscape.

 

But, there is a silver lining to all this negativity of local radio leaving FM and AM, we can actually switch off these basically national stations in our homes and cars and instead tune into a mostly locally produced, locally presented Internet Radio Station. These stations really need your support. If you have some spare time, maybe you could even volunteer. You wouldn't have to necessarily be on-air talent, you may be a social media whizz, or be a budding show producer I'm sure many stations would be happy to talk to you about being able to help out in some capacity. Remember how some of the biggest stars in radio today got their break in Hospital Radio, local Internet Radio is the public's hospital radio.

 

We all know what these group stations are like, they all play the same 100 - 200 (approximately) tracks on random and repeat, all day, every day, these playlists are decided by a team in an executive office and then issued leaving the presenters little to no say in what is played. Of course, there is an exception to every generalised statement like that, and I accept that you will no doubt be able to name one, maybe if you're lucky more, in your local area that is such an exception.

 

I'll leave you with a quote from a great, no legendary broadcaster ...

 

Wasn't it the great, late John Peel who answered "Life has surface noise" when he was a listener / fan tried to tell him that CDs were better than Vinyl.