always listening in

I found myself in the unfortunate position last Friday of having nothing to do. I thought ‘I know I’ll turn on the Radio’ - I listened to Radio 1 for a while, then XFM, then GWR, then Bath FM. The one thing they all had in common? “It’s party night on [insert station name here]”.

I don’t know about you but if I’m in alone on a Friday night the last thing I want to hear is the latest uplifting party tunes from some overly excitable DJ. I want something chilled and relaxing, not something reminding me that I’m really sad and want to stay in on a Friday.

This got me thinking, how many people actually listen to these kind of shows? So I asked people I know in the industry. And guess what? Almost nobody. Between 6pm and about 8pm, before people go out, listener figures are pretty good. After 8 the figures take a nose dive; nobody is listening. I can’t seem to figure out why they insist on running these shows after 8 rather than playing something a bit more laid back.

• Does anybody out there have an insight?
• Do you listen to Friday night “party” radio? (Is anybody actually going to admit to this?)
• Leave a comment

The Reith Lectures are one of the highlights of BBC radio broadcasting.

In this year’s Reith Lectures musician and conductor Daniel Barenboim discusses the interplay between music and society.

Broadcast: Fridays at 9am, 7 April to 5 May. Best of all they are going to podcast it.

• BBC Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2006

The Mighty Boosh have just announced another Bristol date to their sell out tour. Nothing has been announced on the Boosh website but the Colston hall are listing the event.

If the last set of dates are anything to go by they’ll sell out pretty damn quickly so get ‘em while you can.

Saturday 15th April @7.30pm at the Colston Hall.

• Colston Hall - The Mighty Boosh

Radio One has just launched Musicubes.

The block on the left there (my musicube) is made up of my prefered music genres. Hover your mouse over each coloured block to preview.

It seems to be a pointless but pretty widget and a nice way of driving more people to the Radio One site.

Picture the scene; I get home from work late after a bad day. Feeling tired and low I tune in to Radio 4. Imagine my surprise when I hear Count Arthur Strong’s Radio show. Instead of the usual six thirty comedy I hear some variety show out of the 1950’s. Confusing, unfunny, clichéd rubbish by someone pretending to be some has been variety star and what’s worse? It’s on again next week.

Come on Radio 4 get him off air now!

Did anybody else hear it? If so tell the world what you thought.

The Engadget podcast is going from strength to strength. The gadget and technology site has recorded record listener figures - so if like me you have the geek gene and know your Origami from your video iPod you’re sure to love it.

• Engadget Podcast

The Beeb have introduced a couple more podcasts. Simon Mayo’s 5 Live show and the very entertaining Sunday morning show Broadcasting House have been added.

Interestingly a section has been added for BBC2 podcasts - looks like the Beeb may be setting up some companion podcasts to popular shows. I’ll keep my eye on what’s happening and post if something is added.

• BBC Podcasts

This looks good, coming up next Monday at 11 am on Radion 4:

It is 20 years since the first computer virus appeared. Now experts estimate there are 115,000 viruses at work on the worldwide web, with 2000 new ones being added to the internet every month. Quentin Cooper investigates their impact and discovers how antivirus companies are battling to beat them.

• Virus Wars - Radio 4 next Monday

There seem to be a lot of online radio stations out there as well as music recommendation sites (Last.fm, MusicStrands, etc) but until now nothing that combines the two.

Pandora is a personalised radio service that takes an artist or song you like and it generates a station of music that is related and supposedly similar. The songs it suggests can be rated - if they don’t match your selection it stop relating it to your original choice - which in theory means that the more people using it the better it’ll get.

It’s heavily American focused meaning there’s far too much crappy soft rock but the more you persevere with it the more it learns what you like. Typing the Artic Monkeys the first thing suggested was the LA Guns (a awful 80s soft rock outfit) but later on I got some good Henry Rollins and Screaming Trees.

There’s no advertising at the moment but no doubt they’ll be some very soon - let’s hope it’s text ads on the screen and not audio ads as part of the stream, one of things that puts me off other streamed suggestion music players.

• Pandora

I’ve just heard the sad news about Linda Smith.

She was by a long way the best thing about many Radio 4 comedies - Just a minute will never be quite the same again.

• Linda Smith tribute on BBC news

Taken from their Saturday show on XFM.

• Adam and Joe MP3s

They talked on their show a few weeks back about doing a podcast, Adam mentions it on his site. They finish the current run of show in April and hopefully something will come of it after that.