always listening in

Slightly older story here about Robot DJs being the new thing in radio. Bit a funny idea if you ask me, still it’s probably better than you average GWR DJ.

Lovely radio from Flikr

Just came across this nice little search engine for Podcasts. There’s even a little widget to preview the podcast. Very clever.

• podscope

I keep catching parts of Adam and Joe’s XFM show on Saturday afternoons. It really is the best thing I’ve heard on radio for a long time. Fantastically funny chat and really stupid stuff as well as a great competition make it a joy to listen to.

You can hear Adam and Joe on XFM every Saturday from 1pm - 3pm.

• Adam and Joe’s XFM show

I’ve been listening to Radio 2’s Ultimate Music Year and what a treat it has been. Hosted by Simon Mayo and featuring Andrew Collins and others nominations were made for the best music year of the past 50.

Fantastic music throughout and great discussion, a real radio treat. And best of all my favourite year was voted the best - 1967.

• The Ultimate Music Year on Radio 2

Found this on Flickr.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a few weeks now - Tom Coates of plasticbag fame has been blogging about the BBC annotatable audio project. The widget being produced will allow text comments to be added to audio, so if say you were listening to an item on the Today programme you could comment on that article and people using the BBC radio player can then see your comment. Other stuff can also be attached to each segment such as transcripts, contact details etc.

Sounds like a great idea, digital TV has transformed how information can be delivered about a particular TV show and radio would really benefit from something similar.

Listening to XFM’s movie programme on Sunday afternoon it really hit me how much better the BBC does film reviews than commercial radio.

Paul Anderson does an admiral job for XFM but never really gets to heart of what makes a good film review - if a film is rubbish saying that it’s rubbish. The temptation for film reviewers to always be positive about the crap Hollywood puts out must be huge, after all, most new films are pretty awful. I’m sure managers in commercial radio don’t want their show to be too negative, after all commercial radio is a ‘happy’ place. Broadcasting a movie review programme that is pretty much negative most of the time wouldn’t fit with a stations image.

Contrast this with Mark Kermode on 5 Live - I’ve talked before about how much I love listening to his reviews. He always says if a film is a turkey, most weeks he struggles to say almost anything positive which is really refreshing. Now if I go and see a film I really know what I’m letting myself in for.

I found myself listening to Sarah Cox’s Radio 1 show last Saturday afternoon. The host was away and in here place were Chappers and Dave who were very funny - I haven’t enjoyed a Radio 1 show so much for a long, long time.

Roll on the day when Chappers and Dave get their own show.

I had a bit of moan about Boothby Grafoe about a month back and he’s repsonded - seems the poor guy is very angry:

no, joe, it’s not just you, it’s countless others like you who have nothing better to do than moan about stuff that in the grand scheme of things mean about as much as you. But there’re countless others again who like my work, and to be honest so what? Try to relax, mate. If you want to write letters U Win Tin is in gaol in Mayanmar for no particular reason, you could write to them and ask if he could be let out. I’m glad I irritate you. It’s wot I was born to do you pointless, thoughtless, talentless wanker.

sincere regards,

boothby graffoe

Seems I’m not the only one who who doesn’t rate his stuff much:

Joe

As it happens I agree with you here. I love Radio 4 comedy on the whole- some of it is utterly brilliant (the Boosch, the Consultants, Dead Ringers) but like you I feel that Boothby Graffoe has more of a “radio 2″ feel about his humour. I didn’t find his reply to you very funny either.

GRL

I’ve been listending to Mark Kermode’s film reviews from the podcast for the last couple of months and they really are fantastic. Often Mark’s reviews are actually more entertaining than the films themselves.

• BBC - Five Live - Mark Kermode’s film reviews

Yahoo! have just announced a new podcast directory - parts of it have a passing resenblance to 43 Things.
It’s very American in focus but it looks like it has some interesting stuff. It certainly is easier on the eye than ipodder or Podcast.net.

• Yahoo! Podcasts

I don’t know if anybody else has noticed the strange occurrence on BBC Radio 4 news. The news readers all seem to pronounce any year from the century, well, strangely.

Whereas most of us would say Two-thousand and four that isn’t good enough for Radio 4. No they insist on twenty-ohh-four. What’s the problem I hear you ask? The major problem I have is that I have to think about what year they are referring to. I don’t want to spend my precious brain energy having to figure out the year - I want to be able to concentrate on the news.

Radio One have just announced that October 13th will be the first John Peel day. Myself I can’t wait I loved John Peel and the though of hearing hime again on radio really makes me happy. Something to really look forward too.

Yahoo! have just launched a beta of their audio search tool and it’s lookinglike it caould be really useful . It searches all the major download sites as well as the web. I’ve only had a couple of plays with it and found some Radio 4 comedy I’ve not heard before.

My only concern is around copywrite - the limited searches I did found copyright material on personal homepages let’s hope that the legal firms of the big record companies don’t find out about it, they’d have a field day.