The British Broadcasting Company was created as a mouthpiece for the UK government, to communicate radio messages to subjects across the
imperial Empire and beyond. Underpinned by a remit to inform, educate and entertain, the British Broadcasting Corporation, still rules today.

Although radio is free to receive, there is a mandatory charge for BBC TV, whether you consume its output or not. If your television has the potential to receive BBC programmes, you must pay the tax or face imprisonment; an anomaly in this age of consumerist choice.

With the break up of the BBC’s monopoly due to the birth of commercial radio in 1973, radio has evolved from the pirate stations to legalised AM output, on to FM and digital platforms, the Internet and streaming. Freedom has been curtailed through rigid scripting and the ‘better music mix’. Even playout systems have severed what was left of any individualism.

As for hospital radio (the lone bastion where you’d hear Montovani followed by Meatloaf), it too has been infiltrated by this strangulating technology and enforced networking. In the real world, competition for limited advertising revenue streams exerts pressure on the industry and the demise of the remaining few niche local radio stations is within sight.

Soon there will be a global ownership by the few of all UK commercial stations, as the elasticity of Ofcom relaxes and once rigid towers crumble, leaving radio consumers with a depressing diet of networked diatribe, the loss of direct listener contact that is cynically clawed at by the fresh-faced social media graduates.

The greatest irony in all this though is that radio owes its seemingly inevitable implosion to the BBC, which provides a refreshing yin to commercial radio’s yang, which counter the downward homogeneous trend. Thankfully.

Daniel ‘Gee’ Gleek – 2019

“Some years ago, that great sage and philosopher Tony Blackburn said, “When you read out a request or dedication, you’re pleasing one person and boring the nation”. Tone, I completely agree with that line of thinking. DJ interaction on air is vastly overrated and has now become an all-consuming obsession. Email, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc. It seems a lot of broadcasters need the constant reassurance that someone is actually listening. Most people in my view just want to be entertained and informed, without social media pressure.”

Peter Young (1951-2018)

For Chris Evans’s astute and prophetic take on the state of radio (made some years before the domination of the few radio groups), click below.