My friend Al posted this on Facebook this week; “It’s six weeks til Christmas. This is a good thing. You get days off work and presents and eat nice food and spend time with people you love. Six weeks isn’t that long. Here on Facebook, we often have to put up with people looking forward to their two weeks half board in Lanzarote for longer than that. So stop saying that it’s too early to look forward to Christmas, because you all sound really old.”

Al now has a radio station he’ll really love.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

WHO Automated
WHAT Smooth Radio Christmas
WHEN 21 November

0753 Greg Lake/I Believe in Father Christmas
0757 ID: Smooth Christmas. “You’ll never guess what’s next. It’s another Christmas song.”
Michael Buble/Jingle Bells

0800
ID: Smooth Christmas, an extra service from smooth radio. Generic cross-promo to Simon Bates on Smooth Radio. Sung Christmas jingle.
Elton John/Step Into Christmas
Gladys Knight/Do you Hear what I Hear?

0807
ID: Smooth Christmas, the extra service from Smooth Radio
Paul McCartney/Wonderful Christmas Time
Band Aid/Do They Know It’s Christmas?

SUMMARY

So Smooth Christmas is back for second (and final?) outing. Reading John Simons’s quote to Radio Today it looks like this is a Trojan Reindeer, designed to get some buzz around the Smooth brand, have some fun, and deliver some tag along listeners to the main station after Boxing Day. There are simple promos on Smooth Christmas making this connection.

The songs are bankers, and the imaging is perfectly acceptable. But based on a twenty-minute breakfast listening, this is … a cold, cold (Smooth) Christmas.

Christmas is all about warmth, and shared experiences, and friendship. So a stripped-back and presenter-less radio station has to work harder to make any more connection than a jukebox.

Some more production would help. A bit more audio graffiti to stoke the Christmas memories. Maybe some Christmas memories from the Smooth team? Even some light voice-tracking at peak to throw in topical Christmas content.

I’m no audio dweeb either, but on my trusty Evoke (Smooth Christmas is on D1 and online) , it wasn’t just the snow sounding crunchy. At 64k mono, you’re probably at the limits of what’s acceptable for a music station, especially one playing some crooners, ballads and classics.

The appeal, the purpose and the schtick of Smooth Radio Christmas is clear. A bit more audio wrapping would help it sound less like being handcuffed to a radiator in Clinton’s Cards.

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

[ First, a declaration of interest. I was Allan’s boss for six and a half happy years, and spent three hours a day in an adjacent studio to him for two of those years. I’m a fan.]

But as John Myers says in his book, Allan ‘was and still is the best I ever heard on a phone-in,’ I thought I’d use the internet to travel back in time and review one of those circa-1985 Red Rose Radio phone-ins to see what all the fuss was about.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

Beswick back in the Red Rose days

WHO   Allan Beswick

WHAT  Red Rose Radio

WHEN  1985 or thereabouts

Ow do Jimmy. Jimmy sings Blue Suede Shoes; gets to ‘Go cat go ..’ With perfect timing, “Don’t Worry. You’ve Gone.” 

Ow d- Allan Beswick you’re a fat get.

Ow do Michael. Ow Do Allan. Are you fat?

Ow do Roland. Yeeeeeeeahhhh (Roland Rat impression.) Cut off.

Ow do Neil. Hello, err, what’s blue and screws on a bin?

No idea. Ow do James.

“Good evening Mr Beswick”, starts James and asks why Allan doesnt feature Houghton Green very much.

We don’t disclude it. We just dont like to talk to pretentious, middle class weirdoes.

Ow do Eric. Eric starts an urban myth about giving someone a backy on his bike. Allan gets to the punchline quicker.

Ow do Geoff. 

My TV’s broke and I’ve been listening to you for the first time in a couple of years. It was interesting then but it’s degenerated since then.

Well, get off then. Ow do Lewis. Ow do Allan, could you do me a favour?

Yes (cuts him off). Ow do Jason. Jason makes a racist comment. Off.

Ow do Steven. Listen, you were just slagging off the Masons, is that right? Was I or wasn’t I? You were.

“Well, why ask me?,” asks Beswick, not unreasonably and continues, “They’re full of pretentious, jumped-up little nerds who are trying to look important.”

Rubbish, remonstrates Steven.

“They’re stuffed shirts! How would you know? There isn’t a babies’ section in the Masons, your voice at least has got to break, you gormless cretin. Go and do your funny handshakes.”

We’re two minutes in. Eleven callers down. Later …

Ow do Ronnie. 

There’s one or two things that you’ve said tonight.

Well pick the most important, and we’ll deal with that.

Well .. you can cut me off if you like but – (click).

Thank you. Ow do Bert. Hello?

Hello. Change of subject, Allan.

My colleague rang today to say we’d won a prize in the draw you had last night. Am I on the right programme?

I very much doubt it. I don’t have a draw.

It was Alan Bleasdale, I think.

Alan Bleasdale? Allan Bleasdale? He’s a playright.

I know that one yes. No? Nothing to do with you?

No. 

Sorry.

S’alright.

Wrong person. Can we go back to the operator?

What operator?

Your operator.

No. What do you want to go back to our operator for?

Then she can tell me where to ring up again.

You have me flummoxed. Has somebody rung you and said you’ve won a prize on Red Rose Radio? You’ve been had. One of your friends somewhere at this moment is now wetting themselves. It’s Bert the Berk.

Ow do Howard.

Alright Allan. Bloody Elvis. Pretty cool isn’t he?

No, he’s dead. Sorry, he’s pretty cool now I suppose .. 

Later.

Oow do Jackie

Hello Allan. Can you tell me… Are you as rude to your family and friends as you are to the people on the radio?

I don’t have any friends

Well, why do you criticise everyone who comes on?

Why not?

Well, do you think they’re all full of faults? Do you not think there’s anything wrong with you?

Think? I know there’s lots wrong with me. I don’t claim to be perfect. It’s others that put that cross upon me.

Well why do you try and put everyone down?

Why not?

Well it’s not very nice is it?

Well I’m not here to be nice.

Well what are you there for then?

I’m here for the money. What are you here for?

Well I don’t really know. I haven’t found out yet.

Right. Well I’ve got a reason.

I know but can you not be a bit nicer to everyone?

Why should I?

Well you’re not going to be very popular are you?

I’m not giving a monkey’s cuss about whether I’m popular or not. It’s whether I get the money or not. When the money stops, I’ll go home.

So that’s all you’re worried about then, the money?

You mean I should be worried about something else?

Well, it’s not very polite is it…?

Polite? Polite? what’s all this polite crap? Why should I start being polite?

Well, why shouldn’t you be polite?

Why not? I like what I do. I do it the way I do it. If you don’t like it, listen to summat else.

So you like being a horrible person do you?

I don’t like being a horrible person. I don’t dislike being a horrible person. I adore being me.

That’s the way you come out on the phone.

I don’t care. Your opinion, and everybody else’s opinion of me, is worth to me nothing.

Well what does your mum think about you?

My mum thinks I’m puddled.

Thinks you’re puddled? And what do your friends think about you?

I don’t have any friends.

Well why don’t you have any friends? Because you aren’t a nice person?

That may well be the case.

So you’ve no friends at all then?

No.

Oh, well that’s very sad.

I’m very pleased about that. I can’t be doing with friends coming round your house. Drinking your coffee. Eating your food. Attacking your earlobes. There’s nothing nicer than being alone. People are horrendous. They clutter up your breathing space.

So who do you talk to when you’re not on the radio?

I don’t wish to talk when I’m not on the radio. I talk for money.

(perfect pause) All right love. Thanks a lot.

(Chuckling…) It’s a pleasure madam, goodnight.

SUMMARY

Usually Listened In checks twenty minutes of output. The above is about five minutes of airtime. This wasn’t vintage Beswick, just a few random minutes someone recorded on cassette and posted on YouTube for posterity.

Clearly, it’s also still brilliant.

In his book, John Myers says gifted broadcasters are ‘as rare as a Salford virgin,’ and that Beswick should be doing phone-in, not breakfast. Believe me, I would love to have been the one who scheduled him on a couple of late nights a week – as well as Breakfast.

I wonder if the time is past, though, if we’ve moved on? The internet is where mad stuff happens now, and I suspect the smoothed-edges of the big brands, and the ever-twitchy BBC would require so much compromise that the real Beswick would be lost. After all, this is the culture where a couple of aggrieved listeners (or callers) can fan the flames online and become thousands of compliance headaches that would consume the station. It could also, suggests John, be massive. I guess  playing Maroon 5 instead lets managers sleep more easily.

But the campaign for more speech radio is gathering momentum. Again and again, Myers rightly makes the point it’s the stuff in between the songs that matters. James Cridland blogged about it with some salient RAJARs this week. And even if the well-intentioned people behind British Public Radio haven’t worked out how to pay for it yet, this is beginning to feel like an idea whose time has come.

[Thanks to gorkys6 for posting to YouTube and transcribing caller Jackie. There’s loads of old Beswick online if you want to hear him at work.]

And thank you, Beswick.

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

It’s the most famous news station in the world. And CBS unblocked the webstream to the world on Monday night as Hurricane Sandy lashed the Eastern Seaboard. We Listened In.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

WHO  Various

WHAT  1010 WINS, New York NY

WHEN  Monday 29 October 2012

2326 We’re midway through one of the station’s famous 20 minute news sequences. The anchor, Paul James is perfectly paced, a note of authoritative calm at the heart of the storm. He tells us the New Jersey governor is worried about people ignoring evacuation, calling them ‘stupid and selfish’. Mayor Bloomberg is happy with the NY evacuation. All the time, when the studio mic is live, the signature typewriter chatter effect is bubbling in the background.

To their reporter in Battery Park, Gene Michaels, “where it is black, and where the water is flowing.”

Gene tells us the water is now slowly receding, “which is the good news. When the floods showed up, Battery Park Island became an island itself, on an island”

Gene messes up his SOC, saying he’s “in Brooklyn – sorry, at Battery Park City”. Paul replies, “It happens, Gene .. dont worryaboudit,” transmitting respect, through a throwaway comeback.

More evocative reporting follows. There’s flooding on West Street and the streetlights are out. “Not that they need them unless boats are going through. Not that we’ve seen any boats, yet.”

Branches and trees are down, “there’s a lone ‘Citizens Voice’ newspaper box standing right in the middle of 7th Avenue.” “Speaking like a real news man”, replies Paul. “Looking out for the papers,” before changing gear in a beat for the sad job of running though the fatalities so far, including two children killed by falling trees in Salem.

2330. A relief presenter takes over for the second half of the belt. “We wanna begin with this important notice.” 1010 WINS becomes part of the story, as its mast is affected and it may need to move from 1010AM to 101.1 FM.

To Carl Lebinsky, Meteorologist. We’re still in high tide. Sandy is over Philadelphia and heading West. He delivers a credible and detailed forecast in twenty seconds. Ever heard a newsreader do that? Then does the usual handback.

“Paul?”
“Alright, Carl.”

Traffic next: “If you’re not a fan of the Lincoln Tunnel, here’s another reason you shouldn’t be driving tonight. It’s the only bridge/tunnel open right now ..”

2334 ADS

WINS news time 1134, and we’re taken live to Middletown NJ for a tight 30″ report. Again, informal, descriptive, efficient reporting. “Kinda scary out here. There’s streetlights out, shops closed, eerily deserted.” And there’s even flooding in Elizabeth upstate. Then back to the anchor for breaking copy, again, read without superflous drama. NYU Langone Medical Centre is being evacuated as the backup generators have failed. He then updates us on the “transformer explosion at Con Edison in Stuyvesant Town at 14th street – a spectacular blow out captured on video.”

1136 ADS

A copy update on outages. There are millions without powers in tristate area alone. We hear a list of electricity companies and number of customers affected. The storm is now “being blamed for at least 11 deaths, 5 in NY state, including a man in Flushing trapped under a tree that fell on his house. Officials are dead serious when saying stay off the roads.” All are closed in Nassau county except to emergency vehicles.

1140 ADS and RESET

ID: All news, all the time. This is 1010 WINS. You give us 22 minutes. We’ll give you the World.
“56 degrees and cloudy at 1141. I’m Paul James. Here’s whats happening.”

The segment opens with Carl the weatherman again. “Historical flooding on the waterfront …” Sandy is now downgraded from a hurricane “but still packing some gusts, as the storm unravels.”

Now. Expanded Traffic with Jonelle Crispin, who tells us this report is brought to us with Lakeland Bank, runs through the biggest issues then runs a short Lakeland ad read off the back.

ID: Great clips of storm action, and the VO: Tracking Hurricane Sandy. Complete storm coverage now. From 10101 WINS.

Back with Gene at Battery Park City : “There are people walking around, checking things out … one man said it blew his mind to look out of his window and see West Street flooded. A lot of that water came in through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel – or wound up there, one way or the other.”

2345 ADS

SUMMARY

As you’d expect from the outfit that invented news radio, this was a masterpiece. Perfect pace and credibility. Mature broadcasters at the top of their game, sensitively handling a massive story. Descriptive nuggets, telling the story and supplying public service information in a compelling way.

Even the sponsor messages, often delivered live, seem to cut through more (by being presented by the same voices) yet distract less.

There’s an economy of language, an informality, (a confidence?) that we never seem to match on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe because we lack a truly breaking news radio station, one that never stops. We’re always interrupting for sport, for ‘interaction’, for built shows, rather than just get on with the news, in bulletin form, every twenty minutes.

It’s a shame the stream is usually geo-blocked. 1010 WINS should be required listening for students of news radio – whatever their age, and however long their experience – the world over.

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

Juice Brighton have knocked out another format. On DAB and the Radioplayer, meet their well-turned out Grandad, Smile Sussex.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

Smile Sussex

WHO Automated

WHAT  Smile Sussex

WHEN  Tuesday 23 October

2005 Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye/Shirley Bassey

2009 ID: Smile Sussex. Smile.

You Go To My Head/Michael Bolton

2013 These Foolish Things/Buddy Greco

2016 ID: You’re listening to Smile Sussex. Smile Sussex. Smile (echo)

Sinatra/I Get A Kick out of You

2019 Lucky Charm/John Pizzarelli

2022 ID: Smile Sussex. Smile.

In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening/Dean Martin

2025 The Nearness of You/Sarah Vaughan

SUMMARY

This was a classy and unexpected mix of songs. It’s absolutely a tonal station. Strings Sussex would be a more appropriate name. Every song starts with one of those laboured string intros or the kind of plinky piano riffs that calls to mind a smoke-filled jazz club.

The imaging disappointed me a little. When you’re playing songs this beautifully produced (and old), your production should match. The station name doesn’t help. Smile, Sussex, SMILE! sounds like an order, not an invitation to relax. For a new station I was sampling for the first time, I would expect some kind of positioner or a promo for any more meaningful content – assuming there is some.

The WordPress website is clean and crisp and includes some interesting stuff about the music – but virtually nothing to help me navigate my new station.

The music is stunning, if you like that kind of thing. Imagine Don Draper’s iPod on shuffle. I just wonder if it’s enough. The older audience values company and connection. There’s not much of that in evidence.

But good luck, guys with the latest attempt to make the vintage format work. After all, if you can’t make camp, show-tunes and American songbook work on the Sussex coast with its massed hordes of grand-folks and gay couples, you probably can’t make it work anywhere.

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

This week, we watched a radio show. Away from the ‘ta-daa’ of the big-idea visualisations, a little Radio 4 business show is quietly getting on with showing how it could be done.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

Evan Davis in the Bottom Line studio

WHO Evan Davis

WHAT The Bottom Line

WHEN  14 October 2012

The Bottom Line is a business show on Radio 4. But there are cameras in this studio, and the resulting show can be seen as well as heard in various places, including the BBC News Channel at the weekend.

James Cridland blogs about it here and makes the distinction between ‘adding visuals to radio’ and ‘making television’ [out of radio]. This show is certainly the latter, but I would say it is the least affected by pictures of anything that’s gone before.

Evan starts each show on TV with a specially recorded into from the Broadcasting House roof terrace.

“Each week influential business leaders gather for the BBC Radio 4 programme The Bottom Line. And now you can see it, as well as hear it.”

A montage of Radio 4 crown jewels (shipping forecast, pips, Jeni Murray) against a fast cut images of BH introduces the show to viewers. Listeners get straight to the meat.

What strikes me about The Bottom Line is how even though it is first and foremost a radio programme, that makes the television better. There’s an informality about our medium, that survives the invasion of cameras into our space. It means the guests and presenter seem so much more, well, real. This was particularly apparent this weekend, when fellow Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden was a panelist, so you could make a real comparison between their television-television and radio-on-television personas.

In response to a point from venture capitalist John Moulton, Evan exclaims “God, that’s amazing isn’t it?” I suspect even he’d not be as relaxed as that if it was just on the junior medium of television. He rustles his paper, leans on the desk, runs a hand through his crop, his suit jacket wrapped around his chair.

Deborah, too, looks so much more natural in a pink top, without that bloody green jewellery and that thing she does with her thumb and index finger on Dragons’ Den.

David Haines is a cold fish, from bathroom fixture empire Grohe, stiff and uncomfortable, but even he thaws as we hear a remarkable insight into Evan’s bathroom. “Your taps and showers are very expensive, aren’t they? It is amazing when you fix up a bathroom, you pay one amount for the tiling and you think that’s quite a big number, then you find you’re paying a similar amount for the taps, it’s extraordinary!”

The always-good-value Moulton tells us that in companies that make quality products, executives “caress them rather more than they do their wives.” “Or more than they caress their husbands too”, corrects Evan. Sound Women would be thrilled.

Apart from the silhouette of a rather congruous music stand (Did Debra bring a trombone?) and a discarded PC keyboard in the talks table-well, it looks like the tidiest radio studio I’ve ever seen. Beautifully and simply lit with a blue wash and Radio 4 logo projected onto the wall, branded mugs in shot too, and microphones just visible enough to prove this is a radio show.

It makes you wonder why News Channel bothers with some of those other weekend specials. Like Julian Worwicker and Mark Kermode badly lit and awkwardly perched on swivel chairs, in a cavernous news studio, in front of a giant screen rattling through the week’s films.

In the week the always-reliable Earshot creative blogged about the influence of music radio on Heart and Capital TV, maybe there’s plenty more for television to learn from the techniques, immediacy and authenticity of radio?

Referenced at the Nextradio conference, and the star of a Social Media session at the last Radio Festival, just how good is 102.3 NOW! Radio from Edmonton. We listened in.

Listened In is 2ZY’s weekly air-check blog. Every week we listen to a random twenty minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

WHO Crash Carter & Mars MacDonald

WHAT The Crash and Mars Show

WHEN  1 October 2012

Crash and Mars

0826 Lifehouse/Hanging By A Moment

Back Announce. Girls are winning the ‘lowest man voice competition’. Brad on the South Side reckons Mars wins. “You guys are just croaking,” says Mars. “I am a woman with a man-voice.” They banter, each line getting deeper than the last. Pipes and vocal chords in the morning. Your voice kind of sucks. No it doesn’t Crash, you shut your pie hole.

“We have Rose hanging on here.” They chat to Rose. She does have an AMAZING voice. “Rose – you sound like Satan. How do you DO that?!” Hilarious caller. “Do you just use that for fun in the living room?” “I never found a Star Wars fan, says Rose. “That would get their light sabres turned on.”  Rose coaches Mars. Crash tries it. “You just sound constipated,” she reckons.

ID: Join the conversation. Now Radio.

0831 

ADS: Sobey’s Chicken. Wine and Beyond. Nomoredebts.org. Michael Hill Jewellers. Kings University College. Lifespan Treadmills. AMA Travel. Creekwood Chappelle development. Toyota 2012 Factory Event.

0836

ID: Now, the Crash and Mars Show.

More riffing on low voice contest. All the guys sounded like cowboys. Gonna have more fun with the deepest voice in town before nine. Meantime, you can sample my deep pipes. Then into a 90” parody song. Crash featuring Loon Dogg/You and my Canoe based on Maroon 5/One Night, which they play straight after.

ID: Text Crash and Mars. Join the Conversation. Now Radio.

Back Announces “Adam Levene in Maroon 5 ripped off Crash,” reckons Mars.

0841

Brief Traffic Read

ID: Join the conversation. Now Radio.

Still looking for the deepest voice. “A guy in the Guinness Book of Records just had the lowest voice. So low only elephants can hear it. So we’re looking for male or female deep pipes, this morning.”

“Line 5, wassup?” “Hello Baby.” “You kind of sound like Yogi Bear.” “Let’s do this one. How’s it going?” “How you doing?”, says a very deep voiced man. How high can you go? Well I dunno, says the guy, scaling a couple of octaves. “I feel I just spoke to three people,” reckons Mars.

ID: Join the conversation. Now Radio.

Carly Rae Jepson/Call Me Maybe

SUMMARY

There’s certainly something in the way that the callers and texters are just part of the format here. Inviting them in isn’t a big deal, it’s just what the station does. And it certainly works. The station is the number one FM in Edmonton from a standing start a couple of years ago.

But this 20 minute sample didn’t sound that dissimilar to Morning Shows around the world. Lots of interactivity. A parody song.  Dominated by a single idea, admittedly an entertaining one. Whilst the website aggregated facebook and twitter feeds, these were absent from this particular sample on air.

This is an interesting example of how embracing the audience can drive word-of-mouth sampling to a music format, and where it has become a differentiator. It will be interesting to see if stations here go as far. Certainly, a speech station that purely curated and gathered the best from the wires, social media, and its audience could be a fascinating experiment …

“Keep those emails coming. It is for some reason, apparently vital that you do,” as David Mitchell says in his take on interaction, here.

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

So this poor boy takes over from an eight-year legend, and everyone reviews him on day one? Not us. We at least waited until Tuesday.

Listened In is 2ZY’s air-check blog. Every week, we listen to a random 20 minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

Broadcasting House is Radio 4’s often surprising, always intelligent, but usually accessible news review on Sunday Mornings. Listened In checked out twenty minutes dominated by two human tragedies, at home and abroad.

Listened In is 2ZY’s air-check blog. Every week, we listen to a random 20 minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

Paddy O’Connell (Pic: BBC)

WHO  Paddy O’Connell

WHAT BBC Radio 4

WHEN  16 September 2012

0908

Two Way with Jonathan Beale from Kabul on NATO soldier attacks.

Perfectly measured update on the attacks. Two British soldiers were killed by a man wearing the uniform of the Afghan police. Description of the dangerous province where the killings took place. “What seems to have happened, and I’ve had this confirmed by two sources, …” is the kind of in-line that drips credibility. The man in uniform feigned injury. Troops came to his aid, and while they were doing that, he opened fire, killing them both.

Paddy comes back with the great question/statement: “Away from that statistic, is the question of trust, eroded with each new report.” Jonathan follows up with what is being done to improve security. Training the security forces “.. is NATO’s ticket out.” In one training base in Kabul, every month they’re training 7,000 new members of the Afghan army. And the vetting so far has largely been on the word of tribal elders.

0910

Paddy transitions between stories. “We’ll return to events back home today …” and preparations for the Anfield meeting of  relatives of the Hillsborough 96. Summarises the Hillsborough news of the week, adding that “the Prime Minister apologised for the “double injustice of football fans being blamed for their own deaths.” Michael Mansfield QC is on the phone and discusses the legal way forward for those families. Responsibility has been ‘barely touched upon,’ he says. The state is revealed to have taken part in a form of institutional cover-up, suggests Paddy.

0914

But this segment really opens up when the show gives thirteen minutes to a simple interview. Paddy talks to Tony Edwards, the ambulance driver who drove onto the pitch only to find none of his colleagues were allowed to follow his lead. He is a listener to the programme, and this is the last interview about Hillsborough he says he’ll give. A chilling segment of commentary from that terrible afternoon sets up the conversation.

After being waved onto the pitch, “the assistant chief ambulance officer got cross. He said he didn’t give a – well, I can’t say the word on radio – he was telling us not to go on the pitch … but we could see there were … err, you know, one in particular young person on a billboard being carried by other people.”

Simply, softly, from Paddy. “In fact, you were overwhelmed,” is a great example of a respectful, simple question that drives the story forward.

Tony talks of how he never took the line of the ambulance service, or the Taylor enquiry, “and now when you say it, people believe you … there was no difficulty getting onto the pitch … They abandoned me. They started a rescue operation … absolutely the right thing to do. What was wrong was to send me onto the pitch without any support.”

Another brilliant Paddy interjection. “What you mean is your vehicle began to be piled with bodies. That’s effectively what you’re telling me?”

The horror of the afternoon is evident in the conversation, without any kind of glorification. But there is also hope. This is a man on the periphery of this tragedy – he lost nobody close to him – but it changed his life forever. He moved to Bute to be away from the post-traumatic stress of that afternoon. “I lost some of my marbles. But I didn’t lose a loved one … For the first time in 23 years, I can see there’s an end to this. For the first time … nobody can say weren’t they all drunk, or weren’t they all fighting because that has been totally dismissed.”

Paddy: You wanted to make allegations of a cover up. And now the whole world sees there was a cover-up. Tony’s voice trembles as he remembers. “The rescue effort was started. But then the rescue efforts was stopped. Somebody took the decision to stop that.”

We smell of Kouros, promises (threatens?) Free Radio 80s’ Facebook page. We’ve already Listened In to Nation and Absolute’s 80s brands so this week we go for the hat-trick. Not that we smell of Kouros too or anything ..

Listened In is 2ZY’s air-check blog. Every week, we listen to a random 20 minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

WHO  Tim Disney

WHAT  Free Radio 80s

WHEN  11 September 2012

1608

Human League/Mirror Man

LINK: Non stop 80s, it IS Free Radio 80s. Was reading in the Birmingham Mail, The Human League are coming to Woverhampton Civic Hall. Another anniversary tour, 35 years of Human League, then Madness in December. Very excited. Looking forward to seeing Human League in Wolverhampton. Cyndi Lauper on the way, after Rufus and Chaka Khan. Free Radio 80s.

Rufus & Chaka Khan/Ain’t Nobody

1615

ID: Only the 80s. Free Radio 80s.

Cyndi Lauper/I Drove All Night

LINK: All 80s, All the time, it’s Free Radio 80s with Tim Disney. Music on the way from a man who’s making a comeback with his new single White Light, George Michael. Since he had pneumonia, he says he’s living in the moment, not in the past. Music from Wham on the way after the Police.

Police/Every Breath You Take

1623

SWEEPER: Reliving the best years of your life .. We are Free Radio 80s.

Wham/Wake Me Up Before you Go Go

1627

LINK: (over ramp) “It’s Tim Disney on the Drive Home where we also talk sport.” Then throws to the Goal Zone.

TRAVEL

SUMMARY

All eighties, all the time. Unless we’re doing football.

This was a good sweep of 80s tunes with nothing to frighten the horses. Tim Disney hopped over from FM to voice-track this with energy and interest.  Nice George Michael and Human League references stopped this being a ‘that was, this is, could have been recorded weeks ago’ bit of automation. The same automation that crashed a bit around the traffic, Wham running under the ramp. Loved the dry humour of a radio station celebrating the music of thirty years ago, warning against living in the past.

Songs from 81, 83 and 89 (x2), and very much in the Venn diagram between Full-Fat Free Radio and this AM/DAB alternative, in terms of tone.

Facebook needs a bit of work, and the whole station only gets a tab on the main Free website, but it’s certainly a more contemporary and complementary listen than Gold.

Where will the 80s turn up next?

You can also read 2ZY Listened In as part of Radio Today’s eRADIO newsletter every Wednesday. To subscribe, just go to radiotoday.co.uk/eradio

“Sadly it seems we’ll be getting a Devonwall mush.” So says Alex Folkes, Cornwall Councillor for Launceston Central. One man’s ‘Devonwall mush’ is another man’s ‘broader regional perspective’ (c) Global Radio. Daggers are drawn over the proposed loss of a local drive, in what was Atlantic, and is now Heart Cornwall. So is it worth the fuss? We tuned in.

Listened In is 2ZY’s air-check blog. Every week, we listen to a random 20 minute sample of a station or programme in the news.

All the same, isn’t it?

WHO  Victoria Leigh, I think. She never said, so that’s from the website.

WHAT  Heart Cornwall