turn on, tune in
You’ll all already know that I don’t do facebook or twitter and my arrogant and/or ignorant stance was (smugly) confirmed the other day when I tuned into the morning’s Radio 5 phone-in where Nicky Campbell posed the question of what good has come out of the new digital age. The long and short of it was a big fat zero.
The massed throng of followers and believers (note the religious zealot-like connotation) bleated on continuously about ‘being connected and involved’ and about ‘reconnecting with people and personalities from their past’. What they failed to throw any light on was the nature of this communication and connection. Twitter and microblogging sites such as facebook are full of the banal and inane at best, and hateful bile at worst. The nature of their immediacy clearly avoids any level of contemplation and reflection and, as we are often told, once it’s out, it’s out there. The great many of the twitterati appear to say things on these sites they would never say to someone’s face, or even on the phone. I believe that on a blog, people think you have to be extreme and confrontational to be appealing and this constitutes a tangible mixture of aggression, sarcasm and abrasion.
My obvious ranting at the radio then made me take a step back and think. The radio, digital or otherwise, was actually conveying the argument to me in a far more gentle and polite manner than the mechanisms they were discussing ever could. Contributors were waiting their turn to speak, weighing their words and argument carefully, using please and thank-you conspicuously, and even accepting others’ points of view.
I personally have five radios in my house, one in virtually every room and when I’m in, at least one is invariably on. Furthermore, research now tells us that nine out of ten of us listen to the radio every week, with the larger BBC stations comfortably holding on to audiences approaching 10 million. And what about the recent figures, posted just the other week that showed the Today programme pulling in 7.1m, only 0.1m below that of Chris Moyle’s Radio 1 flagship morning slot? Audiences are booming but what is it exactly that has made the radio so durable, so resilient to new technologies and broadcasts?
Firstly it’s cheap – cheap to buy and enjoy and relatively cheap to produce and broadcast. Secondly, it’s simple and idiot-proof. It also engenders loyalty. Once hooked, we remain attached to the radio and its regularity; its rhythms, its voice. And don’t we just get so attached to the people who present it. I can still recall Brian Redhead’s deep resonance and clarity of view and woe-betide anyone who speaks ill of the tetchy and caustic John Humphrys. Radio is personal. It stops us feeling alone.
