What's going in in the radio world? An anoraks view

Mike Brown's picture
Posted January 17th, 2009 by Mike Brown in
Paul Stellings at Vixen 101

Hello you!

Sometimes I think my heads going to explode with the stuff going on in there, so here's another blog so i can share some of it with you. This week, the weird world of the wireless!

First off, Vixen 101 hit the airwaves last Saturday bringing a mix of community news, local issues and music to Market Weighton and surrounding areas. At the moment, the station is broadcasting live programmes at the weekend and is preparing to build a full weekday schedule.

Good luck to me old mucker Paul Stellings, the stations founder, who even back in 1994 when I worked with him on hospital radio in Goole used to say that the area isn't served by existing services. It seems he has finally got his wish!

105.3 Seaside FM's Justin Macartney went to the launch and you can view his pics below:

Before leaving for work this morning, I heard John Prescott on the radio! Yes, the former deputy Prime Minister and East Hull MP was on KCFM. He joined Tim Jibson to give his memories of music from as far back as the 50s. I suppose it's something different, and up until me leaving the house I never heard him mention his book once, still there's always time!

In other news, The Local Radio Company, which owns various stations across the country, are to axe networked programmes. This means stations like Minster FM in York and Yorkshire Coast Radio in Scarborough will no longer share programmes which are broadcast from elsewhere in the country. Instead, each individual station will broadcast shows relevant to the areas they serve - great news all round me thinks!

Talking of networked programming, the commercial radio chart show hit40uk has dropped CD singles from its chart figures. The move come after it found that 96% of sales in the charts are downloads.

Maybe it's just me, but I remember the happy days of going out and buyinmg a Rick Astley record (yes, i did!) and knowing that it would count towards the chart and who remembers David "Kid" Jensen presenting The Network Chart Show? Things just ain't what they used to be!

Here's something else for you to ponder...

An online radio station in Basingstoke has had their website hacked by extremists.

Radio Basingstoke's homepage was replaced with chilling a picture of men in balaclavas carrying machine guns. Prior to this, the site was defaced with messages claiming to be posted on behalf of Ahmed Al-Qahtani, suspected to have been involved in the 9/11 hijackings. Then sinister images and messages by someone claiming to be a “Soldier of Allah” and “M03sl3mH4ck3rs” where displayed.

They called on God to bless “mujahidin” (Muslim fighters) and embedded a music file that played chanting. More disturbing messages, declaring “The victory is so near, and you the pigs and monkeys (Israelien/Yahudi) will see what the holocaust really means”, were also left on the site.

The owner of Radio Basingstoke has since upgraded the security of the site and has urged presenters not to change the playlist because “then these extremists will win”.

Scary stuff eh?

That's all for now, enjoy your weekend!

Mike.

Related links: