BBC Trust to be scrapped?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmcumeds/315/315.pdf

 BBC Trust to be scrapped?

The days of the BBC many be numbered, if the proposals in a Report by the Select committee  of the Government's DCMS  come to fruition.  The 166 page report suggests that the Licence Fee would be dropped in favour of a household tax  which gets spent on public service programming from a variety of sources. 

“We recommend that a new Public Service Broadcasting Commission (PSBC) be established with the role of scrutinising the BBC’s strategic plan, assessing the BBC’s overall performance, and determining the level of public funding allocated to the BBC and to others,” say MPs in the Report. 

Further debate and investigations will continue in a wide reaching consultation of how the BBC might best be organised. 

As predicted the commercial radio industry have welcome the report:  “The RadioCentre welcomes the findings of the new Culture, Media and Sport Committee report that the BBC does not need to provide ‘something for everyone’, particularly in areas that are already well-served," said Siobhan Kenny, the CEO of the RadioCentre. 

The report envisages opening up the BBC to more  independent production companies and putting an end to the 'in house' guarantees that keep much of broadcasting a closed shop to BBC staff employees.  

The Radio Independents Group  welcomed the move -  “The committee has taken a balanced and informed view in many areas. We welcome such aspects as: general support for competition in programme making; support for a continuation of the Licence Fee, including its possible use for wider industry training; and greater transparency including in-house production costs."

“We also welcome the committee’s statement that the BBC ‘must develop a more equitable commissioning and business strategy that fosters cultural variety and spreads its activity, as far as possible, across the country’. To achieve this the BBC needs to introduce much more competition for ideas in radio so that audio indies, large and small, around the UK have a greater chance to compete to make radio programmes”.

Any changes are envisaged at the next charter renewal, in 2016.  

The Report of the Select committee can be read here:

Whats next for radio?

What's next for radio?

As the UK lumbers along with its early 1990s technology, DAB, there may be one solitary development. An applicant for the next chain of national DAB franchises has promised that PART of the peace will be used for the much newer DAB+.  Thats the method of transmitting radio stations that the rest of the world uses - you get better quality and more stations, but even that seems about to be replaced by newer technology.

There have been suggestions that all terrestrial radio is obsolete, and that satellite delivery will be the future source. Well, they have been saying that since the 1980s, but so far no satellite-only radio service has ever looked like breaking through in Europe.
In the USA they have SIRIUS, which is a bouquet of satellite channels. It worked in many of the far open spaces where you couldn't get many regular radio stations. Sirius offers 80 or 140 channels, but at a price. Its a new radio and either $15 or $20 a month. A rival network (XM) was readily absorbed into Sirius and they now have 21 million paying subscribers.  It wouldn't work in Europe, especially the UK, as most of the US is a lot further south meaning it gets a stronger signal from the satellites. The UK is too far north to get reliable signals from geostationary satellites in cars.

Web Radio
Some have suggested that we might get all radio in future via the internet. Here the sheer capacity, or rather lack of it, of the UK networks is the big obstacle.  In the rest of the world the word 'Superfast broadband' now means 25MB or faster, but in the UK the IPs sell us a 12 MB service and call it 'superfast', which it isn't!

If you take the entire UK broadband networks and use them for radio, the amount needed wouldn't cope at the off-peak times of day, and at peak radio listening time (generally around 8am) it would be overloaded by a factor of 7. Thats just for those listening at home - in cars there is some limited (and in most places, VERY limited) internet capacity  available.  The radio stations doing well on satellite currently will agree that at times internet capacity can barely cope, so the idea to move radio across to that as a medium re just being unrealistic.

Radio on mobiles

4G is barely readable in city centres, and very hit and miss in the suburbs. In the countryside its just non-existent. I live on the edge of a 500,000 population urban sprawl (called Hull) and can't get a sniff of the 4G, which is less than 5 miles from me - I can see it if I stand on the roof! My 3G service (from O2, which I would suggest avoiding at all costs) is not much better - intermittent upstairs, and barely seen on the ground floor - and I'm 140 feet asl. I would dread having to rely on our solitary monopolistic internet provider for my radio services - my service drops to a crawl of about 1MB for hours around this time of day, although they have tantalisingly been promising us fibre for the last three or four years.

Apple launched iTunes Radio over a year ago but it still hasn't made it to the UK. I keep hearing whispers they are planning to make it even bigger by having SPEECh content, that goes with the music.  This may well be so as in the last few days Zane Lowe has left Radio 1 to join them.  One of the best New Zealand broadcasters we ever got in the uK, maybe he will steer them to huge success with iTunes Radio?

It seems that we had better stick to regular ether airwaves for now. Some say the FM band is closing in 2015, but these are the same guys who produced that satellite would take over all radio about 30 years ago.

I will bet anyone that we shall still be listening to FM radio stations on the same FM radios in at least 2020, probably much further beyond.  Short Wave and Medium Wave will still be there too, so don't be panicked into buying whatever the industry pundits try and force on you.

When you know what makes a radio tick, you'll buy a Bulova! 

BBC ends coverage in Eastern Mediterranean

BBC ends MW coverage

 in Eastern Mediterranean

The BBC World Service English is to end medium wave radio services to the Eastern Mediterranean area on 1323AM. The service is widely heard across the Middle east, Turkey and North Africa.

Director of BBC World Service, Fran Unsworth, says: “Our English language service will still be available via satellite and on the internet – which is increasingly how our audiences tune in. However, we cannot identify a financially viable method by which to continue the medium wave radio service. It is for this reason that we have decided to end these transmissions.“

The 1323 AM service has been the 'Voice of Britain' since the 1950s, when it was built by the 'Diplomatic Wireless Service' to broadcast the UK's point of view after the BBC rejected UK Government statements as propaganda.

Latest UK Radio listening figures

The latest radio listening figures for the UK for the last 3 months of 2014 show that 89% of the population are regular radio listeners, tuning in for an average of over 21 hours a week. BBC Radio 6 has over 2 m listeners, putting it above BBC Radio 3. 

Radio 1 lost listeners again; total BBC Radio reach is 35million, or about 53% of all listening. Radio 2 attracts over 15m listeners and Radio 4 10.75m.  BBC Radio 5, without any FM outlet, is still reading over 5.5 million listeners each week, while the BBC;s top Breakfast shows are Chris Evans (9.6m) and Radio 4's TODAY programme (6.7m) 

The top private station in London is now Kiss FM, ahead of the long time leader Capital, which is now networked around the UK.  
BBC Local radio now reaches just a shade under 9 million, considerably down on its peak of 9.3m reached last year. 


Meanwhile the BBC Trust has begun its latest review, looking at the speech radio stations provided by the BBC. The review will mainly look at Radio 4 and Radio 5. Its part of a rolling programme whereby each BBC service is reviewed at least once every five years.

The weekly record chart show

The Weekly Chart Show - still relevant?


I never expected to be still checking the weekly music charts. While its become fashionable for guys my age to knock current music, I find that my music taste still cover a wide gamut of genres, though mainly funk ad rock, anything energetic and well produced actually!

Until recently I used to excitedly sit and listen to the countdown of the new singles chart each Sunday teatime. The decline in presentation standards has spolied that period of radio for me, but I still grab a copy of the new chart around 7pm each Sunday, to see who is doing what.

The album charts have never interested me much - for many years in the 60s it seemed like the Sound of Music was No 1 forever, so I became more interested in the singles chart. I never really found 40 minutes to listen to an album in its entirety, three minutes is quite long enough for some tunes!

If YOU have fallen out of syn with today's music charts, but still like to have a very quick glimpse of the what's new, we will let you know what's No 1 in singles and albums, what's storiming up the charts, and what's new and expected to be a big hit soon.

Are you still interested in music, or has much of it lost its attraction for you? Do you still buy music, as CDs or downloads?   I'm very interested to hear.  Drop me a line HERE and let me know.

Until next Monday

            Click any song title to access the number in iTunes

UK SINGLES

1. Changing,       by SIGMA 
     f  Paloma Faith
 This has toppled last week's number 1 (Blame by Calvin Harris) by storming up the charts 115 places

Professor Green is at number 4 with Lullaby. Pharrell Williams single Happy has moved one nich higher this week; its 44 weeks in the Top 40 now, thats just six weeks off a year stay. Totally Amazing!

UK ALBUMS Chart
1. No sound without silence  SCRIPT
  First week in the chart, but close behind is  Barbara Streisand's new album 'Partners'    while the new CHRIS BROWN album is just a couple of places behind her.




Paul's Blog is published Mondays,

British Food & Drink reign supreme

British Food & Drink reign supreme

(two of my favourite subjects!)

The latest dining out survey shows that British Food is still then nation’s favourite. The result came from a survey by Travelzoo conducted last month.  While British diners like to think they are adventurous when choosing a dining out destination, the fact remains that there is still genuine affection for British Food.

Olde English Bangers & Mash

with crispy onions & red wine gravy

courtesy of 3663 

Here are the Top 10 cuisines 
as found in the UK Travelzoo Survey, 
published this Autumn.

1. British
2. Indian
3.  Italian
4.  Chineses
5. Gastro Pub
6. Thai
7. American
8. Mexican
9. French
10. Sushi /Japanese 

Of the British dishes, Fish and Chips is joint first with the traditional Roast Beef, with Bangers and Mash, Cornish Pastie and Meat Pie close seconds.  

Pork is also increasing in popularity, perhaps as it is such great value for money, but lamb has been pretty absent from restaurant menu for four years now, perhaps due to costs?

In the survey, over two thirds of respondents to the survey said they tend to choose a favourite local dining out destination most of the time.  The majority of diners tended to travel less than twenty minutes  to their target restaurant, although in London they usually travel much longer. Younger diners tended to eat out more often than senior citizens.

In the drinks market, beer sales continue to fall while wines, and especially sparkling wines, are growing. They are showing a 20% growth in the lst quarter, largely due to the hot dry summer.  Despite the so called recession, Champagne sales are up 9%. The Wine and Spirits Trade Association says this is due to the alcohol duty freeze in the last budget (when the Chancellor chose to freeze the duty on spirits and cut beer duty).

In 2013, ciders outperformed the beer market and wines and spirits too, with a 4% increase in ‘on trade’ sales.  Premium ciders are now accounting for a third of all sales, well up from 20% the previous year. Fruit ciders show a massive growth accounting for 47% of packaged  product, although apple-products still accounts for 97% of the market.  Specialist or craft ciders are also showing a surge in popularity, accounting for 18% increase, a 28% surge in value.

Alcoholic Ginger Beers too have had a surge in popularity. Flavouring food with ginger beer began around 50BC in India, but was first brewed in Yorkshire in the 1800s. It became very popular all over the English speaking world in the early 1900s in the mid 20^th century was common drank mixed with lemonade.

A small Scottish company John Crabbie’s of Edinburgh has been producing alcoholic ginger beer since the early 19^th Century, but it was bought out by the Glenmorangie Distillery. When the brand was sold to Halewood  International  in 2007 and they have promoted and marketed Crabbie's very keenly ever since. Crabbie’s now sponsor the Grand National festival.

The latest trend is SPIDERS, which are spirit based ciders. They are still a new phenomenon but there has been quite a buzz about them among younger drinkers. 

The big buzz spider of the summer has been amaretto favoured cider, Alcoholic cider is frequently lauded for its crisp taste, but Orwell’s new amaretto - flavoured cider tops that. The new drink is  described as offering a “refreshing blend of amaretto notes and a fruity hint of cherry paired with a crispy cider apple background.”  I can't disagree with that, it is very pleasant if slightly unusual. Many lady drinkers have made Disaronno (an ameretto flavoured liqueur) very popular as an after dinner drink, taken neat or in coffee,  for the last five years or so. Disaronno has been produced for almost 500 years,  and is "a liqueur of apricot kernel with the pure essence of seventeen herbs and fruits" Orwell's is sold in single-serving 330ml glass bottles and certainly represents a very new flavour innovation in flavoured alcoholic beverages, quite unlike anything else in its category  It is 5.5% ABV and went on sale in June in 330mL bottles.

Younger drinkers do tend to be prepared to experiment and will often have up to ten drinks in their 'try often' category, whereas the older generations are more conservative but still will regularly try up to six categories of drink. That’s a huge difference from the tastes of their parents, who a few years ago would remain loyal to just one or two favourite drinks.

(Some damage may have been done to a few brain cells and my belt in researching these products)

How does one become a Disc Jockey

How does one become a DJ?

The most common question that every DJ gets asked all the time is, "How to I become a DJ?"  In my case, I have been spinning the 45s for so many years I have a bit of difficulty remembering. Did I get born playing records? Of course not, although as my love of music emerged when i was only about 10 years old it WAS quite some time ago.

That was late 1963; there was very little music on the radio and maybe I was lucky as my family were pretty poor and we didn't have a television, but night times were spent huddling around my Mum's old Bush listening to Radio Luxembourg. One Saturday morning I went to the Locarno Ballroom in Hull with a friend, where they hd a two hour disc session for kids - I was hooked. It became a major part of my life for the next few years, and eventually I got chance to do a guest DJ spot by one of the DJs, and would help hims sort his records out etc.  By the time I was 12 or so I found that there were all kinds of strange radio stations popping on and off the dial - pirate radio ships, which played my beloved pop and soul music all the time, unlike the BBC which was pretty turgid and boring at the time.

Within a few years I was involved in that world of watery wireless too, but in March 1968 I began playing the records at a local club.  The first one was a tiny little place in Hull called MUSIC BOX. I remember at the time thinking that there was NOTHING more satisfying than someone coming up and saying they enjoyed the music you were playing.  (I don't think I had discovered girls yet, far too busy with the music!)

I had also become quite keen on the technical aspects of audio and music, but especially of radio engineering. I decided that radio and music had to be my future career, though I had no idea how. Radio was simply the BBC, hundreds of miles away from Yorkshire. The pirate radio ships had been put off the air - who could I combine the two? The local college had a large marine radio section, but there were no such thing as grants, so I had to find a job to "work my way" thru college and support myself. Working as a DJ in clubs was THE obvious solution. I had lots of training courtesy of some of the best showmen in the business, in particular other DJs on the Mecca circuit; we were trained and encouraged to be showmen. I even worked on the fairground for a thrilling week, spinning the records on the waltzer, and extolling the girls to scream if they wanted to go faster. I still love to wander the fairground  fifty years later and reminisce about those days but its my only DJ gig to which I would NOT want to ever return!

What I was getting was the hands-on experience of actually DOING the work of a DJ, and the technical knowledge of how a programme was assembled, what was possible, and how to make it sounds as though you knew what you were doing. Later, I was offered my first proper radio gig on Radio Caroline, hosting the breakfast show. I got that simply because I had those important essential ingredients - expertise with equipment, and showmanship, or rather just raw enthusiasm.

And that's the key - get the experience and have more than a modicum of enthusiasm.

The DJ world is much more competitive now and DJs are expected to have many more skills such as mixing, scratching and Beat Matching, none of which were even possible with the primitive equipment we had in the 60s. To get the skills is important and one source I would recommend is the course run by How to DJ Fast.  
You can go from being a beginner to mixing like a pro, impressing your friends and packing the dance floor in just two weeks!

Click that link to take a look, and you could be DJing yourself REALLY SOON. All the instruction is done by video, so you can work so the course work in the comfort of your own home. There's a money back guarantee, and you could start in the next ten minutes, wherever you are, no matter what the time is. 

Getting a break into radio is now so much easier nope that there are around 600 radio stations in the UK alone, although few of them want real DJs these days at all. I will look at how to get a break into radio in a future blog; I'm going to to try and talk someone else to write that article if I can!