Heart Radio is DIRE! Options

[Blake]

I lament the passing of Radio 210. The dross that has now taken over is Heart.

This is a truly APPALLING station which seems to favor about 10 artists and plays them to DEATH!

The discourse of that station is also spirit-crushingly superficial and plebeian.

I can only assume its target market must be the chav-masses. It's woefully downmarket.

[JeffG]

There's always Classic FM if that's more to your taste

[spartacus]

Why the rant?? Switch to Radio 4 if you want something more upmarket! ....or Radio 2 ....or switch to Newbury Sound if you want the local touch and some reasonable music (better than Heart by a mile)

[user23]

Radio 210 was awful too. I remember their "Almost anything goes hour" which people would phone in and request Phil Collins or Level 42 every week.

The calls were obviously screened so that only those requesting middle of the road dross would get on air.

[Strafin]

Radio is great, Newbury sound is great as far as local radio goes. Radio 5 live is brilliant if you're not after music at all.

[Andy Capp]

I like Newbury Sound as well. I also like Radio 4 and 5Live. Radio 1 is unlistenable these days, but that is probably my age showing.

[Blake]

I do enjoy Radio 2 and Radio 4.

Radio 210 went downhill big time after it came under the 2-Ten FM branding.

I just hope Heart gets replaced with something better soon.

[Simon Kirby]

The discourse of that station is also spirit-crushingly superficial and plebeian.

It's really more that the plebs are spirit-crushingly superficial, and unless prog-rock's you're thing (as it is mine) pop has never really tried to be anything other than popular. I quite like the seriousness of Radios 3 and 4 now.

[Simon Kirby]

Radio 210 was awful too. I remember their "Almost anything goes hour" which people would phone in and request Phil Collins or Level 42 every week.

I wouldn't disagree with you as it was never really my thing, but I have to say that Mark King is one of the very finest bassists ever, and that lifts Level 42 above the ordinary. And for that matter Phil Collins is really rather a fine drummer (for Genesis, obviously).

[Andy Capp]

It's really more that the plebs are spirit-crushingly superficial, and unless prog-rock's you're thing (as it is mine) pop has never really tried to be anything other than popular. I quite like the seriousness of Radios 3 and 4 now.

I think pop is OK, when it is organic like in the 90s and 70s (the 80s was a mixed bag), but it is the 'digital' stuff these days that it has become an anachronism.

[Andy Capp]

And for that matter Phil Collins is really rather a fine drummer (for Genesis, obviously).

'Easy Lover' could drive me to murder.

[Simon Kirby]

I find it difficult to separate pop from the zeitgeist. So deeply are those inane tracks from the brickie's radio carved into my brain that almost anything from 1984 will transport me back to a building site in Essex.

[Andy Capp]

Yes; the nostalgia effect. It is strange. I tend to like music I didn't care much for in the day, yet other music that I liked, I find is not as good as I remember it.

I was never interested in Blues back in my youth (Steve Ray Vaughan played in the sun at Reading while I looked on in disinterest - what a chance missed!), but now I 'get it' as it were.

On a Prog Rock theme, I remember spending a summer in the early 80s listening to Uriah Heep - High and Mighty and Yes - Close to the Edge, amongst others. Uriah Heep's High and Mighty was never their best album, but Close to the Edge is regarded as one of Yes's best. I bought it recently as a 'remaster' and felt it didn't sound as good as I remember it. Going for the One, on the other hand, was better than I remember.

On topic: I wonder if one of the problems with radio, is that some of the DJs on the main stream stations are not 'true' music fans - not like they were back when everything had a tint of rose - IIRC.

[Richard Garvie]

The biggest problem with radio now is money. Heart now covers what used to be Fox FM (Oxfordshire) and 2-Ten (Berkshire and North Hampshire), with a regional breakfast show and regional drive show with everything else coming from London. The music policy is described as "club classics" which means you get stuck with the same 200 songs over and over again.

Newbury Sound does a great job here, but in most places those sort of stations are merged together with very little local content which is why many fail to win listeners and ultimately commercial revenue.

[user23]

I don't think their general music policy is club classics as this is commercial dance music from the 90s and 00s. It's Adult Contemporary.

I thought radio was your field?

[Richard Garvie]

Listen to the jingles... "Club claaaaasssics... This is Heart"!!!

[user23]

Listen to the jingles... "Club claaaaasssics... This is Heart"!!!

That's just a couple of shows. The station's format is Adult Contemporary.