J G Miller wrote:
On Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at 15:29:13h +0100, Richard Evans wrote:
True, in theory.

No, true in fact. David Eduardo has a successful career in commercial radio.
Actually I wasn't talking about Mr Eduardo, but I can understand the
confusion. It was a comment about radio in general.


However, I'm not sure if this exactly works with the BBC, who often seem
more interested in their own agenda, rather than in doing what is best
for the listeners.

BBC listeners have long been conditioned into accepting whatever
the BBC does is best for them.

Obvious examples of such people spring to mind
I'm happy with most of what the BBC do, but with radio being the big
exception, over processed, and reluctance to provide good digital sound
quality.

Don't know about community stations. They should in theory be a lot more
listener centric than the normal commercial stations.

It will all depend from where they receive their funding. If it is
a listened supported station then they will have to be receptive to
their listeners or they will not get any money to continue. If it
is a block grant from a government agency, then they can probably
ignore listeners completely so long as they can justify they next
grant application.

I don't really know if this works in practice as I don't have much
experience of community stations.

You could try listening to some for about 5 minutes -- you may feel
yourself unable to listen for any longer than that for some of them
in England.

I've only listened to one, and that was only because a friend has a show
on that station. I did send a message to the station once, on Facebook,
saying I found their 96k mp3 internet stream too low quality, and
suggested that if they can't afford a higher bit rate they might
consider an aac+ stream. I never got any response to my message, however
some how their 96k mp3 sounds better than it used to. Not sure if they
did something about it, or whether I simply got used to it. It does now
sound better than I'd expect, although not hi-fi quality.


As for the big commercial stations, the regulator ought to keep them in
line

If their is a regulator and if the regulator has policies and power
to do that.

Ofcom seems to have allowed allowed most of the commercial stations

OfCon is a light touch regulator whose purpose is to maximize
revenues from the exploitation of the electro-magnetic spectrum,
not a body to promote the interests of the listener and quality
programming.

And if Jeremy Hunt keeps his promise, OfCon will become just a
technical regulator and all policy decisions will be made as
an afterthought by free market enforcers at the DCMS.

No wonder radio listening is dyeing out :-(