This year, for me, has been the year of the radio show. I can't get enough of it.
What a fantastic medium radio is.
The radio format creates a focus for story telling and soundscapes and scene setting like no other art form. It is so much more than simply a series of music tracks with cool introductions or just a sort of picture-less TV. The listener creates the scenes themselves, prompted by the programme, in a way that TV or a live gig cannot...its all in the mind. Listeners lend their attention in a way that is quite different from attending to a visual performance, listening is closer, more intricate.
Radio is also live, it is happening in the moment, no retakes or overdubs. The seconds count down, the buttons are pressed and faders lifted and...you are off.
Radio is also a lot of fun to make. With no audience watching, the focus is the microphone and the sounds you make in the room...no distractions. The radio studio is a bubble, a cocoon, a cozy nest to hatch a plot or two.
Internet radio is still seen by some as the poor cousin of FM radio partly because it is easy to start your own station, needing fewer permissions and much less cash than a dial-up radio station. No transmitter is needed, licences are easier, just some software and a high speed internet connection.
However the pressures on mainstream radio to be.... well....mainstream mean that the cheeky little internet radio show has a chance to cut it like no other.
Overlook this little beauty at your peril as you sink into the predictability of mainstream radio.
Try The Suburban Pirate Radio Show on Croydon Radio every Friday at 2pm.