WE are, in many ways, in a golden age of radio - with more stations available than ever before, offering something for everyone: ethnic radio, gay radio, religious radio, middle-aged radio, hipster radio, talk radio. If there is a niche, radio fills it. Here we look at what your favourite radio station says about you.
MIDDLE CLASS, MIDDLE-AGED
Radio 2
Chances are, given the station’s demographics, if you’re a regular Radio 2 listener, you’re in your late thirties or forties, heading towards middle-age, and not too troubled by it. Mid-life crisis? Pah! Maybe in the old days you used to get up to Chris Evans and you still are now he’s drifted over from Radio 1 to 2, or you always regarded Jo Whiley as your big sister of the airwaves, and now she too is there on Radio 2. Back in 2014 a BBC survey found the band most associated with the channel was Queen, after which followed Gary Barlow and Diana Ross.
Music of choice: Adele, Ed Sheeran
Also listening to: Magic
Watching: Strictly Come Dancing, Masterchef, Top Gear
Eating: M&S ready meal,
Radio 4
The home of the smug metropolitan liberal elite? Not at all. After all, you’re here as much for the thrift tips from You and Yours as Jim Naughtie or Mishal Husain pinning down a politician on the Today programme. We all know the cliche: Radio 4 is for people who like to think they are clever. Probably they’re white, most likely middle-class. Recently it was criticised, by a panel and audience at the Hay festival, of being biased, confrontational and unfunny. But its 11 million listeners prove it’s still a national love affair.
Music of choice: You don’t have time for it.
Also listening to: Who needs anything else when you’ve got The Today programme and the Archers?
Watching: Channel 4 News, Newsnight, Panorama
Eating and drinking: A Pret sandwich on the go between meetings
Classic FM
There probably was a time in your youth when you remember a vague inclination to classical music but never mentioned it for fear of being uncool. Yet here, you are today tuning in, somehow persuaded by the likes of Catherine Bott, that you are near-as-dammit now an actual classical afficionado. Funny that. One day you’re listening to Public Enemy, the next you can’t hoover to anything other than Bach and Beethoven.
Music of choice: Air on a G String
Also probably listening to: Radio 3 (feeling adventurous), Smooth
Watching: Poldark, The Great British Bake Off, Planet Earth II
Eating and drinking: Strawberries and cream, Pimms
Radio Scotland (Saturday afternoon)
There are many reasons for listening to Radio Scotland – Good Morning Scotland, Call Kaye, The Janice Forsyth Show - but one of the biggest is the sport. It’s the channel’s Saturday shows get the biggest audiences, and that’s what they’re all about. “If you look at Radio Scotland’s listening figures they’re at their biggest on a Saturday,” says Stuart Cosgrove, presenter of Off The Ball.
Also probably listening to: Clyde 1, Forth 1
Eating: Full Scottish
Watching: Still Game
Smooth
Smooth declares that their audiences are “more than just a demographic”. They are, it adds, “people who not only believe that life begins at forty but are the embodiment of the expression”. Mostly listeners are women, and they are more financially secure now than they’ve ever been, and “there’s not a comfy chair or slippers in sight”.
Also probably listening to: Radio 2, Magic
Music of choice: Adele, Bee Gees, Lionel Richie
Watching: Strictly Come Dancing
Magic FM
At Magic it’s really all about the feel good and delivering music that’s a kind of audio Prozac. It’s what the company that created it, Bauer Media, describes as “upbeat-optimistic”. Forget all the rest of the happiness and positive thinking industry, all you need is feel-good music as delivered by DJs like Nick Snaith, Angie Greaves, Mel C, and Kim Wilde.
Music of choice: Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Ed Sheeran, Aretha Franklin
Also probably listening to: Smooth, Absolute 80s
Eating: Happy foods
Absolute Radio
Absolute declared that its stations are targeted at “reluctant adults”. If you think everything, including music, has gone down the tubes since your youth, then nostalgia-tripping Absolute, is no doubt the channel for you – whether it be their hugely popular 1980s channel, or any of the other decades they feature. Because it was all better in the old days wasn’t it? The perms, the ZX81 games, the Jackie magazines. “We don’t do plastic pap,” says its website, in a slightly sneering way. “We do real guitars, real drums and real singers.”
Also listening to: Magic FM
Watching: 100 greatest programmes, Doctor Who, Stranger Things
Eating and drinking: Angel Delight, Tennents Lager, Snowballs
NERDS AND HIPSTERS
Radio 6M
6M has long had the reputation of being the muso’s channel – mainly for those middle-class, white guys who like to be on top of the music scene, and feel they know about everything that isn’t chart or plastic pop from the last fifty years. But it’s not just that anymore. More and more of us are tuning in to this space that delivers the pop and rock music world in all its mad and marvellous diversity. It’s the biggest growing digital platform. Steve Lamacq described the channel best: “Radio 6 does that thing of offering words of reassurance, filtering through everything that’s out there to bring you the best bits.”
Music of choice: Anything but the charts.
Also listening to: Radio X
Watching: Later… With Jools Holland,
Eating: Gourmet burgers, craft beers
Radio X
It’s called Radio X, but actually what you’re most likely to have if you’re into the station is a Y chromosome. You’re probably a bloke. You do all the gigs and the live events, and you like to think you’re up there on the cultural trends.
Also probably listening to: Radio 6M
Watching: Dave
Eating: Responsibly sourced steak and chips
Celtic Music Radio
All right, if you’re listening to Celtic Music, you’re probably quite into folk, which means you’re probably one of those communitarian types with a social conscience who also staying up till all hours in the local folk bar, clutching a whisky glass. But there are many reasons to listen to Celtic Music Radio even if you’re not. 1. It’s run entirely by volunteers. 2. The charming and companionable Gordon Hotchkiss hosts shows. 3. They even like to get “out and about” to events, open stages, house concerts and Celtic Connections.
Also listening to: Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk
Music of choice: Christy Moore, The Corries
Eating and drinking: Malt of the month, vegetarian stovies
YOOF
Radio 1
The channel always pitched itself at the 15-29 year old crowd, but now it’s an older Peter Pan crowd it’s attracting. This is probably a result of two factors. Firstly, the rise of kidulthood. Secondly, young millennials are tuning out, going online, using Spotify, Mixcloud, and leaving only those edging towards their thirties to listen to Nick Grimshaw, Clara Amfo and the rest.
Also probably listening to: Heart, Capital
Watching: The X Factor
Eating: Domino’s pizza
Radar
If you’re young and hip, and particularly if you live in London, it’s online radio station Radar that you’re listening to for your grime, Afrobeats, techno and UK rap. This is where the youth is, and particularly black youth, and nothing says more about the channel than the fact that its breakfast show is hosted by Snoochie Shy, a pink-haired DJ and model who is all about the female empowerment.
Also probably listening to: Reprezent, Mixcloud, NTS
Music of choice: Skepta, Big Zuu
Watching: Youtube channels
Eating and drinking: A can of Monster and a Rustlers burger
Mixcloud
All right, this isn’t a radio station, so strictly speaking it should be here. But if you’re wondering where all the young urban, ambient, house and electronic music fans are going for their music, it’s Mixcloud, a site that is like one giant mixtape library, into which “curators” upload their radio shows, mixes and podcasts. Here among the over a million curators you can find progressive trance group Above & Beyond and techno producer Carl Cox, as well as many other less well knowns.
Music of choice: Bonobo, Defected Records
Also listening to: Reprezent, Radar, NTS
Watching: Netflix dramas
Eating and drinking: Flexitarian
MINORITIES
BBC Asian Network
“100% British, 100% Asian”, was the rebrand the BBC did on its Asian network a few years ago. The advert they did said it all, featuring the rapper Raxstar delivering rhymes that climax with “You know what British-Asian looks like – this is how it sounds”. And it sounds like Bobby Friction, Noreen Khan, Tommy Sandhu and Harpz Kaur.
Music of choice: Jasmine Sandlas, Arijit Singh
Also listening too: Mixcloud
Watching: Sky Asia Pack
Eating and drinking: Your mum's home cooking from the old country
Gaydio
The station that tells you it’s The Beat of Gay UK, is actually the world’s biggest radio station for the LGBTi community. And there’s nothing like the chirpy chat and innuendo of breakfast duo Emma Goswell and Chris Holliday to start your day.
Music of Choice: The Black Eyed Peas, Steps, Right Said Fred
Also listening to: Pride Radio
Watching: Vicious, Sense8
Eating and drinking: the same as everyone else
Colourful Radio – Julie Ann Ryan
The radio station for Europe’s African and Caribbean communities - that doesn’t doesn't reduce everything to hip-hop and rap. It was the first ever British black-led radio operation that has focused on speech instead of music. But it still delivers some great Afrobeats, between chat by DJs like the funny and fabulous Julie Ann Ryan who does the drive-time slot several days a week.
Also probably listening to: Radio 1Xtra
Watching: The Get Down, Being Mary Jane
Music of choice: Stephen ‘Ragga’ Marley, MC Aggro, Mica Paris
Eating and drinking: the best Caribbean food imaginable
MOTORMOUTHS
LBC
The shock jock station of choice for those news junkies who want to get angry over just about anything. Though, with Nick Ferrari, its biggest cheese, occupying the breakfast slot, where he slays politicians from Diane Abbott to Amber Rudd, the anger seems to centre on immigration control, liberal policies and snowflake views. By the time Ferrari’s done his morning bit you may well feel you want to wash yourself off with a dose of angry liberal James O’Brien. Then when that’s over, yank the temperature up with a bit of Katie Hopkins. But, wait, oh no, proving that there are limits even for LBC, it turns out she’s been given the push just last week after making her “final solution” suggestion following the Manchester Bombing. Sometimes, after all, provocative is just plain offensive.
Also probably listening to: Talkradio
Music of choice: Morrissey
Watching: Fox News
Eating: Pure HP Sauce, Spitfire lager
Talkradio
The main reason for listening to this channel is that, in the middle of the night, it features comedian and cult figure Iain Lee, who is not only funny and surreal but also affecting. Radio critic Miranda Sawyer wrote that “he hosts the funniest, most inventive, most touching late-night phone-ins out there”. He’s the man who got sacked from BBC Three Counties radio after the corporation’s trust ruled an interview in which he labelled anti-gay views as bigotry broke its editorial guidelines. That makes it the favoured channel of restless night owls, insomniacs, anti-bigots and humans.
Also listening to: LBC
Music of choice: The Monkees
Watching: Gogglebox, Jackpot 247
Eating and Drinking: Late night munchies with Iain Lee
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