BORN as I was in the early 1960s, I’m very much the target demographic for Boom Radio (boomradiouk.com) which launched on Valentine’s Day. There are 14 million of us possibly coming to an end of our mortgages/child-rearing years and presumably with some spare money in our pockets which might attract passing advertisers.
Which might explain why Boom’s presenters – veterans, mostly men – from time to time, start extolling the virtues of some small business between playing Alison Moyet and The Bachelors.
The station's constant Boomer boosterism is also a bit tiresome and rather clashes with the mental health messages. And let’s face it, there’s something weird about hearing Diddy David Hamilton doing the same shtick he used to do back in the 1970s.
What I do like about it, though, is its rather eccentric music policy. Obviously, it’s not the place to come if you want to hear The Fall or dubstep, but the way it jumbles together music from the 1950s to the 2000s means there’s a genuine sense of the unexpected to it. If you want to hear Nat King Cole segue into The Weather Girls, this is the radio station for you.
In other news Radio 5 Live has been doing my head in this week. Tuesday morning’s breakfast show, in the wake of Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown, was giddy with the prospect of an easing of restrictions. And that was just the presenters.
“Has Boris got it just about right?” Rachel Burden asked at one point, one of those questions that is both silly and unanswerable. It also didn’t consider Johnson’s history of U-turns over the last 12 months. Frankly, Dave Lloyd over on Boom Radio was more rigorously sceptical.
Read More: Alastair Campbell is not saying sorry
5 Live has offered some of the best pandemic coverage over the last year, but it also has been guilty of giving too much room to lockdown sceptics and at times seems more inclined to see the pandemic as an inconvenience rather than a real health crisis. The constant looking for an upside has also been jarring when the death rate keeps rising.
To be honest, if I hear Tony Livesey say “let’s look for the positive” one more time … It’s a pandemic, for goodness sake. Maybe there isn’t an upside.
Or maybe I need a holiday, like everyone else.
Listen Out For: For the Love of Leo, Radio 4, Friday, 11.30am. Mark Bonnar returns for a third series of Michael Chaplin's comedy drama about love and grief.
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