Heritage Stations: (Part 2) Charting their rise and the hidden flaws.

By Paul Dempsey

I welcomed the heritage stations with open arms. Radio Two had deteriorated into a hotch potch mixture of the mediocre with occasional gems such as the ‘Pick of the Pops’ chart programme. This was the station’s best programme and was beloved of many listeners until it was dropped this year. However, Radio 2 and the other stations were in thrall to celebrities who had no real interest in music which would seem to be self-destructive. No one is going to argue that Graham Norton, Lisa Tarbuck and Frank Skinner are not excellent communicators in their own right, but they are not DJs. Certainly not in the way classic music presenters of the past such as Simon Bates, Richard Skinner, Gary Davies,Steve Lamacq or John Peel were. These DJs knew their stuff, they had opinions and oversaw playlists they had a significant influence over.

The answer when it came was astonishingly simple. Bespoke channels that played music only from one decade. The perfect example of this was Absolute 80s. It was originally a breath of fresh air. A demographic easily identified offered these commercial radio stations an advertisers’ dream – targeted playlists, targeted audiences and targeted adverts! And the first couple of years were fantastic. A major factor is Absolute 80s brilliant 3-hour chart show; the station plays two charts from the corresponding week in the 1980s every Sunday. For me it is still essential listening each week and Sarah Champion is the perfect host.

A stable of sister channels followed. Absolute 60s, 70’s, 90’sand so on. Not only that but many other commercial stations followed suit. The emergence of DAB+ radio stations and smart speakers such as Alexa provided these heritage stations at the touch of a button or voice request. Your every whimcould potentially be met with a specific decade. You could slip through the musical soundtrack of your life as the mood took you. The musical equivalent of a Dorian Grey portrait (or perhaps that should be radio) in your attic!

What could go wrong? Well, quite a lot as it happens. Theses stations are, unbelievably, even more constrained and straight jacketed than Radio 2 ever was. Why? They seem to have a playlist of about 100 songs. Now I may be exaggerating but seriously, listen for any length of time and the same hoary old nuggets turn up with a frequency they never achieved even when they were originally hits. Human League? - Don’t You Want Me? Spandau Ballet? - Gold. The Jam? - Start! You get the picture. A station format that could be so inventive, so varied, so bloody marvellous is sacrificed on the altar of lowest common denominator and ‘NOW that’s what I call Sh*te’ blandness. The eighties brought us so much in the way of invention and innovation that it seems criminal to waste it on predictable algorithmic slop. So, is all lost? NO.

Next time: (Part 3) Hope is on the horizon.