I GOT A LETTER the other day; yet another triumph for the postal service.
The first aspect that drew my attention was the calling card paperclipped to the top right-hand corner. This is great. Should I choose to pursue a life of crime I can now represent myself as the press and PR officer of Chrysalis Radio, which will open many a door. The other is that it mentioned the word Chrysalis, an organisation for which I have held a deep affection since, as a teenager, I became a fan of Chrysalis recording artists Jethro Tull. With such small things does the writer of a letter attract and retain the reader’s attention.
Anyway, the nub of it all was that the digital radio consortium, MXR, is now broadcasting to the Yorkshire region, and that Chrysalis Radio is somehow involved. And how jolly for the Yorkies, I thought, and would have left it there had it not been for the fact that, later on, after the bit about MXR being the UK’s leading regional digital consortium, reference was made to one of its services, The Arrow. Yes, it’s a naff name for a radio station, but is it as naff as naming a consortium MXR which, as any fool knows, is the name of a Japanese sports car? And what’s intriguing about The Arrow is that it is “the UK’s first rock radio station aimed predominantly at an adult 40+ demographic”. This, presumably, is easier to prove than the MXR claim, being extremely specific and probably the leading contender in a field of one.
But do you know what this means? It means that someone whose job it is not only to know what a demographic is but can use the word without blushing has gone to the trouble of identifying a gap in the market — people old enough to know better who like to play air guitar in the car — and is now filling it. Or, at any rate filling it for the benefit of males who live in the northeast, northwest, West Midlands, South Wales, the West, London, Central Scotland and, of course, Yorkshire. And possess a DAB digital radio.
In digital terms this is practically saturation coverage.
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Ah, you will be saying, but don’t other stations already cover much the same areas? Of course they do, but not exclusively. Yes, you can rely on someone like Jonathan Ross to play music for rockers of a certain age on Radio 2, and there are the various oldies stations that stagger uncertainly over the medium waves. And, yes, there are stations beamed specifically at those in the fool’s gold of their years, stations like Saga. But that’s aimed at, shall we say, the more grandparently end of the mature market, the people who grew up actually liking their parents’ music. The Arrow rocks, but gently (as Val Doonican might say).
This is not to say that the music wouldn’t scare the horses — there are some thunderous backbeats in there, equal to anything your nu-metal kids could come up with — but it would have scared them 30 years ago. These days the horses would go “Mmm, Boys are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy. I like this one,” and move up through the gears to a trot.
And there is an added advantage to listening to the likes of The Arrow — as the Zepp follow the Purps follow the Tull follow Free follow Traffic follow Golden Earring follow Steely Dan in one vast, unending tribute to hirsute and loon-panted Seventies youth, listeners will be able to enjoy once again the cries from downstairs: “Turn that rubbish down, Dad” and stick two fingers up at convention.