Neediness is rarely a turn-on. So why does the radio keep showering us with pleas to get in touch, tell us what you think, join in the chat on our messageboards? Do programme chiefs think listeners will enjoy the whiff of desperation? The Music Club with Jo Brand (Radio 2, Tues, 9.30pm), a kind of handy cribsheet to music, began last week as an offshoot of the station’s Music Club website. Among the site’s aims is to encourage us to share our musical passions with Radio 2’s presenters (Terry Wogan has a soft spot for When You and I Were Young, Maggie by Finbar Furey) and other listeners via its messageboard.
Recent subjects up for discussion have included great B-sides and misheard lyrics. But other Radio 2 messageboards offer a less cheery world. Here you’ll find why Chris Evans “is nota Radio 2 person” and campaigns to bring back Gloria Hunniford.
Someone announced a petition on a Radio 1 messageboard to get rid of Jo Whiley, only for her colleague Colin Murray to get into the online fray. Chris Moyles’s haters abound. On Radio 3’s site, the Proms chatter has been questioning “Dimitri overkill” and a lack of Vaughan Williams this year, and whether clapping or coughing is worse between movements. Another Radio 3 listener notes: “If I ever hear Pictures at an Exhibition again, I’m going to head-bang the Great Gates of Kiev.”
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At Radio 4’s site, Archers followers are proud of avoiding news about Wayne Rooney while dissecting the minutiae of Ambridge life. A fulminating message suggests that Woman’s Hour should be renamed “Homosexualist, Radical Feminist, Pro-abortion Hour”. On Radio 5 Live, under the heading “Other Sports”, is the exasperated declaration: “I hate to keep repeating myself but wrestlingis not a sport!” Amid all these specific concerns, the original programmes rather get lost. Behind all this mania for interactivity and feedback may lurk a Utopian notion of participatory, democratic broadcasting. But do they make the programmes any more pleasurable to hear? Take Radio 4’s Home Truths. Its content has always been dictated by the public — but did that make it any more pleasurable for the rest of us? The series bows out next Saturday. I wonder what the messageboards will say?