Freewind on Free Radio
Crapital Fart
Posts: 401 Forum Member
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Free Radio have replaced their Guess the Year hour at 9am with a new Freewind hour.
They now play an hour of old school tunes but not from the same year. The songs are much more upbeat now, yesterday they played Architechs - Body Groove, Notorious BIG - Mo Money Mo Problems, Baby D - Let Me Be Your Fantasy and The Original - I Love U Baby. The choice of music was better than Kisstory and Reloaded on Xtra. You can request the songs here www.freeradio.co.uk/freewind/
hopefully they will extend the program to other times of the day or even replace Free Radio 80s with Freewind.
They now play an hour of old school tunes but not from the same year. The songs are much more upbeat now, yesterday they played Architechs - Body Groove, Notorious BIG - Mo Money Mo Problems, Baby D - Let Me Be Your Fantasy and The Original - I Love U Baby. The choice of music was better than Kisstory and Reloaded on Xtra. You can request the songs here www.freeradio.co.uk/freewind/
hopefully they will extend the program to other times of the day or even replace Free Radio 80s with Freewind.
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Comments
To be fair, Kiss isn't available in the West Midlands (except on DAB obv).
That won't work on AM. However they could put it on Saturday evening, find mix versions of those tracks and called the programme........
'Saturday Night Freemix'.
It would be slightly remiscent of the 'hot mix' show on Friday night BRMB back in the early 90s
It might work as a DAB channel, although that would obviously depend on MUX space, which I'm guessing isn't very plentiful in Brum
Funny enough that show was also on Mercia aswell.
I like Free Radio 80's.
But surely its a new phenomena designed for the internet age to complain about???
;-)
They've made a few other changes to Free Radio in the last few days, like getting rid of the Sky news bulletins at night, getting rid of 80s music (listened to 2 hours of their breakfast show on Friday continuously and didn't hear a single 80s song) and making the playlist much more upbeat. Their playing a lot more dance music now. Also the football commentary has been axed from Free80s, as expected, given that Absolute 105.2 will have FM premier league commentaries from next month in addition to BBC WMs coverage of all the local teams and Signal 107s Wolves commentaries. Free radio have also stripped the news section of their website to just 4 or 5 national stories plus their twitter news updates feed.
A 24/7 Freewind could in theory be run as an online/app stream at first, in the manner of Kisstory/KissFresh beginning online and Freeview before they went to DAB, or Smooth 70s running as an online stream (IIRC alongside 60s and soul feeds) before its DAB phase. With the right capabilities of RadioPlayer and web/app design, such spinoffs could easily be linked back to the parent station, much as, say, Kiss and Absolute's siblings do...
As they don't yet have the brand portfolio of the bigger groups, Orion potentially have a little room to experiment, to play around with other formats, to see what works most effectively (commercially and editorially), and then bring the better-performing formulas that emerge from this out over linear radio platforms in the longer term, subject to available capacity, Look at what Pirate are doing, for instance - new digital-first siblings which are distinct from the originating station in audio, but build on the established resources and experience therein...
But I dislike stations that stop news bulletins after 7pm. Those of us on shifts in large warehouse for example like to know what so happening.
And Leicester Sound!
There'll be no cost saving in ditching the news.
Those bulletins are included in the blanket IRN/Sky service they subscribe to... so they're paying whether or not they take them.
So it's an editorial decision based on what (they think) listeners want to hear.
Back to the topic and I think Freewind on Friday and Saturday evenings is a good move. In a way is a replacement for Free Radio Anthems. The weekend evening shows have been going downhill since James Hall left (now on The Hits daytimes) but Phil Ray on Sundays has presented a good show although I can't see this continuing as he presents weekday overnights primarily. It meant that Phil could be heard on Free Radio from 19:00 yesterday until 06:00 this morning then 06:00-09:00 on Free 80s for breakfast. Emily Segal has presented two Saturday evening shows that haven't been poor, they've just been mediocre and contained nothing memorable.
Good move ditching 80s music even though I like it a lot. Not noticed the more upbeat music yet but I'll keep an ear out. There playlist was quite dully and dreary at times, full of Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding type stuff so this is a good move.
Not heard Freewind but sounds good to have it Fri and Sat nights.
The :30 past news and sport bulletins are back during breakfast and drive. For the last few weeks for some reason they had been splitting it into a news only bulletin at :20 past and a sport only bulletin at :40 past the hour.
The public file also confirms that they now have some automated programs on weekend early evenings!
It also says that news bulletins prepared by Sky may be broadcast in some hours.
www.freeradio.co.uk/public-file/public-file-birmingham/
Moving the news back to top of the hour and half past is a good move. It was just over the top doing the headlines at xx:50 and then the full news at xx:00. Sky News bulletins have been used in between 20:00 and 05:00 on weekdays and most of the day except breakfast on weekends for quite some time.
Is 'weekend early evenings' referring to Saturdays 15:00-19:00 (which I would consider an afternoon show) or 19:00-00:00 (which I would consider an evening show)? The word 'early' there causes confusion.
And yet GEM has to be complimented , for being very listenable.
Its about the 3rd or 4th time that the format has been tinkered with during breakfast. Hopefully this one stays as it is. Foxy and Guilano do shorter links more often now it seems.
Never understood why the whole thing wasn't called GEM - it's a better name than Free
Gem stand for Great East midlands, which doesn't go well with the West Midlands.