Occy fails the Turing test

I live in hope Jon. Although saying that he did answer me a few weeks ago when I asked him about his enthusiasm (or lack of) for Smooth (just after the changes were announced)

As, I say, I live in hope.

I'm baffled. I always thought it was Careless Whisper that was generally loved the most, and not A Different Corner, even though both were mid 80's No1 hits. That is why I can't work out the latter track getting such excessive play.

I took Tony Blackburn to task at the weekend on the Pick Of The Pops thread when he was playing 1974 and played Candle In The Wind by Elton John, 40 years old now. I felt like I was listening to Smooth as soon as I heard it begin, and thought he might have avoided it considering his comments about stations such as Smooth. This is the trouble with such crazy over playing and rotation of old hits. You begin to dislike them, and associate them in a negative way such as this.

Carlos becomes Carl Emms eh. I only realised he was one and the same very recently. What kind of an ego does a man have to simply style himself "Carlos" like that! I recall listening to Carl Emms on Chiltern Radio late at night, overnight way back in early 1988. So that is 26 years since The Hot FM now.

Smooth as it now exists is positively retarded in comparison to Chiltern Radio/The Hot FM of the late 80's.

I thought you meant New music by George Michael

What the heck are you banging on about ? It would have been likely a PD's choice who for some reason either thought that Carls name didn't fit the format (Eg not cool enough for hit music) or someone had a similar name so he was given a nickname.

Theres loads about Roberto, The Bassman ect most of these have nicknames due to being on hit music stations and there name suiting the format.

Noticed it with David Jensen who became Kid on early commercial radio and radio one, reverted to David on Gold and Planetrock, became the Kid again on Smooth when GMG went though the phase of trying to be a mature radio 1 after trying to attract it's mature ex listeners, then he went back to David when Global took over to change Smooth to take on Magic London.

Although I praise you for taking Tony & Phil to task over playing a song on POTP but you can't really blame them for playing Candle In The Wind on a retro chart show. It's one of his most famous songs, if not his most famous.

If anything we should be taking them to task over songs that don't get played. As we know Tony & Phil continually to dismiss punk songs when they feature charts form 77-79

To me this is more of an issue than playing Candle in the Wind. It's not like he plays in week in, week out is it?

I remember even in his Carl Emms days he had jingles that said "Cool and crazy Carlos" and callers would often refer to him as Carlos, even though he was listed as Carl Emms.

A Different Corner tests like a dream hence why stations going for a specific audience play it.

And that's why money is spent on very extensive music research. One might *think* a song is popular but research tells the real story.

Out of sheer interest - I have no "angle" here - just how is testing carried out.
I would be fascinated to find out - nobody's ever asked me, but why should they.

Apparently he started using the nickname Carlos when he joined BRMB in 1993; it was Richard Park who billed him as such. The name was a family nickname, dating back to a Spanish holiday when he was a kid. As for ego, I think it unlikely you would make much of a career in radio if you didn't have one of those.

Smooth is beginning to sound like a hospital radio station now. Anthony Davis is dreadful with his hopelessly contrived links and complete lack of personality. What next? Full-time voice tracking.

I'm not a Global knocker, I think Heart generally sounds very good - but they have lost the plot this time with Smooth. I mean Kate GoAway for goodness sake, when there are so many good presenters out there. I know Sleb magazines are big sellers - and there are a lot of empty-headed women obsessed with them these days - but really, what on earth are they thinking. This is just not going to translate to radio.

...................Digressing from the current subject and on to technical issues. While driving in my car on Monday evening , around 5pm, I heard the Smooth London traffic news. That was followed by a traffic bulletin from Heart Essex, jingle and all. The Smooth Radio tag disappeared from the RDS and read just 102.2.
I suppose when you cram all those radio stations, in one building, with local feeds thrown in, you should expect the odd technical glitch.

This link goes into detail about how its done. It's American but similar practices are carried out here. This should give you an insight into what goes on.
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/research_AMT.htm

I freely admit it is my own (irrational) problem with anything by George Michael. I particularly dislike 'A Different Corner' ... it's just bland rubbish IMO.

Some hospital radio is very professional sounding!

Name some so we can gauge your taste and judgement.

Agreed. Some can be very sleek and smooth (no pun intended)

http://www.forestgold.org.uk/

Cheers, thanks for the link.

However, its NOT extensive, or even accurate....

Getting a load of empty headed Sharon and Tracy's to listen to a very limited "chorus" or "hook lines"......bimbos who are not interested in music, and probably, as they have a limited attention span, will just put anything as their response to get the whole thing over with....

Who'd have thought in 2014 the major influences on what gets played on UK commercial radio are people with no real spark for music.........sad times......

How do you know that Wc... Do you work for a research company or been included in a survey? I find your attitude toward women most offensive.

For that read most normal people, very few people are music anoraks who like obscure B Sides and records. Smooth is a commercial radio station so has to cater for the largest possible audience, leave it to the BBC to play B sides from unreleased albums.

It's a LOT more accurate than gut feeling.

Do you ever wonder why nobody takes your posts seriously....?

Aka the majority of listeners.

I'm not really into music and I've had a good career in radio. I've even been a head of music believe it or not.

Oh, in this day and age I CAN believe it....

Its the reason so much "research" has to be done, as the bods in control haven't got a clue!!