thirty-pieces-of-silver, sure a seen yourself & Ven say, Y'd both stay faithful to our thread ??

A very tedious first hour tonight with that woman Tricia Robertson. I was barely listening to her words, it all mushed into a kind of white noise. The Loch Ness nonsense is just piffle.

This Merlin project discussion is interesting but the things people like this always predict are major events like the Berlin wall or the fall of the Soviet Union. I'd like to hear some of the more run-of-the-mill predictions they have got right, if there are any. Tell us the result of the EU referendum with your algorithm, should be easy as it's only a coin toss. How about the month that Cameron is going to quit and who will take over. There is no "science" to predicting the future other than in pure astronomy and universe terms, not on earthy things.

By the way, who the hell cares what floor of the building the radio shows are coming from!

Howard Hughes was better doing his podcasts (independently), for some reason he doesn't seem comfortable on live radio.

As I said in an earlier posting, I was looking forward to hearing this show when I first saw the tR schedule published. (I didn't know about the podcasts).

Sadly, from what I have heard to date, Howard seems to challenge absolutely nothing. There is no scrutiny, no fact-checking, so critical eye whatsoever. It makes the show very poor, IMO. What a shame.

So... did the show try and support the Loch Ness monster as having some basis in reality? I haven't been listening tonight, having been put off by the previous shows.

I know we are only on show number three but I can't help but agree with you and was on the verge of posting the very same thing. His podcasts seem far more focussed and credible. Filling 3 hours of this kind of thing every week on radio is a big ask and the quality is bound to suffer I think.

Yes.
There is only so much you can expect Howard to fill 3 hours of live radio with, especially as the subjects are fairly 'niche'.
May well work better if the show was 1-2hrs long, or even just once per month for 3 hours.
Maybe similar to his podcast shows.

Howard has made these Merlin Project guys sound absolutely foolish over their prediction for the US Presidential Election. But in the end he has dragged it out that they are predicting that it is Bernie Sanders who is going to become President Of The United States and that Hillary is going to come a cropper. Not a chance!

Howard asks for their website but they don't even have a proper one.

I became very disillusioned with Hughes podcast too, far too many nonsense topics kept coming up and when a good guest did come around like Dr Judy wood, Hughes kept being up f##king remote viewing nonsense during the interview.

Thanks for that Sandy, it's good to have that cleared up. I had wrongly assumed that talkRADIO would be on a different floor to talkSPORT, given that I knew both talkSPORT 2 and talkSPORT Live were on lower floors. I remember hearing Andrew McKenna mention he was "moving downstairs" upon giving up his afternoon sports newsreading gig on talkSPORT to become a talkSPORT 2 presenter and commentator, while I've heard talkSPORT people who also work for their international service talkSPORT Live (which provides Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Bundesliga commentaries for overseas radio stations and their website outside the British Isles) referring to their work for the latter as coming from "the basement."

That would explain why Iain Lee has been able to have some fun with Andy Goldstein and Bobby Gould during their respective shows on Friday night. I'd be interested to know if Ash Gould is still doing bits on The Sports Bar from Monday to Thursday - I haven't listened to that show at length during midweek since talkRADIO launched - now that he's co-hosting The Brothers Gould with Jonny.

The uploader has synced the audio (presumably from the listen again mp3s) which is why the callers are so clear. I was planning a similar project but he beat me to it, which is probably for the best because there is a lot of work in doing 3 hours of that every day.

Caught Nigel on Iain Lee's Best Of show yesterday he still seems confused bless him at what the station is called calling it again Talk Radio UK even after Iain had told him yet again it's just talkRADIO.

He had a good conversation with a pre-recorded audio file that Iain Lee played him and thought it was another caller talking to him, and then the dreaded song followed.

>> http://bit.ly/1Q2FJQE <<

I quite like the chat room nature of watching on periscope.

Vinnie is alive on facebook

Notice Virgin are giving out a What's App number today, wonder if TalkRADIO could do the same?

Are Virgin using it just for messages, or for calls as well?

Didn't say just messages on the tweet & it seems to be an 07 mobile number, so guessing they can take calls on it.

That's exactly what I like about it too, it's so social

Am surprised WhatsApp don't have a 'for business' option where radio stations can be contacted using their sms short code or send bulk messages to subscribers for things like breaking news, etc

A few weeks in & just not many people listening to this station . Something has to change ? They have not even got more than a comment an item on there Facebook page . They need to get this station onto some tv platforms at the very least & still one of the problems is people don't know they are there . Sad to say but unless something changes will this station be even on in a years time

I don't like to agree but I kind of share Simon's pesimism which I did outline before the station went on air. attracting listeners and callers was always going to be a challenge and the over priced number hasn't helped them. Jon Holmes seems to do ok as his show doesn't need many callers and Iain Lee obviously gets a lot of callers but poor old JHB and Sam Delaney just seem to be talking to themselves.

I haven't listened that much to Jonny & Ash but they do seem to have more callers than in the daytime shows, despite 7-10pm being a bit of a graveyard slot for radio as it is the main TV watching time.

I don't think going onto Freeview or satellite would help that much as about five times as many people use DAB than TV to listen to the radio:

http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/RAJ...phicQ42015.pdf

https://www.wirelessgroupplc.com/get...t.pdf?ext=.pdf

says the three new stations only need a modest audience to survive because the costs are so low.

They're not particularly new-media savvy for a new station in the internet age.
The websites of the new stations are dire myspace profice kock-offs. and there's precious little by way of promotion or sharable content.

They've got a marketing budget of virtually zero so they should be hammering the facebooks, instagrams, youtubes and twitters for all they are worth.

They could do worse than learn from LBC's lead on this.

If James O'Brian or Nick Ferrari has a ding-dong with a caller you can guarantee that there's a polished video online within no time at all. It's all sharable and sharing snowballs on places like facebook. It's great for brans awareness.

I don't think they need to splash out on a Sky or Freeview slot - they just need to bang the drum a bit louder.

Yes poor old Julia must be used to callers bumper-to-bumper on LBC.

Part of me thinks that she isn't really right for that time slot; I mean was she really trying to compete directly with LBC this morning, launching into a typical "muslims think homosexuality should be illegal" discussion?

Surely TalkRADIO ought to be offering a fresh, exciting alternative (such as Jon Holmes and Iain Lee are masterfully doing each day) rather than competing with the predictable and repetitive topic of the day.

I wouldn't disagree. I presume their thinking is that they're offering a less London-centric political call in, but it doesn't fit well with the rest of the schedule; I'd have thought something like a light hearted interview show would be better (and would have great social media potential). Eamonn Holmes is doing a great job.

The breakfast slot does need some news, although there's a lot of work to do there to get the balance between serious news and vacuous trivia right.

Whilst Jon and Iain have been making amusing comments about other presenters, especially JHB and Paul Ross, they have really been bigging each other up. Iain made another comment a few minutes ago to a caller who was complaining about LBC that on talkRADIO there is his show, Jon Holmes show and other shows, although he did post script that with a mention of Jonny & Ash. Jon regularly compliments Iain on how he deals with callers.

When I heard what turned out to be your call to Iain the other night when you asked about his understudy, he began your call saying "Hello Richard" (Cool name ) but ended it saying your DS username "Radamfi" I noticed when I listened back. How come?

I notice a lot of comment about Julia Hartley Brewer. No, or few calls? Not surprised. She's a dreadful woman whenever I've come across her by accident in the wider media. Even if I was at home alone, kicking my heels and it was the only radio station available I would not tune in to her.

Pointing a new listener in the direction of Iain Lee (who's show they didn't like), where they heard Nigel from Maidstone, and I received the comment that the joke with Nigel was on us, and that he is simply playing up a role pretending to be thick or a bit slow on the uptake rather than genuinely being so.