“This is a message for Mr and Mrs Reginald Beauchamp, who are believed to be holidaying in the North Devon area. Would Mr and Mrs Reginald Beauchamp please contact ward nine of the Royal Hospital in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, where Mr Beauchamp’s mother, Mrs Cecily Beauchamp, is dangerously ill.”
As I ate my jam sandwiches I would wonder, and worry, about the possibilities of the Beauchamps, in their holiday caravan at Ilfracombe, hearing the message, and of course, the chances of the senior Mrs Beauchamp pulling through.
This was an era in which mobile phones were thoroughly absent; indeed most households were without a landline, and we all relied on ‘interaction’ by letter or postcard. The sight of the telegram boy heading to your door was usually unwelcome. People rarely sent good news by telegram.
So – if you had a dire emergency, and did not know the location of the recipient, the BBC and their ‘dangerously ill’ missives were your only hope. Fifty years on, and both the BBC and independent radio are trapped in the belief that they still need to provide public services, ignoring the technology and changing lifestyles that have revolutionised our ability to receive information.
Traffic and weather bulletins provide comforting junctions for broadcasters. They enable them to feel they are being of service, and perhaps more importantly, give structure to not only the programme, but also the station. Programme controllers like structure.
In this country we have pretty stable weather. Most days, it is sunny, cloudy, or raining. Blistering heat or belligerent snowfall is rare; at most they feature for a few irritating days each year. Therefore, if a radio (or TV) station really feels an overwhelming desire to forecast the weather (and incidentally we could just as easily look out of the window) the whole business could be wrapped up in five seconds, “Cloudy today, chance of showers later, a high of about fourteen degrees.”
That’s all we need to know right there.
Instead, however, we are treated to an aural essay, detailing every nuance, hour by hour, of high pressure, low pressure, isobars and prevailing winds. Those five seconds run into minutes. We hear a lot and learn nothing.
The weather report though, is nothing but a light breeze compared to the hailstorm of worthless information delivered by the traffic reporters.
A few days ago I was driving back to Berkshire, on the M4, and listening to the excellent Richard Bacon on 5Live; up pops Nick Duncalf with his traffic news. “I’m hearing that a lorry has overturned on the M4 between junctions fifteen and fourteen, and that all three lanes are affected.”
Yes Nick, that’s quite so, if only we could travel back in time about an hour.
As the M4 blockage was broadcast, I and my fellow, stationary, drivers had been sitting, without moving an inch for about forty-five minutes, whilst the emergency services dealt with the incident. As Nick Duncalf gave the first indication of the obstruction, the truck had been uprighted, moved to the hard shoulder, and the traffic was beginning to move freely once more. That’s not a public service. Traffic news generally tells you what happened an hour ago. By the time you hear the update, you’re either already sitting in the middle of the incident, or it’s been cleared up, and the information has no relevance.
How many people were caught up in ‘my’ traffic line – a couple of hundred? How many listeners does 5Live attract in the afternoon? Well they won’t tell us but it will be several hundred thousand. So that M4 information, delivered an hour after the event, may have been useful to about 0.0005% of the listeners.
The most compelling reason to drop weather and travel reporters (WTRs - or ‘witterers’) from radio programmes, and especially music based shows, is the overarching desire that overcomes presenters to include the WTRs as a part of the show, rather than as a contributor to it. This starts innocently enough, usually with some contrived and excruciating banter. The WTR, unused to having to respond speedily, live on air, will often fall back on a silly insult about the presenter’s stature or appearance. There is usually one of those forced, “HA HA HA!” laughs, and we go straight to a new entry in the chart from Lady Gaga.
It doesn’t stop there. The WTR is useful to fill up a link or two, and the role increases to reading out some text messages, and they receive a surprise call from their mother on their birthday. It’s terrible, outdated, and squirm inducing. Generally, we can hear the underlying terror in the WTR’s voice, when they are asked anything away from their weather or traffic comfort zone. Set them free.
Will the controllers of all radio stations please drop the traffic and weather updates at once, as their usefulness is dangerously ill and out of date.
Thank you.
Terence Dackombe, October 2010
This week I have:
Been listening to Prefab Sprout’s wonderful “Let’s Change The World With Music”, and the traffic flowing ‘the other way’ on the M4.
Reading Stewart Copeland’s memoir “Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies” and wishing he had employed an editor.
Watching The Apprentice (don’t those applicants ever watch the show? “I turn everything I touch into sold!”), Seven Days, and, of course, X Factor, joining in with the public anguish about the fate of Gamu.
