Bank holidays and radio schedules
Posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 8:08pm. #
Photo: Adam Bowie’s bank holiday weekend. Used under licence.
Today, Monday August 27th, is a bank holiday. (If you’re not from round here, a bank holiday is a national holiday. For us in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, this was the last holiday until Christmas Day).
Many of us have been relaxing - waking up later, going to a bathroom showroom, stopping the honeysuckle from collapsing on the car by strengthening the fence, cutting the grass, successfully finishing the ‘Excite Truck’ standard level on the Wii, thinking about painting the porch, not painting the porch, that sort of thing.
An ideal time to listen to the radio, therefore. I’ve been doing a fair amount of that today - far more than normal (like, I’d wager, much of the UK).
I woke up to BBC Radio 5 live, to hear regular presenters Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty, with Helen Blaby doing the travel as normal. On driving to aforementioned bathroom showroom, I listened to James O’Brien on LBC 97.3 - irritatingly entertaining as always. (I went to school with James; it annoys me that he’s so much cleverer.)
Had I listened to BBC Radio 4 after 12pm, I’d have heard You and Yours as normal, followed by the World at One. I didn’t get my fix of Radio 4 today, but I did get some more BBC Radio 5 live, where 5 live Drive was presented by the excellent Peter Allen as normal.
Interesting, then, to compare the schedules of the music stations. Moyles is off; O’Connell is off - indeed, absolutely no Virgin presenter is on normal daytime schedule today from 6am to midnight; come to that, the Radio 2 schedule is equally totally dissimilar to an ordinary day; the Capital Radio website tells me that again, today is totally different to a standard Monday; and I’ve no doubt the changes continue across the land.
Interesting:
- speech stations are taking this opportunity to allow people to sample their standard programming, possibly seeing this as great marketing to get listeners they otherwise wouldn’t.
- music stations don’t think this way. Wonder why?
Anyone any ideas?
Helen Blaby said at August 28th, 2007 at 6:39am 
