[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by Sideband

That must be my problem then. I now listen to a local station as preference. I've had R2 tuned in more or less permanently on the car radio for years but over the last 18 months or so I've drifted away except for Sounds of the 60's on Saturday mornings.

It's my supposition that they moved Sounds of the Sixties to 6am on a Saturday a) in the hope that the audience figures would drop off and it could be quietly 'rested' (BBC parlance for 'axed') and b) in the meantime it wouldn't offend the new R2 target audience too much in that time slot. Unfortunately, Tony Blackburn is making a rather good job of it. He seems to have quite a fan base and could well hang around as long as Brian Matthew!

I think I'm fortunate that I like a wide variety of listening and always have done. However, I'm clearly in a minority as the trend today in terms of style and content is towards 'narrowcasting' rotating the same 100 or so records from a particular era or genre over and over again. The commercial stations, whose main object is to make returns for their shareholders through advertising revenue, will have done enough research to know which model works best.