Life and Local Listening

All right all? It's been a while. My apologies. Saturday was a busy day and Sunday wasn't. Nevermind I am here now.

On Saturday, I went to the Harrow game I mentioned previously. A bumper crowd of 174 (including me and Denis) saw a boring goalless slog between Boro and Tooting and Mitcham, and we then were asked to write a 500 word match report about it. Fun(!) Before that though we went to O'Neills to watch the rugby and in an incredibly tense game the Irish overcame the Welsh to win the Grand Slam. Fair play to them.

With this mention of sport, I feel I should express my intense concern at the current form of United. A 4-1 defeat last week followed by a 2-0 embarassment at Craven Cottage this weekend has seen those scummy Scouse bastards move within a point of us at the summit. We do have a game in hand mind, so it's not all doom and gloom. I can just see them edging us though. It is a worry.

Yesterday, as I said, I did nothing. It was a tough day, being Mother's Day and spending it with Aoif, but we got there and ended up watching Dumb and Dumber, Mulan, Aladdin and 40 Days and 40 Nights all in a row. The last film in that list offended me to the core however. If you are familiar with the film then you will know that Josh Hartnett is essentially raped towards the end by his crazy ex-girlfriend. How? Well, he's asleep and she just hops on and he's not really aware what's going on until the climax when he wakes up. Now, it maybe silly, but had that scene shown the reverse with a man sleeping with a woman who was asleep, there would have been public outcry and the film would probably have been banned. I am therefore pissed off. Bloody ridiculous.

Anyway, that's enough of my anger towards rape. Today saw the second Heart attack in the UK, with the south and sotuh west stations becoming Heartified. It's another sad day for radio, and it makes me frustrated that all of this history is just glazed over in an instant. I'm not sure that the Heart network even works, seeing as GWR has to play at least 66% worth of songs from the last two years in it's output, which isn't the Heart style. Global received a warning from Ofcom recently about this and they have now rectified this.

On another radio point, I have spent a good 5 or 6 hours today listening to 'The station that pays your bills' 95.8 Capital FM and it's been brilliant. Now I know that I have a reputation as being 'the commercial one' amongst a few of us in the class, and I seem to be the official spokesman and defender of the sector whenever we have debates, but today was even better than I even believed. At the moment, Capital are running a 'Pay your Bills' competition at the moment, which whilst is not original appears to be going incredibly succesfully, as their website crashed earlier. I was listening during The Bassman covered drive and the thought the way he dealt with callers who had won was brilliant. On one occaison, at the end of the call, he asked he caller 'Who pays your bills?' and the very pleased winner shouted '95.8 Capital FM' which is a great way of instilling the brand, and reiterating the idea behind the competition. It sounded fantastic. Also, something else that impressed me immensely is a little trick that Capital uses to keep listeners during ad breaks. They played two or three ads and then a little trail comes in informing listners that the traffic and travel is coming next, and then another advert is played. This little five second trail probably keeps listeners who are thinking of switching off, from doing so and catching the latest news. Very impressive, and something I've never heard of before.

I'm currently listening to Rich Clarke and Kat Shoob at the moment. Rich is a great jock and Kat Shoob is well hot, so it's a pretty well rounded show. Safe to say that at the moment, Capital is by far my favourite station.

Gonna chill out with my Xbox for a while now.

Laters!