This Monday Virgin Radio becomes Absolute Radio, Virgin is my favourite music station and I have BBC 5 Live for sport and news, when Virgin first burst onto the airwaves all those years ago they were a breath of fresh air, playing some corking music that nobody else was playing, through the original Virgin I discovered my admiration for Pink Floyd, Van Morrison, and many many more, this sort of music at the time was not being playlisted by anyone, sadly Richard Branson then sold the station and over the years as the station has changed hands the original idea and sound has been diluted, so you would find songs that would be played on Capital now being played on Virgin, not my really my cup of tea. Listening over the last few weeks it appears the station is heading back to its original state, which is great.

When I myself have presented radio shows on all the stations I have worked, I have always insisted on choosing the music myself, if the station had a particular sound and style and my style would not fit in I would not do it, as has happened a few times, I have no qualms with a playlist that is designed for a specific audience,you can look at a playlist and get a very good idea of who they are aiming at.

The playlist is essential and a lot of care and attention is needed to be put into it, otherwise it will all sound a mess, as has happened at Gateway in Basildon, when I joined them in the Summer I was given my usual licence by one of the Directors (who knows what he is doing)as I had worked with him before and he got me in to do the style of show I was good at, sadly as you may have seen in an earlier blog other Directors who quite obviously have no idea about radio wanted me to do the show with their playlist using a PC based system that frankly was a shambles, the playlist was a complete disaster, absolutely no though had gone into it, some of the music on their was frankly embarrassing, who these days plays Gary Glitter's Do you wanna touch for gods sake? They did have the opportunity to have a great playlist , in fact they had it in place, Bertie, who has done the same job for Virgin, Invicta, Millenium, Swale Sound and many other stations, was in the month leading up to ur joining working all hours to sort a very good playlist out, sadly a few days before we were due to start they scrapped all the work he had done and gave the job to a 15 year old, and as a result we had no listeners, and no chance!

So playlist is everything, Radio 2 have a good mix during the day, and know exactly who there market is, the likes of Capital, XFM all seemed to have theirs sussed, and thank god Virgin are going back to what they are good at!
Shame about Gateway they had a chance to be decent but the ego has landed! in the meantime I have had an interesting offer which I am going to accept!