Rock music stations have never had it so good, according to a debate chaired by Rick Wakeman. Are you happy with the rock music on your radio?
The joy of digital radio means we now have stations playing rock around the clock. It was all rather different 20 years ago, when my friends who were into Poison, Thunder and Enuff Z Enuff had to wait all week for Tommy Vance's rock show on Radio 1. And even then it was scheduled just as you were going out, so you had to get your mum to tape it onto a couple of C90s.
Well, maybe Planet Rock and The Arrow don't play a great deal of Enuff Z Enuff - maybe that was just me, er, my friends back in the '80s - but back to last week's Radio Academy debate in central London.
"This is the best it has ever been," said Nicky Horne, who you may remember from various late night Channel 4 music shows and can now be found at GCap's Planet Rock. "This is the best fun I have had in radio in my entire career."
Unlike certain radio stations he could mention, Horne says Planet Rock is staffed by people who are passionate about the music.
To paraphrase him a little, Horne says it hasn't changed formats because it doesn't have the pressure of having to get a huge audience on FM, and it doesn't have consultants shipped in from Australia telling him to turn that awful racket down. Oh, and there are fewer idiot bosses who don't like presenters who know anything about music.
Xfm's Ian Camfield agrees. "Now we have got proper rock stations rather than people who think they want to start a rock station then six months later start playing Blondie and INXS."
Camfield hosts a rock show, among other things, on Xfm while Virgin and Radio 1 play quite a lot of the stuff and - glory be - Ofcom has even licensed local stations dedicated to rock, such as the aptly-named 97.4 Rock FM in the north-west of England.
It all depends how you define "rock" music, of course, a debate which Shaun Keaveny, the former Xfm man now at BBC 6Music, wasn't entirely enthusiastic about getting into. "I am new, I don't want to destroy my career before I've started. Can I ring [6Music head of programmes] Ric Blaxill?"
Anyway, I occasionally tune into The Arrow, as I have mentioned here before, and it certainly plays a lot of rock. Only problem is it always seems to be the same record. Well, not quite, but certain songs appear to be on particularly heavy rotation, as they probably don't say in radio circles.
Still, you can't quantify the joy of hearing a radio station that actually appears to enjoy playing a Genesis song. I never thought that I would see (should that be hear?) the day. But is this a good thing?
