Snap, crackle and pop with Radio 4 Extra Extra

The BBC has turned off its long wave radio service after 101 years. But ardent fans of the special sound quality of the long wave service need not worry. The BBC is launching a new service called Radio 4 Extra Extra (to distinguish it from Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra).

The new service, referred to as BBC R4XX, is a digitally enhanced copy of standard Radio 4 output, with the trademark long wave snap, crackle and pop added back in electronically, along with unintelligible mumbling and some dropouts. The dropouts will mostly be old Radio 1 DJs.

Long Wave fans regard this solution as very unsatisfactory. One said, 'I'm cheesed off about buying a new radio. The valves in my radio have plenty of life left in them. I don't pay my licence fee for this sort of PC, woke, nanny-state nonsense.

'I was psychologically prepared to move to the medium wave, or possibly short wave. I have a massive allergy to FM transmissions, and will only buy an FM radio over my own dead body. As for DAB, that's not for me. And you can keep DAB+ as well. And I'm not sure that you can properly call internet radio 'broadcasting'.

'I'm petitioning the BBC to reissue old long wave broadcasts in a format that's accessible to true fans - wax cylinders, eight track, or, for the tech-savvy, Sinclair Microdrive.'

Image credit: deep dream generator

Careless Whisper FM

Smooth FM will change its name and move to broadcasting George Michael's Careless Whisper all day long, on a loop. The track has topped a listener poll for the eighth year in a row.

A spokesman said, 'Okay, we give up! If that's all you want, then that's fine. There will still be plenty of variety on the radio station, as we have several different advertisers and we will still be using our famous automated AI deejay to introduce the track, give traffic updates, and remind listeners to keep breathing. We will occasionally play a live version of the track, just to keep things fresh, and we will continue to run out phone in competitions, with all the prizes being George Michael merch.

'Financially, it's good move for us. We've done a deal on the broadcast rights and we won't have to pay for any other music. It's very popular with listeners, because our broadcasts are considerably less annoying than Capital Radio, as long as you don't mind George Michael...

'Romesh heard about our plans and asked if he could do some DJing for us. We said no.'

Image: manfredrichter - Pixabay

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