now there has been a female presenter playing a interesting mix of dance music genres – slightly more vocal and pop dance orientated but not too cheesy. Its a lot like a London pirate 21 years ago but with way better quality now my antenna is correct.

I thought there was still hiss, but this time it is the station, the presenters mic has a earth fault on its circuit and/or is situated next to a ventilation fan or noisy piece of equipment.

Having worked with similar stations in SE England including doing announcements etc, I know presenters rarely notice this because they are concentrating too hard on getting their announcement right / correct levels / confidence, it is either excessively hot or cold in the studio (hence the fan which may be a heater or for cooling) and a proper broadcast desk cuts the studio speakers out when the mic fader goes up, puts up a red light and in todays PC / health and safety world there is often a limiter in the cans so presenters do not blast their own ears (especally from mic feedback!)

Plus their studio clock is out by a few minutes (to the point she was unsure about the local time or how many tunes she could fit into the the last segment of her show) And she could not obtain the score of the local football match, despite the studios being immediately opposite the ground (this may however be also due to commercial agreements at Portman Road they have with other stations – I couldn’t find it either yet she was reading out emails so there must be at least one networked PC there. She did say there were a lot of glum faces but thats no accurate indication, ITFC supporters have been a glum miserable lot when they have beat a much better resourced team 3-0.

I can’t do much about the morale of the footy supporters or the business deals but (having been through the entire Ofcom paperwork to work out where their TX was) I know this station runs on a shoestring budget compared to the mainstream “local” ones which are rubbish and all run from London, and both the noise on the mic circuit and the clock drifting are easy fixes. I’ve heard other presenters complaining that some bits of the studio are playing up

So tomorrow I will find a better run for the antenna cable (as presently my loft hatch is propped open with empty jiffy bags and the gaps sealed with cardboard and gaffer tape so I can listen to the tunes without the cold North Sea wind getting into the room via the roofspace) and look into volunteering with this station – when I am at work I cycle back past the studios every day as it is, and the odd hours I work at coincide with the night janitor turning up at that building so it would be simple to sort this after the live shows have finished. My only condition is that I can park my bike inside the place for security (as the janitor does) 😉

I’d certainly agree for mainstream pop, although dance music and rap often made by minority groups in France isn’t bad (but is in a kind of French dialect you may struggle with as it isn’t taught in school nor broadcast on the mainstream stations. (I certainly do, my French is very formal as most of the textbooks in my schooldays were written in the 1950s). it wouldn’t get played on daytime radio in FR nor here as it also often contains swearing and both Ofcom and whatever their French equivalent is wouldn’t permit it.. they do have community radio in FR but also onlly recently as both UK and FR completely and utterly fucked up the frequency allocation of the FM band after the war (against a signed European agreement) and it still caused problems until the 1990s (no other nations in the entire world did this. Not even the USA).

Younger people from these nations however speak English as their main language other than their native one and would most likely be listening to the grime show as well 😉

As for the football (a friendly in the Youth league) Ipswich won 2-0 against Leeds – but this info was only updated after her show had finished.

I don’t even follow football much, but am going to ask some people who do about why the local club either cannot or will not get this result to the community radio station whose studios they can see from the the ground, and who work with BBC Suffolk anyway. I can understand ruthless competition for rights over big league matches, but surely every broadcast should share the result of the teenagers’ match at least?