UK music radio programming: good radio records and the imagined audience

Abstract

The questions addressed in this chapter are: in what ways are radio programming decisions constrained by notions of the imagined audience? What is the relationship between a “good record” and a “good radio record”? How long is a “good radio record” still “good”? The answers to these questions are drawn from interviews conducted in the mid-2000s with music radio programmers and record industry pluggers in the UK. This chapter argues that decisions on music programming emerge from a complex interaction of professional ideology, market research, and subjective judgements on the value of music as both art and commerce. All of this is framed for programmers by their sense of who is already listening and who they may wish to attract to their station, that is, the imagined audience.