Nothing to Turn Off

from David Runciman in the London Review of Books:
What has gone is the traditional magic of pop radio that came, as Dylan describes it in his memoirs, from the experience of tuning the dial and having to settle for the best you could find. There are no more dials to tune. Instead, on digital radio, you can flick through the names of every station you might possibly want to listen to. Choice is wonderful for extending variety and driving up quality. But the downside of choice is that the listener has to choose. This might not matter so much for people who know exactly what they want; for them the digital revolution is a godsend (the internet can find you a station for any interest under the sun, with the promise to come of stations personalised to individual listeners’ tastes). But when it comes to pop music interspersed by relatively mindless chat, choice spoils things. It’s impossible not to be impressed by the skill Chris Moyles devotes to being reliably zany and boisterous 60 hours a month, but it’s hard to stick with it knowing one could be listening to almost anything else. Moyles is a better DJ than Tony Blackburn ever was. But there was a good reason to listen to Tony Blackburn if you wanted mindless chat in the morning: that’s all there was…