Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Useless information

There was a time when you could listen to music radio and hear music. These days there are increasing intruptions from weather reports, business reports and worst of all traffic reports. Traffic presenters on Radio 2 for example have become celebrities in their own right, publishing books and doing personal appearances at 'monster truck' events. I was reminded of this as I was driving to Berwick-upon-Tweed this morning to deliver one of our dogs to the vet for a little op when on came a traffic report from BBC Radio Newcastle. There were the usual things - a truck broken down at the Washington turn-off, slow moving traffic round the metro centre, some train information and then horror of horrors; a delay at Newcastle airport. Not just any delay but a delay to the 8.45 a.m. Dublin flight, " it will be departing at 8.55 a.m.". A whole ten minutes! Worst of all this was at 8.23 a.m. so any passenger on that flight was either in the departure lounge or in the security line and were well aware of the delay having read it on the monitors

Why don't they just play the Stones, Satisfaction instead....

And that man comes on the radio
And he's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination.

5 comments:

Sean Jeating said...

Ha ha. This reminds me of the notorious square limber lying on the A7 near Hamburg. It has, by the way, not been found, yet. :)
As for the 'shocking' 10-minutes-delay:
A German and a Japanese on the way to the underground. Says the German: 'Let's hurry up. We might catch the next train, which will save us ten minutes.'
Taking their seats, the German while wiping the sweat off his forehead, gasps: 'Done!' - 'Indeed', says the Japanese, 'and what are we now going to do with the ten minutes?'

Have a nice day, Sir. :)

Selena Dreamy said...

These days there are increasing interruptions from weather reports, business reports and worst of all traffic reports.

...nope, worst of all are the football reports!

Footballers are the principal characters in a national thriller that is fated never to have a conclusion. The insanity of it is exceeded only by the inanity of it. And the reports are remarkable above all for the fact that they are freely transposable provided you adapt the venue, the dates and the players.

The turn of phrase never varies.

Popular demand has persuaded the nation that it has become necessary to create a new aristocratic class based on moronic values, and celebrated mostly for its inarticulate vernacular, the flat feet and a great wish to be taken seriously socially.....whereas all those who, under the pretext of sanity or intelligence, offend the values of moronism, have come to see themselves as outcasts, set apart from society by their love of perspective and the pursuit of reason!

And note: this notion of moronic insensibility as a kind of grace freely bestowed by commercial radio stations persists every half-an-hour, twenty-four hours round the clock.

Dreamy

Richard Havers said...

Sean, that's great!

Dreamy, of course you are absolutely right. I suppose we'll know when we've reached the real rock bottom. A Radio 2 traffic reporter will be invited to spend the weekend at Chequers with the PM and Mrs PM.

Ellee Seymour said...

I guess you will have to rely on your iPod Richard, it's the only way to avoid these unwanted and useless constant interruptions.

jmb said...

Love this. Traffic presenters who are celebrities, like the weather men.

On the good old CBC we don't have traffic presenters but we have a coordinator of cellphone calls from the general public who writes something for the host to read every so often. It only happens at rush hour when there are talk radio shows anyway. Thankfully the music on the music programs is played only interrupted by the comments of the host of the show but are usually worth listening to.