format

Interview with Roger Mathews on Thameside Radio - Jan 1979

OK What about working on Caroline in general? Do you like working on there? Do you enjoy working on the ship?

I think you have to, otherwise there's no way you could stick it, you know, not for a long period of time.

Right. You are allowed to pick your own records very much, sort of freedom isn't there?

There's a lot of freedom. I mean at one time there was total freedom, up to a few months ago, well, time flies here again, it would be about a year ago actually. But we decided there was such variation in the music with crew changes, I mean, you'd get one crew who were really into the heavy music and then you'd get a crew which was into light music, so your audience would keep changing depending on the crew. So to kind of balance it more we devised a format system which kind of balanced out the music. Which means that about almost two thirds of the music is formatted previously in the programme. And by formatting we don't mean you have to play a certain record but you have to play say a record from the Top 10, you know, followed by a classic or a superstar and then you get a new release followed by something from the 11 to 30. It's a very flexible system, you can move it round as you want it and you also get the free choices in as well.

Well, it certainly seems to work 'cos obviously a lot of people listen to you. So how many people do you think you've got listening? Have you any idea at all?

It's a very hard question, I mean, people come up with these surveys every now and again and, you know, you don't really know who to believe. The last ones I heard of they reckoned that there was about, over the week, there was about 4 million people had listened to us.