This month Peter pays a visit to the south-coast radio station for Chat Roulette and fugitive racoons
As regular readers will have surmised, Radio Daze employs a strictly regimented selection process when examining the planet's airwaves. This month there are two deciding factors in the selection of Brighton's 15-year-old independent station Juice FM. First, I see that the sun is out. Second, like all London idiots when the sun appears, I decide it will be quite nice to spend a few hours by the sea.
The day after making this decision I arrive in Brighton to meet Juice's very likable breakfast hosts Dan Gasser – what a name! – and Hanna Neter, and bunting lining the streets tells me that Brighton's fringe festival, in which Juice will play a key role, is due to start in two days' time. This is definitely newsworthy and, satisfied that my pursuit of sunny weather is perfectly in tune with journalistic integrity, I join Dan and Hanna in the studio just as Robbie Williams's mighty Candy is playing. It's only 8.10am and today is already excellent.
Thanks to one of those surveys that companies put out in order to stimulate just this sort of discussion, Dan and Hanna just been chatting about "bugbears in the workplace", a topic that was covered on the two other breakfast shows I listened to on my way down. While Candy continues to tootle along in the background Dan explains that one of their regular features, which I have just missed, is called Chat Roulette. This is "three minutes talking on a subject that is thrown as us", and the subject today was "fruit".
I double-check that this really means that the duo spent three minutes discussing fruit.
"Yes," Hanna confirms. "We did all right on fruit."
What were the bulletpoints?
"Favourite fruits, fruits we like ... The fact that I don't like the funny black bit in bananas ..."
"All the hot topics," Dan states.
Speaking of hot topics, it's time for Hanna to deliver a news bulletin. This morning's top stories concern a troubled Coronation Street star, an elm tree not being chopped down in the Brighton area and – most excitingly – the news that two raccoons from nearby Drusillas Zoo Park have escaped and are, apparently, "at large". Dan and Hanna's monitors flash up listeners' texts, and it seems to me that Juice's audience is a lot more engaged than those of many stations I have visited before. I ask whether they would consider trying to mobilise these listeners in a south-coast raccoon hunt.
"Well we could do," Dan says. "But when Justin Bieber's monkey was in the news we wanted to get Drusillas involved, and they're up on animal welfare so they didn't want to be seen to be making light of it. Drusillas is actually some distance away, too."
Dan seems to be be suggesting that the raccoon story's relevance to Juice's Brighton audience hinges on a combination of both when the zoo-break took place and how fast a raccoon can travel, but before we can discuss this in the necessary detail, Dan has to play Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. While it plays, I ask Dan precisely how he and Hanna broadcast to a city as diverse as Brighton. "The thing is," Dan says, "obviously Brighton is well known for people living here being a certain way but that's not true for everyone in the local area. Not everyone's a vegetarian; not everyone's gay."
Just as I'm musing on the possibility that Dan's perfectly reasonable statement will look more severe in print than it sounded when said in front of my face, Juice's founder, Daniel Nathan, appears, and he and I head downstairs to make coffee for the hosts. While he's fiddling with filters, Daniel explains that Juice's policy is "ratings by day and reputation by night" but that the key is locality. "That's the only reason for stations of this type to exist," he says. "You've got to be everywhere, but the good thing about being parochial in Brighton is that it's not quite the same as being parochial in other places. We're at the cricket, pantomime, Pride... "
We deliver coffees to the studio, where a competition to win tickets for Brighton & Hove Albion's weekend match is underway. As someone who has grown increasingly sceptical of whether radio stations' switchboards light up as frequently as they claim, it pleases me that Juice's switchboard does boast lights, all of which are now flashing.
"We've got to do a Paul Weller announcement!" Hanna suddenly says. It sounds urgent.
"Is he dead?" I ask. This could be even more exciting than the fugitive raccoons.
"No," Hanna says. "He's playing at the Brighton Dome."
Dan and Hanna spin a song by David Guetta, an artist whose ubiquity on UK airwaves is described by Dan (off air) in the following way: "He's everywhere; he's like shit in a field."
Guetta's appearance means it's time for me to go. After the show goes off air at 10am, Dan will edit it into a best-of package, which will be broadcast at 2pm. And those raccoons? This isn't the sort of story that should be allowed to fade away as the topline news agenda shifts. "We will be monitoring the raccoons," Hanna reassures me. "We will find out if they've been found, although I'm a bit worried that when they are found, they'll be squashed on the A27".
*juicebrighton.com* Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
As regular readers will have surmised, Radio Daze employs a strictly regimented selection process when examining the planet's airwaves. This month there are two deciding factors in the selection of Brighton's 15-year-old independent station Juice FM. First, I see that the sun is out. Second, like all London idiots when the sun appears, I decide it will be quite nice to spend a few hours by the sea.
The day after making this decision I arrive in Brighton to meet Juice's very likable breakfast hosts Dan Gasser – what a name! – and Hanna Neter, and bunting lining the streets tells me that Brighton's fringe festival, in which Juice will play a key role, is due to start in two days' time. This is definitely newsworthy and, satisfied that my pursuit of sunny weather is perfectly in tune with journalistic integrity, I join Dan and Hanna in the studio just as Robbie Williams's mighty Candy is playing. It's only 8.10am and today is already excellent.
Thanks to one of those surveys that companies put out in order to stimulate just this sort of discussion, Dan and Hanna just been chatting about "bugbears in the workplace", a topic that was covered on the two other breakfast shows I listened to on my way down. While Candy continues to tootle along in the background Dan explains that one of their regular features, which I have just missed, is called Chat Roulette. This is "three minutes talking on a subject that is thrown as us", and the subject today was "fruit".
I double-check that this really means that the duo spent three minutes discussing fruit.
"Yes," Hanna confirms. "We did all right on fruit."
What were the bulletpoints?
"Favourite fruits, fruits we like ... The fact that I don't like the funny black bit in bananas ..."
"All the hot topics," Dan states.
Speaking of hot topics, it's time for Hanna to deliver a news bulletin. This morning's top stories concern a troubled Coronation Street star, an elm tree not being chopped down in the Brighton area and – most excitingly – the news that two raccoons from nearby Drusillas Zoo Park have escaped and are, apparently, "at large". Dan and Hanna's monitors flash up listeners' texts, and it seems to me that Juice's audience is a lot more engaged than those of many stations I have visited before. I ask whether they would consider trying to mobilise these listeners in a south-coast raccoon hunt.
"Well we could do," Dan says. "But when Justin Bieber's monkey was in the news we wanted to get Drusillas involved, and they're up on animal welfare so they didn't want to be seen to be making light of it. Drusillas is actually some distance away, too."
Dan seems to be be suggesting that the raccoon story's relevance to Juice's Brighton audience hinges on a combination of both when the zoo-break took place and how fast a raccoon can travel, but before we can discuss this in the necessary detail, Dan has to play Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. While it plays, I ask Dan precisely how he and Hanna broadcast to a city as diverse as Brighton. "The thing is," Dan says, "obviously Brighton is well known for people living here being a certain way but that's not true for everyone in the local area. Not everyone's a vegetarian; not everyone's gay."
Just as I'm musing on the possibility that Dan's perfectly reasonable statement will look more severe in print than it sounded when said in front of my face, Juice's founder, Daniel Nathan, appears, and he and I head downstairs to make coffee for the hosts. While he's fiddling with filters, Daniel explains that Juice's policy is "ratings by day and reputation by night" but that the key is locality. "That's the only reason for stations of this type to exist," he says. "You've got to be everywhere, but the good thing about being parochial in Brighton is that it's not quite the same as being parochial in other places. We're at the cricket, pantomime, Pride... "
We deliver coffees to the studio, where a competition to win tickets for Brighton & Hove Albion's weekend match is underway. As someone who has grown increasingly sceptical of whether radio stations' switchboards light up as frequently as they claim, it pleases me that Juice's switchboard does boast lights, all of which are now flashing.
"We've got to do a Paul Weller announcement!" Hanna suddenly says. It sounds urgent.
"Is he dead?" I ask. This could be even more exciting than the fugitive raccoons.
"No," Hanna says. "He's playing at the Brighton Dome."
Dan and Hanna spin a song by David Guetta, an artist whose ubiquity on UK airwaves is described by Dan (off air) in the following way: "He's everywhere; he's like shit in a field."
Guetta's appearance means it's time for me to go. After the show goes off air at 10am, Dan will edit it into a best-of package, which will be broadcast at 2pm. And those raccoons? This isn't the sort of story that should be allowed to fade away as the topline news agenda shifts. "We will be monitoring the raccoons," Hanna reassures me. "We will find out if they've been found, although I'm a bit worried that when they are found, they'll be squashed on the A27".
*juicebrighton.com* Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.