Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
This talk explores contemporary listeners’ engagement with and thoughts about programmes and DJs of the most listened to radio station in the UK, BBC Radio 2.
It analyses how the station only become committed to playing post 1950s rock and roll influenced popular music from the late 1990s and how Radio 2 demonstrates that commitment in its shows, its special events and features. The talk is both a critical analysis of the station and a celebration of the passions of its listeners.
The British Academy funded the research on which this talk is based, into listeners to BBC Radio 2. It is the first sustained research into BBC Radio 2 which has been the most listened to UK radio station for the last quarter of a century. Along the way we will explore why no other research has explored the station compared to book length studies of Radio 1, Radio 3 and Radio 4.
The talk will highlight key DJs, listeners’ perspectives on them and their programmes. It notes the passion of listeners when Radio 2 bosses announce changes in programmes and personnel. It concludes that the station is an extremely successful example of popular public service broadcasting. The importance of BBC Radio 2 goes way beyond its large-scale audiences. The existence and features of Radio 2 gives us clues to some necessary features of the future of public service broadcasting itself.
Leeds Cultural Conversations is a series of public lectures organised by the Centre for Culture and Humanities at Leeds Beckett University. The series is run in partnership with Leeds Central Library and each event showcases a different piece of leading research being undertaken by our academic colleagues to a wider public audience, with discussion and debate encouraged by all that attend.
Neil Washbourne teaches and researches in three areas having specialised in media and politics earlier in his career (thus the book Mediating Politics (2010)): media celebrity and film stardom; comedy studies; and BBC Radio. He is currently writing a chapter on the history and current existence of British stand-up comedy and conducting research into 120 hours of broadcast programming on BBC Radio 2 to assess it as public service broadcasting during the difficulties and anxieties of the covid pandemic and aiming to conduct further research into listeners to the station.
