Blogradio

Listening to James Whale on TalkSport last night – rather a bizarre choice of radio station for the poet and I to have as our default nighttime listening I always think, given our lack of interest (mostly) in sport, but we do love the Whale. His show often has interesting topics, and amusing callers – I was struck by the thought that radio talk shows and blogs have a lot in common.

Both tend to have a mix of current events mixed with the opinion of the presenter/blogger, which can make for controversial listening/reading. Radio shows and blogs both tend to attract more attention the more controversial they are. Both give a mouthpiece to the presenter/blogger, with a relatively unlimited audience – although radio probably has the edge in terms of the number of shows/blogs with a large audience, given the thousands of blogs that exist, and blogs have the potential to reach far more people (live) than a radio broadcast (as opposed to listening to the radio via the web).

Radio shows have callers, blogs have comments. Hosts can hang up on or ban callers, bloggers can delete comments and ban commenters. Some people become serial callers, some commenters comment on every blog post (well, I’m hoping….) Radio hosts have a 5 second delay before anything goes to air, bloggers can delay hitting the publish button as long as they like.

Have I missed anything?

So, welcome to MarriedtoaPoet, the radio show. Do call in, but it might take me a minute to get to the microphone as I'll be in bed listening to James Whale. I think it's aliens tonight. Hope Phil the trucker calls in.