Character of service: Radio Caroline is an album station, Europe’s first. We offer an extremely broad mix of music, exclusively from albums, tailored towards an adult audience with a slightly discerning music taste. Hit singles, current or past, do not feature within this mix unless they are taken from an album and their chart success is just an accidental coincidence. It is a significant part of our programming that we ignore chart positions, past or present. Radio Caroline does not identify with any particular era or genre of music. We play tracks from albums from the 1960s right through to the present day, making us unique in the United Kingdom.
Our typical listener: Someone who is a mature, musically aware adult. They probably grew up in the 1960s with serious music acts such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash. They probably shared the views of people like John Lennon and took an interest in events such as the Woodstock Festival. As the 1970s dawned they may well have gone to the Isle Of Wight Festival, discovered the evolving sounds of The Who, David Bowie and Stevie Wonder and read with interest about the early careers of future greats such as Bruce Springsteen. At the moment they may not be listening to any radio at all as they believe there isn’t a station that plays the depth and variety of material they prefer. They may well be feeling let down or ill-served by their perception of what is currently available.
Our ‘target’ audience: Currently Radio Caroline targets for its core listening the 50+ year old demographic. Our research shows that our programming also broadly appeals to listeners of 40+ years of age. It is our intention to continue to target that core demographic and also those in their 40s who prefer our more serious and perhaps challenging mix of music over that offered elsewhere. The 25 year old demographic so coveted by the majority of commercial radio operators is of no importance to us. We see the vast majority of any new audience that we attract coming from the ranks of current non-radio listeners rather than 'taking away' listeners from existing stations. Our own research backs this up. Many of our current audience do not listen to any other music station, choosing to supplement their Caroline listening with Radio 4 and/or Radio 5 Live.
Our music: As previously stated the music we play comes exclusively from albums with no bias to any one era or musical genre. With such a huge amount of music at our disposal it is impossible to give a definitive list however the following representative examples may help to give a flavour of our output. It should be noted that these examples are album titles and not specific tracks, we do not programme one or two specific tracks from each album, our presenters are encouraged to play tracks from the whole album.
| 1960s The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Small Faces – Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland The Byrds – Younger Than Yesterday |
1970s Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here Fleetwood Mac – Rumours Genesis – A Trick Of The Tale |
| 1980s U2 – The Joshua Tree Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms The Clash – Combat Rock Steve Winwood – Talking Back To The Night |
1990s White Stripes – The White Stripes Radiohead – OK Computer Waterboys – Dream Harder Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill |
| 2000s Blackmore’s Night – Fires At Midnight Kaiser Chiefs – Employment Ian Hunter – Man Overboard Eagles – Long Road Out Of Eden |
Current Gary Wright – Connected Doobie Brothers – World Gone Crazy Robert Plant – Band Of Joy Rumer – Seasons of the Soul |
To further illustrate the wide scope of our music output and in addition to the examples above, bands and artists such as the following would also feature.
- Blood, Sweat & Tears
- John Cale
- Nick Drake
- Elvis Costello
- Miles Davis
- Allman Brothers Band
- Rufus Wainwright
- Curtis Mayfield
- Gill Scott Heron
- Johnny Cash
- Billy Bragg
- Tom Waits
- Bob Marley
- Steely Dan
- The Band
- Deep Purple
- Joan Armatrading
- Earth, Wind & Fire
- Otis Redding
- Steve Miller Band
- Bruce Springsteen
- Arcade Fire
- Kings Of Leon
Speech content: Currently this counts for a very small percentage of our output, no more than around 5% across any seven day period. This percentage normally takes the form of interviews and additional speech segments in themed programmes. We do not propose to alter this level greatly although we are closely examining the possibility of being to provide travel news and news headlines at peak times.
To sum up, Radio Caroline will continue to offer its unique music service presented in a style very much tailored to an adult audience. Our contention is that being totally different to anything currently available it poses no threat to any established operator.
