Maria Ghasan came onto QL a couple of nights ago, and resurrected a six-month-old thread that criticized the newsreaders and music choices. She blamed the poor news on badly written copy, and blamed the music on listeners requests. Then, a few hours later, she had a re-think and deleted her comments.
Here are my suggestions.
1. Qatar should remove QBS's monopoly on English-language broadcasting. Competition is good, and would raise quality. The quickest and simplest way to do this would be to transmit the English service of the BBC during the day. This is what happens in Abu Dhabi.
2. French broadcasts should be given their own station. There are enough Lebanese in Qatar to make this worthwhile. Chopping into peak-listening drive-time on an English-language station with French news is mad, but I can see why French speakers wouldn't want to lose the limited time they have on the airwaves.
3. QBS should decide what kind of radio station they are. If they are a music-based station, they should ditch the poor-quality speech programmes like London call.
4. QBS should find out who is listening, and what they want to hear. During drive-time, music should be geared towards the great bulk of English speakers who like to listen to popular music. That means, it should be the top-10 from England, USA and Australia, and classic tracks from the past year.
5. The station should try to maintain a similar feeling across the day. This could be done with playlists. Obscure music (either obscure genres or hits from the 1950s) should only be played in the early mornings when no one is listening.
Maria Ghasan came onto QL a couple of nights ago, and resurrected a six-month-old thread that criticized the newsreaders and music choices. She blamed the poor news on badly written copy, and blamed the music on listeners requests. Then, a few hours later, she had a re-think and deleted her comments.
Here are my suggestions.
1. Qatar should remove QBS's monopoly on English-language broadcasting. Competition is good, and would raise quality. The quickest and simplest way to do this would be to transmit the English service of the BBC during the day. This is what happens in Abu Dhabi.
2. French broadcasts should be given their own station. There are enough Lebanese in Qatar to make this worthwhile. Chopping into peak-listening drive-time on an English-language station with French news is mad, but I can see why French speakers wouldn't want to lose the limited time they have on the airwaves.
3. QBS should decide what kind of radio station they are. If they are a music-based station, they should ditch the poor-quality speech programmes like London call.
4. QBS should find out who is listening, and what they want to hear. During drive-time, music should be geared towards the great bulk of English speakers who like to listen to popular music. That means, it should be the top-10 from England, USA and Australia, and classic tracks from the past year.
5. The station should try to maintain a similar feeling across the day. This could be done with playlists. Obscure music (either obscure genres or hits from the 1950s) should only be played in the early mornings when no one is listening.
6. Buy in a decent news feed.