Birdsong radio campaign to improve quality
Mike Terry
London
By Vikki Miller
6 April 2008
A radio station that broadcasts the sound of birdsong from a British country
garden has become an unlikely hit.
Birdsong radio: Ten of the best on air
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/06/nbirds206.xml
Half a million listeners so far have tuned in to the Birdsong station, with
an increasing number choosing to wake up to the soothing sound every
morning.
Listen: The most popular bird songs
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ttv/news.jhtml?bcpid=1452232298&bclid=1452257940&bctid=1489847268
The station has proved so popular the company behind it has bowed to public
pressure for better sound quality and upgraded the recording.
An internet campaign has also been launched to keep the station on air,
following fears it may soon be shut down and replaced by a commercial
channel.
Listeners have stumbled across Birdsong while searching through the stations
on their digital radios.
Starting at 6am every day and closing at midnight, the station plays a 20
minute-long recording of birds singing in chorus, which is repeated on a
continuous loop.
One avid twitcher has noted 12 different types of bird, including the
chirruping of a swallow and the scratchy warble of a spotted flycatcher.
The Birdsong station broadcasts on a slot once used by OneWord, a
spoken-word station that closed down earlier this year.
Bob Sinfield, 51, an actor from Epsom in Surrey said the birdsong gave him a
sense of reassurance. "I am quite a fan," he said. "I used to listen to
OneWord and was looking for it one day when I heard the birds instead.
"I find it mightily relaxing. There's not enough genuine birdsong in our
urban environment."
Paul Boon, editor of The Radio Magazine, said the station's popularity was
due to word of mouth. He said: "It is the sort of thing that causes people
to talk, so obviously people are listening. We have readers phoning us just
to say how much they like the Birdsong channel. "
Birdsong will remain on air while a permanent commercial broadcaster is
sought for the frequency by DigitalOne, the company that runs Britain's
commercial digital radio network.
Glyn Jones, operations director at DigitalOne, said: "Most of the 159,000
weekly audience from OneWord have listened [to Birdsong] and now, because it
has caught the public's imagination, at least 340,000 have come on board as
well." The recording was made by Quentin Howard, chairman of DigitalOne, who
taped birds in his Wiltshire garden in 1991 for the sound effects of an
amateur dramatics play.
"At the time I thought it was just the sound of an ordinary garden on the
edge of Salisbury Plain but now it has become famous and part of radio
folklore," he said.
"It has become the soundscape to people's lives. I am very proud of that."
Birdsong was first heard as a filler on Classic FM's frequency in the run-up
to its launch 15 years ago and was a huge hit.
But despite its popularity, Mr Howard warned the station could not work as a
commercial venture. "It is not designed to make money as it has to run
uninterrupted," he said.
However, the listeners who love Birdsong are not about to give up without a
fight. Two campaign groups have been set up on Facebook, the social
networking website, with one group trying to raise £1 million from an
"eccentric millionaire" to keep the station going.
An anthropologist, Andrew Whitehouse, a research fellow at Aberdeen
University who is conducting a two-year study into the effect birdsong has
on people, said the popularity of the channel could be explained because
bird calls often evoked special memories. He said: "It is not always the
sounds we think of as the most beautiful that people like to listen to.
"People tell me they have certain bird sounds, such as seagulls, that remind
them of being a child or by the seaside. They make associations.
"Swifts and nightingales remind them of spring and an English countryside
scene. It takes them somewhere else, almost like a form of escapism."
A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: "We
actually have birdsong as our telephone hold music and it is not uncommon
for people to ask to listen to it a while longer.
"Birdsong has always been a source of happiness and inspiration and is
important in all of our lives."
. To hear the station for yourself, tune in to Birdsong on a DAB digital
radio http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/news/display.asp?id=290
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