While specialist radio stations have been common in North America for decades, music listeners in Britain did not have such choice until the Internet and digitalisation liberated the airwaves. Planet Rock has taken the opportunity with open arms and has built listener numbers over the last year while also bagging prestigious awards.
A Brief History of Rock and Heavy Metal on Modern British Radio
Although radio stations such as the BBC's Radio One played decent music, it was mainly commercial and chart orientated. For rock fans there was little choice, with a two hour show hosted by Tommy Vance at the inconvenient time of 10-12 on a Friday night the only opportunity to hear new heavy metal apart from the occasional song that charted.
Now, bands such as Guns N' Roses, AC/DC and Lynyrd Skynyrd can be heard in digital sound all day.
Rock Music All Day and All of the Night
All that has changed now that Planet Rock is on the air, with Alice Cooper of all people starting the DJing off at 6am each weekday with his three hour show. All the extra bits they cannot fit into the morning shows are put into Alice's Saturday night show.
Rock DJs present two or three hour programmes continuously throughout the day, with Nicky Horne the last on during the week with his show starting at 8pm.
There are DJs on from 7am on the weekend as well, and rock music continues through the night all week.
Planet Rock's Legendary Presenters
As well as Alice Cooper, whose forty year career needs little introduction, Planet Rock has also had other famous rock luminaries presenting on the station, such as Fish, who was the lead singer of Marillion in the 1980s and is still an important figure on the British progressive rock scene.
Another famous prog rocker on the show is Rick Wakeman, who was the keyboardist in genre creating legends of British 1970s rock, Yes. Wakeman presents a show called Rick's Place every Saturday morning, where he spends just as much time cracking jokes with his sidekick as playing music.
American blues rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa also has a show on Tuesday nights, and Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham has just joined to present on Sunday evenings.
Apart from famous names from the rock music world there are also great DJs like Liz Barnes, Nicky Horne and David Jensen to present the best of classic rock music alongside fun features such as the anorak quiz, which takes place on Rob Birnie's morning show.
Planet Rock Awards
Fish won a couple of highly prestigious awards for his show: a Gold at the New York Radio Awards and a Silver at the Sony Awards.
In May 2009 Planet Rock won the Freesat (BBC and ITV's combined company)'s Best Digital Radio Station award, and in the following month won the UK Digital Station Of The Year Award at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards.
You can listen to the station online from the Planet Rock website.
Marc Latham - Doctor of Philosophy and experienced freelance writer searching for truth and meaning, and reporting it in clear and concise copy.
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