Sometimes too much can still be not enough.
It’s pretty safe to say that everybody has heard about King Midas, and what became known as the ‘Midas Touch’. Even if you think it is just a song by Midnight Star from 1986.
The gist of the story is that King Midas was bestowed with the gift of gold. To channel Midnight Star once again, ‘everything he touched turned to gold’.
Initially overjoyed by this seemingly incredible power he had been given, he soon realised it was also a terrible curse. His food turned to gold, and then even his own daughter too.
You see, too much can actually be a burden.
Nowadays we suffer from too much choice.
We may find ourselves trawling, frustrated, through the Netflix home screen searching in vain for something good to watch, when there are hundreds of thousands of options available.
In fact, one of the most popular searches on Google is ‘What is good to watch on Netflix?’
It seems we just can’t cope with too many options.
We now also have every song in recorded music history in the palm of our hands, and the ability to search, find and listen to them within seconds.
But, after curating a few tracks you suddenly run out of ideas and options, even though you know there are thousands of songs that mean the world to you.
And, playlists are great, but they can soon become boring too.
We have become victims of our own freedom to choose.
It can actually render us useless.
Without sounding like a moaning, nostalgic, old git - back in the day when we only had four tv channels, and a handful of radio stations, we were grateful for whatever programmes were served up for us; the choice wasn’t a problem.
We also all watched the same tv programmes, and listened to the same radio shows, together, and then we discussed them with each other the next day.
That sharing of an experience is no longer a thing. There’s no real community around the entertainment we enjoy anymore.
So while we flounder in the face of too many TV choices, there are very few options on offer in the world of Radio.
Most stations are repeating the same standard hits by the same standard artists, or just stuck in a certain decade or genre.
Up to 25 minutes of every hour is taken up with presenters talking, adverts, news, weather and travel reports. The remaining time is taken up with music that is on relentless repeat cycles.
If you flick from one station to the next during advert breaks you find they are all taking ad breaks at the same time.
It’s disheartening, to say the very least.
So we decided we had to build the radio station that we would want to listen to.
And, our aim was to provide no choice but to build total trust.
We would take the burden of choice away, and in return, you would trust us to keep playing music that made you want to keep listening.
We would surprise you constantly.
We would remind you of your favourite songs that you had forgotten about, and play you tracks you hadn’t heard before but that would become new favourites.
But most of all we would take the pain of choice and overwhelm away from you, so you could concentrate on the enjoyment of simply listening.
So that’s what we did.
And, it has proved that sometimes less really is more.