‘Billy Sloan’s final Radio Scotland show deserves a place on your Christmas picks’<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n Speaking to The Herald a few hours before his final broadcast, Sloan said: \u201cI\u2019m not angry, I\u2019m just frustrated,\u201d over the decision to end his show.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound like some whinging disgruntled ex-employee, because that\u2019s not what it is at all,\u201d he added, though he did admit he\u2019d sent a Fortnum & Mason hamper the BBC had sent him for his \u201clong service\u201d to a Foodbank in Scotstoun.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sloan\u2019s is one of three shows that have been cancelled by Radio Scotland. Iain Anderson and Natasha Raskin Sharp have also disappeared from the schedules as Radio Scotland switches direction for their late-night music shows.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The station can point to the fact that Vic Galloway, Ricky Ross\u2019s Another Country show and BBC Introducing in Scotland will continue, while former late-night DJ Roddy Hart is starting a new weekend show.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n But the reaction to the schedule shake-up has been vocal. A petition was launched to save Iain Anderson\u2019s show, whilst many Scottish musicians and names from the country\u2019s creative industries signed an open letter protesting the BBC\u2019s decision.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Sloan\u2019s cancellation has also prompted many Scottish musicians who were given their first airplay by the DJ to speak out.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cBilly has been a great champion of Scottish music, he was our John Peel,\u201d James Grant of Friends Again and Love and Money told The Herald on Saturday.\u00a0 \u201cHe played the first Friends Again demo on his show as we all jumped around our bass player\u2019s kitchen thinking we had arrived.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Ken McCluskey, front man of The Bluebells, fears that Sloan\u2019s disappearance would mean that there would be less new music on the airwaves.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to hear Young at Heart for the rest of our lives,\u201d he argued, citing the band\u2019s number one hit, \u201cbut we\u2019ll never hear any of our new stuff.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just for the heritage acts like ourselves. It\u2019s harder for young bands to get any play at all. We have BBC Introducing, but that\u2019s a lottery.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Sloan\u2019s final show was wilfully defiant as the DJ played the Velvet Underground, Orange Juice, Edith Piaf and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Off the Ball presenter Tam Cowan sent in a message saying he would miss listening to Sloan on the way home on a Saturday night and asking – unsuccessfully – for some Peters and Lee.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sloan\u2019s final song was Sinead O\u2019Connor\u2019s The Last Day of our Acquaintance, which, he pointed out, contained the line, \u201cI\u2019ll talk, but you won\u2019t listen to me\u201d; a line he directed at Victoria Easton Riley.\n<\/p>\n
\n Speaking to The Herald, he lamented the decision to switch to a more restricted playlist on late-night Radio Scotland.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere are already a 100 radio stations up and down the country adopting that format,\u201d he pointed out.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cNobody in 2025 needs to listen to the radio anymore,\u201d Sloan added. \u201cEverybody has got 10,000 of their favourite songs on their tablet or their phone. So what you\u2019re trying to do is give them something that they don\u2019t get from just listening to songs they\u2019ve downloaded from Spotify.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThey just seem to be trying to bland it out, and dumb it down and smooth the edges.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n As for his own future, he hasn\u2019t any plans yet. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing on Monday. Everybody says you must do a podcast. I think podcasts are a bit like arses. Everybody\u2019s got one. I want to play records.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n But he is leaving Radio Scotland, he says, with his head held high.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019m proudest of the fact I think I can put my hand on my heart and say I\u2019ve never sat behind the microphone and played a song that I didn\u2019t think was a great record.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019m also proud of the fact that I introduced people to bands like Simple Minds, U2 and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and the Trashcan Sinatras and Hue and Cry, all of whom got their first radio plays when I played them on Radio Clyde and continued to play them at the BBC.\n<\/p>\n
\n That\u2019s what I still do. I\u2019ve had messages saying, \u2018I\u2019ve never heard of the American band Lo Moon, then I heard you playing them two years ago and I went and bought the album and now they\u2019re my new favourite band.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI just played my favourite records and hoped someone liked them and I was astonished to find out that there was a whole audience out there who did exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“A new boss has taken over,\u201d he added, referring to Victoria Easton Riley, Radio Scotland\u2019s Head of Audio,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-340440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}