I was stunned when I heard what some small-town DJs were being paid - they must really have loved the job because they were certainly not in it for the money.

But a solution is hard to come up with - apart from a group of like-minded individuals who love the music, coming together to get a licence to run a station purely on a break-even basis.

It has been done - it can be done.

However, depending on commercial interests to satisfy musical needs, is a waste of time.

In the USA, there seems to be no regulation of formats, and stations appear free to switch at will.

As a result, in some towns, you can end up with a preponderance of Top 40 pop (or Top 40 country), and little or nothing else.

In Ireland, you have to stipulate your format, and you are not permitted to change it once you have got the licence.

But as a result, there is a shortage of applicants for what are seen as the less lucrative formats, so the result ends up the same anyway, with perhaps one difference, without format changes, staff tend to have a lot more stability.

I agree that nowadays, it is the thing simply to play music - no presenters, and in all honesty, I think that can work with current chart material, simply because with kids tuned into mp3 players, streaming etc., that it the way they are used to getting their music.

But with oldies, that simply does not work.

We have all the tracks an oldies station is likely to play, so hearing them on a radio is no big deal. What we like is the information - and experiencing again, the nostalgia of how we once heard those tracks (DJ's, corny jingles, even more corny ads - the lot). That is why the Cruisin' series of LPs and CDs sold so well - they didn't simply supply the songs from our youth, they supplied the experience of how we first heard those songs.

The reason I like Bob's shows so much is down to Bob.

I already have all the music in my collection, and if I wanted to, I could dig it up and play it.

Bob adds the extra ingredient, and for that, I for one, am most grateful.

I still think there could be a good living for Bob if he promoyed and monetized the countdowns - and it would not be confined to the USA.

There are thousands of people in Europe, who love the music (you should see the number of reissues of 50's and 60's material each week - and they do sell).