Typically, we get around 6,000 people per day coming onto the Free Radio website, to check out a contest say, or look for some local information. That number represents around 1% of our regular audience.
However, on Friday of last week we had 97,000 people check in, and on Sunday we had 137,000 unique users - getting on for 20% of our total audience. The site actually crashed for a short time on Friday, traffic was so intense (boffins have now injected more oomph into it I am told).
And of course its all due to the snow, and its effect on schools.
Most schools these days have their own snowlines you can dial into, can tweet and text parents, host their own on-line information, and councils are increasingly good at collating all this school data into their own sites....and yet, when snow strikes and schools close, local radio still becomes one of the first ports of call for parents.
Why is this? I suspect a couple of reasons. firstly they know our web address (do you know your council's or your kid's school web address?) and they trust that we'll have the information on our front page. Also, because people are more easily connected these days (smartphones, tablets etc) there's no need to wait for a computer to warm up in the morning - folk can go directly to our website from their phones and see if we have up to date information. There's a bit of folk memory going on too for parents, from the days when they were at school and we were the only game in town!
And boy, do we try to have up to date info. As David Lloyd my group PD put it to me today, we suddenly have to become experian as well as a radio station, because so many people are whizzing bits of information at us. For a biggish patch like the West Midlands you are talking about literally thousands of schools, and quite complex logistical issues in sorting, collating and displaying all this data. We like to think we got most stuff right (and a thank you goes out to all the staff who helped out at our stations over the last few days - and their equivalents up and down the country) but it does put a bit of a strain on our resources. Most stations run lean, so dragging staff in at 5.30 in the morning does mean less essential stuff doesn't get done.
There's no way of course that we can ever get the full lists actually broadcast over the air - those days are long gone, and I suspect when we did attempt to do it many years ago it was the dullest radio going. Adding in lots of T&T must have made those breakfast shows back before the internet interminable for people without kids, especially if they weren't planning on going out anywhere! Now it's a nod in the right direction by doing one or two of the latest closures, and a big push to check out the website.
Certainly this approach seems to be effective. The Q1 rajar data release always seems to be a good one for us, and although the seasonal bad weather only normally lasts for a few days, it must help pull a few listeners across from the networks - for a while at least!
And the fact is that if our experience is repeated elsewhere, literally millions of people in the UK must have gone on-line to local radio station websites every day over the past few days - and that says something fundamentally reassuring about our place in society.
Monday, 21 January 2013
Friday, 4 January 2013
"...It was twenty years ago today..."
Jean and I waved our daughter Alex off at the railway station this morning. She is off to Kenya for three months, doing Voluntary Service Overseas, and we're both proud and a little nervous about our 19 year old eldest child leaving home properly for the first time.
She was born on a beautiful summers day in 1993, just a little short of "..20 years ago today..." (copyright Lennon/McCartney), and of course at moments like this one ponders the passage of time and how life has changed during those intervening two decades.
Alex was born at LGI, and is a true Tyke. I was running Radio Aire at the time and her birth in Leeds coincided with an upturn in that station's fortunes after the very deep recession of 1990-1992. Driving back from the railway station today, I was wondering to myself how much radio had changed during the last 20 years. Could I identify 20 real improvements/developments/changes in our industry to mark the almost two decades I'd been a parent? I thought I could, so here goes:
1 - More local FM stations. Back in 1993 we had no regionals, and only a smattering of 2nd FMs in big local markets (none in Yorkshire as I recall) so all those new regional, and smaller local, and community stations, have all added to the overall quality of radio. We must have moved from 100 to over 300 local stations.
2 - DAB. I'm a big fan, and probably spend 50%+ of my time listening to DAB now, both for new stations and improved audio quality. I'm not sure switching off FM is the best way forward - but keeping DAB is a no-brainer - and with digital weekly reach at 40% of the adult population (including Sky/Freeview etc) many millions of folk agree with me.
3 -Online streaming. Wow - these days you can listen to a station anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, via a PC. you couldn't do that 20 years ago.
4 - Mobile online - Even more wow - you can take a phone and use it to connect to a station anywhere in the world. We did have mobiles back in 1993 - but they were BIG! They also did not have any data capacity.
5 - Podcasts / listen again. Who'd have dreamt that you could put out a show, and then put a recording of it somewhere for people to listen to later! Genius, I would have said, back in 1993.
6. Rajar. Back in the early 90s the commercial Industry did its own research, and the BBC did its own research - and neither could make sense of the other. Advertisers hated it. I'm cheating slightly here because the first Rajar survey was Q4 1992 - so would have been published around about now - but you get my drift - hard to imagine now a time when the entire radio industry didn't all claim record figures on the same day!!
7 - Selector et al. Again a slight cheat as the first version of selector (RCS claim) was released 30 years ago. But no one owned PCs much until the beginning of the 90s in the UK, and we definitely were using a single PC (with floppy disc) and a dot matrix printer to generate our logs at Radio Aire, and it was all pretty new and whizzy at the time. The sophistication and manipulative power of current versions would leave that early program standing in the dust. More importantly, it was the rise of computer generated logs which put paid to presenters having their own input into music selection, certainly for daytimes on commercial radio.
8 - Master Control et al. The ability to drive all of the elements of a programme from one central hard drive didn't happen until the mid-90s (the launch of Heart FM was marred by RCS MC nightmares!) but now who would ever think of setting up a pro station without a fully computerised playout system. Radio Aire was still reliant on CDs whilst I was there, and we swapped and changed constantly because CD playout was so unreliable for a tight rotation CHR operation. I'd add in news management systems like Burli at this point too, as they have transformed news-gathering.
9 - Hard drive portable recorders. The newsroom at Aire used Uhers for certain, and I'm not sure quite when smaller hard drives replaced tape, but again what a transformation. And the ability now to record on a device like an iPhone and then send the resulting audio in to the studio instantaneously via email - just not something one could ever have imagined 20 years ago.
10 - ISDN/Codec developments. ISDN was another 90s technology that changed our industry, allowing down the line interviews, much wider and easier sports commentary, and V/Os to work in their pyjamas! Other codec technology has made the ability to remote broadcast using standard POTS lines even more phenomenal of late.
11 - Satellite audio delivery. The commercial network built its own satellite delivery system, SMS, in the 1990s (the uplink is not far from my house just outside Rugby at Lawford Heath) to deliver Ads, IRN etc. Much has changed, but at the time, being able to deliver masses of network audio simultaneously to the commercial industry was revolutionary.
12 - Mobile phones. The advent of mobile telephony definitely helped democratise access to the airwaves. The ability to call in to a station, wherever you were, allowed far more people to participate in phone-ins across the airwaves than ever was the case with fixed line. (Ironically, It actually killed off one of the best radio shows - Les Ross's Round The World phone calls, which became redundant when everyone had a mobile.)
13 - Radio 5 Live. My favourite BBC station, which "sort of" began for two months in 1991 as "Scud FM", the 24 hour rolling news channel covering the first Gulf War which used Radio 4's FM frequencies. It was so popular the BBC was persuaded to launch 5 Live in 1994 - replacing the rather ill-thought out Radio Five which had started in 1990.
14 - Classic FM. Again I'm stretching slightly, as it launched in September 1992, but now a mainstay of UK Radio. Not my cup of tea as a listener I have to admit, but I am very grateful as a practitioner - Classic helped make commercial radio seem serious and grown up to an awful lot of advertisers during the 90s.
15 - Absolute Radio. Absolute was Virgin Radio originally of course, and launched in April 1993. I remember rushing back from a driving holiday in Scotland, with a pregnant Jean feeling very nervous in the passenger seat, in order to hear the launch!
16 - TalkSPORT. Again, this station started as Talk Radio UK in 1995, before morphing into TalkSPORT, where it continues to innovate to this day.
17 - Level-headed commercial radio management. I'm not kidding here - back in the early 90s a lot of senior commercial radio bosses were fruitcakes. Not all of them - but a lot! Getting the industry to agree on anything was a huge challenge. The general standard of commercial radio management at both a station, group and industry level has improved dramatically over the last two decades.
18 - Better regulators, with better legislation to enforce True I'm afraid, for those of you who moan about OFCOM - that which came before was worse. Probably because of the outmoded and outdated regulation to be sure, but the IBA and Radio Authority were hell compared to OFCOM.
19 - Social Media. How did we ever cope without knowing what our listeners were thinking, via text, twitter and facebook 24/7! It is without doubt a sea change for the industry in terms of feedback, helping us make our shows better and adding to the entertainment value of all output, everywhere.
20 - Wind up radios. I've saved Trevor Bayliss's ingenious invention until last for two reasons.
The first is the obvious one - here was an idea that has single handedly brought radio within reach of untold millions of people across the world. Trevor was inspired by a 1991 TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa, and the idea really took off when it was featured on Tomorrow's World in 1994, so I'm happy it falls within the last 20 years from an operational perspective. A brilliant, and simple idea, which means our medium continues to inform and entertain across the globe.
The second reason is that a wind-up radio was one of my Christmas gifts to Alex (it had a torch function too). I figured she could use both the radio and torch wherever she found herself during her three months in Kenya, and that when she put the radio on, it might remind her of me, and how much importance this great medium has played in my life and, by association, in hers too.
Most of the items on my list were born/created/invented in the early to mid 1990s - just after the 1990-1992 recession which was itself brought about by the 1987 Wall Street crash. The echoes with today are remarkable, and I only hope the next five to six years see both an upturn in the economy similar to the 90s - and also another burst of the energy, creativity and innovation which marked the UK Radio industry back then.
There - made it to 20 pretty easily. What did I miss?
She was born on a beautiful summers day in 1993, just a little short of "..20 years ago today..." (copyright Lennon/McCartney), and of course at moments like this one ponders the passage of time and how life has changed during those intervening two decades.
Alex was born at LGI, and is a true Tyke. I was running Radio Aire at the time and her birth in Leeds coincided with an upturn in that station's fortunes after the very deep recession of 1990-1992. Driving back from the railway station today, I was wondering to myself how much radio had changed during the last 20 years. Could I identify 20 real improvements/developments/changes in our industry to mark the almost two decades I'd been a parent? I thought I could, so here goes:
1 - More local FM stations. Back in 1993 we had no regionals, and only a smattering of 2nd FMs in big local markets (none in Yorkshire as I recall) so all those new regional, and smaller local, and community stations, have all added to the overall quality of radio. We must have moved from 100 to over 300 local stations.
2 - DAB. I'm a big fan, and probably spend 50%+ of my time listening to DAB now, both for new stations and improved audio quality. I'm not sure switching off FM is the best way forward - but keeping DAB is a no-brainer - and with digital weekly reach at 40% of the adult population (including Sky/Freeview etc) many millions of folk agree with me.
3 -Online streaming. Wow - these days you can listen to a station anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, via a PC. you couldn't do that 20 years ago.
4 - Mobile online - Even more wow - you can take a phone and use it to connect to a station anywhere in the world. We did have mobiles back in 1993 - but they were BIG! They also did not have any data capacity.
5 - Podcasts / listen again. Who'd have dreamt that you could put out a show, and then put a recording of it somewhere for people to listen to later! Genius, I would have said, back in 1993.
6. Rajar. Back in the early 90s the commercial Industry did its own research, and the BBC did its own research - and neither could make sense of the other. Advertisers hated it. I'm cheating slightly here because the first Rajar survey was Q4 1992 - so would have been published around about now - but you get my drift - hard to imagine now a time when the entire radio industry didn't all claim record figures on the same day!!
7 - Selector et al. Again a slight cheat as the first version of selector (RCS claim) was released 30 years ago. But no one owned PCs much until the beginning of the 90s in the UK, and we definitely were using a single PC (with floppy disc) and a dot matrix printer to generate our logs at Radio Aire, and it was all pretty new and whizzy at the time. The sophistication and manipulative power of current versions would leave that early program standing in the dust. More importantly, it was the rise of computer generated logs which put paid to presenters having their own input into music selection, certainly for daytimes on commercial radio.
8 - Master Control et al. The ability to drive all of the elements of a programme from one central hard drive didn't happen until the mid-90s (the launch of Heart FM was marred by RCS MC nightmares!) but now who would ever think of setting up a pro station without a fully computerised playout system. Radio Aire was still reliant on CDs whilst I was there, and we swapped and changed constantly because CD playout was so unreliable for a tight rotation CHR operation. I'd add in news management systems like Burli at this point too, as they have transformed news-gathering.
9 - Hard drive portable recorders. The newsroom at Aire used Uhers for certain, and I'm not sure quite when smaller hard drives replaced tape, but again what a transformation. And the ability now to record on a device like an iPhone and then send the resulting audio in to the studio instantaneously via email - just not something one could ever have imagined 20 years ago.
10 - ISDN/Codec developments. ISDN was another 90s technology that changed our industry, allowing down the line interviews, much wider and easier sports commentary, and V/Os to work in their pyjamas! Other codec technology has made the ability to remote broadcast using standard POTS lines even more phenomenal of late.
11 - Satellite audio delivery. The commercial network built its own satellite delivery system, SMS, in the 1990s (the uplink is not far from my house just outside Rugby at Lawford Heath) to deliver Ads, IRN etc. Much has changed, but at the time, being able to deliver masses of network audio simultaneously to the commercial industry was revolutionary.
12 - Mobile phones. The advent of mobile telephony definitely helped democratise access to the airwaves. The ability to call in to a station, wherever you were, allowed far more people to participate in phone-ins across the airwaves than ever was the case with fixed line. (Ironically, It actually killed off one of the best radio shows - Les Ross's Round The World phone calls, which became redundant when everyone had a mobile.)
13 - Radio 5 Live. My favourite BBC station, which "sort of" began for two months in 1991 as "Scud FM", the 24 hour rolling news channel covering the first Gulf War which used Radio 4's FM frequencies. It was so popular the BBC was persuaded to launch 5 Live in 1994 - replacing the rather ill-thought out Radio Five which had started in 1990.
14 - Classic FM. Again I'm stretching slightly, as it launched in September 1992, but now a mainstay of UK Radio. Not my cup of tea as a listener I have to admit, but I am very grateful as a practitioner - Classic helped make commercial radio seem serious and grown up to an awful lot of advertisers during the 90s.
15 - Absolute Radio. Absolute was Virgin Radio originally of course, and launched in April 1993. I remember rushing back from a driving holiday in Scotland, with a pregnant Jean feeling very nervous in the passenger seat, in order to hear the launch!
16 - TalkSPORT. Again, this station started as Talk Radio UK in 1995, before morphing into TalkSPORT, where it continues to innovate to this day.
17 - Level-headed commercial radio management. I'm not kidding here - back in the early 90s a lot of senior commercial radio bosses were fruitcakes. Not all of them - but a lot! Getting the industry to agree on anything was a huge challenge. The general standard of commercial radio management at both a station, group and industry level has improved dramatically over the last two decades.
18 - Better regulators, with better legislation to enforce True I'm afraid, for those of you who moan about OFCOM - that which came before was worse. Probably because of the outmoded and outdated regulation to be sure, but the IBA and Radio Authority were hell compared to OFCOM.
19 - Social Media. How did we ever cope without knowing what our listeners were thinking, via text, twitter and facebook 24/7! It is without doubt a sea change for the industry in terms of feedback, helping us make our shows better and adding to the entertainment value of all output, everywhere.
20 - Wind up radios. I've saved Trevor Bayliss's ingenious invention until last for two reasons.
The first is the obvious one - here was an idea that has single handedly brought radio within reach of untold millions of people across the world. Trevor was inspired by a 1991 TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa, and the idea really took off when it was featured on Tomorrow's World in 1994, so I'm happy it falls within the last 20 years from an operational perspective. A brilliant, and simple idea, which means our medium continues to inform and entertain across the globe.
The second reason is that a wind-up radio was one of my Christmas gifts to Alex (it had a torch function too). I figured she could use both the radio and torch wherever she found herself during her three months in Kenya, and that when she put the radio on, it might remind her of me, and how much importance this great medium has played in my life and, by association, in hers too.
Most of the items on my list were born/created/invented in the early to mid 1990s - just after the 1990-1992 recession which was itself brought about by the 1987 Wall Street crash. The echoes with today are remarkable, and I only hope the next five to six years see both an upturn in the economy similar to the 90s - and also another burst of the energy, creativity and innovation which marked the UK Radio industry back then.
There - made it to 20 pretty easily. What did I miss?
Friday, 14 December 2012
A Fairytale of Aston
My earliest recollection of Christmas on the Radio was 1981.
I was a young, single brmb DJ, sharing a flat with Brendan Kearney in Walmley. Being single, I had the dreaded 2pm-6pm shift (no Christmas lunch for me!) and Brendan was on at 10am, doing the Christmas bloopers show. Brendan was famous for his collection of radio faux pas and cock-ups, and his Christmas Day "best of" show was always a festive highlight.
Ed Doolan was doing breakfast, and had invited then PD Bob Hopton to join him to act as the voice of Father Christmas (Bob did have a wonderfully deep voice). Jimmy Franks was driving the show.
The show had gone well. All of the children calling in had spoken to Father Christmas; all of the batteries had been handed out (firms like Ever Ready and Duracell used to give us big stocks of them to hand out on Xmas morning for parents who had bought their kids an electrically operated toy, but had forgotten the batteries!); Slade, Wizzard et al had been played, and all was well with the world.
The clock ticked round to 9.57. Ed picked up the programme schedule for the rest of the day - and ran through Brendan's show in some detail, picked up the features in mine, and the show afterwards - and highlighted the late night phone in scheduled for 10pm The day had been well sign-posted to listeners, young and old, across the West Midlands
Ed then wrapped up - thanked Father Christmas, spread some peace, happiness and general Christmas bonhomie amongst the population of Birmingham who were tuned in, and gave Brendan's Christmas bloopers show one final tease - the best radio bloopers in the world - coming up after 10.
And then Ed put on his most serious tone, and uttered the words ".....This is brmb, it's 10 o'clock on Christmas day morning....and now... Her Majesty The Queen."
Now, at this point I have to tell you I was in the bath, having a good soak, getting ready to spring up, dry off and head off to "The Sauce Works" as brmb's Aston Road North studios were affectionately called. The Queen's Speech in those days went out on all radio stations at 10 am, and was, at 8 minutes in duration, the perfect opportunity for me to get dry and dressed, and then listen to Brendan's show whilst getting ready to go out - after all, who doesn't enjoy a good radio blooper......
Anyway - back to the radio.
"....Her Majesty The Queen" ...slight pause....followed by what can only be described as farting noises...followed by more farting noises! The whole of Birmingham, expecting to hear the words of HM The Queen, was instead being treated to trumping sounds coming from 96.4FM.
By this time I had almost drowned with laughter - but what the hell was going on?
It dawned on me at about exactly the same time as it dawned on the folks in the studio.
Someone had put the tape on back to front, and we were listening to the strains of "God Save The Queen" ....only backwards! I could only imagine the frantic rush by Jimmy to stop the tape. The bum-clenchingly excruciating part of this was knowing that Bob Hopton, the big boss, was in the studio watching his chances of a New Year's Honour going out of the window as his senior tech-op tied himself up in knots trying to turn a 3 1/2 inch reel-to-reel tape around in double-quick time.
Back up went the mic fader - Ed was told by Jimmy via talkback to fill.
As it was Christmas Day there wasn't much by way of news, no lists of "what's ons" to run through - just the upcoming schedule. So Ed, ever the trooper, started again to tell us all about what was coming up later in the day - only at half speed - pausing a lot - trying to pad for time - and undoubtedly watching the pandemonium in the control room with utter disbelief.
Rereading that schedule must have been the longest couple of minutes of Ed's career.
Eventually the tape was reversed - and Ed was freed from his misery to cue in the Queen's speech correctly.
Brendan came on 8 minutes later to start his blooper show - knowing one of the best bloopers of all time had probably occurred 10 minutes previously, right in front of him.
None of the people involved in this have ever been knighted, although Ed did receive an MBE. And as boss, I've tried to avoid being anywhere near a studio on Christmas Day ever since!
Merry Christmas, and may all your bloopers occur in the middle of the night. In June!
I was a young, single brmb DJ, sharing a flat with Brendan Kearney in Walmley. Being single, I had the dreaded 2pm-6pm shift (no Christmas lunch for me!) and Brendan was on at 10am, doing the Christmas bloopers show. Brendan was famous for his collection of radio faux pas and cock-ups, and his Christmas Day "best of" show was always a festive highlight.
Ed Doolan was doing breakfast, and had invited then PD Bob Hopton to join him to act as the voice of Father Christmas (Bob did have a wonderfully deep voice). Jimmy Franks was driving the show.
The show had gone well. All of the children calling in had spoken to Father Christmas; all of the batteries had been handed out (firms like Ever Ready and Duracell used to give us big stocks of them to hand out on Xmas morning for parents who had bought their kids an electrically operated toy, but had forgotten the batteries!); Slade, Wizzard et al had been played, and all was well with the world.
The clock ticked round to 9.57. Ed picked up the programme schedule for the rest of the day - and ran through Brendan's show in some detail, picked up the features in mine, and the show afterwards - and highlighted the late night phone in scheduled for 10pm The day had been well sign-posted to listeners, young and old, across the West Midlands
Ed then wrapped up - thanked Father Christmas, spread some peace, happiness and general Christmas bonhomie amongst the population of Birmingham who were tuned in, and gave Brendan's Christmas bloopers show one final tease - the best radio bloopers in the world - coming up after 10.
And then Ed put on his most serious tone, and uttered the words ".....This is brmb, it's 10 o'clock on Christmas day morning....and now... Her Majesty The Queen."
Now, at this point I have to tell you I was in the bath, having a good soak, getting ready to spring up, dry off and head off to "The Sauce Works" as brmb's Aston Road North studios were affectionately called. The Queen's Speech in those days went out on all radio stations at 10 am, and was, at 8 minutes in duration, the perfect opportunity for me to get dry and dressed, and then listen to Brendan's show whilst getting ready to go out - after all, who doesn't enjoy a good radio blooper......
Anyway - back to the radio.
"....Her Majesty The Queen" ...slight pause....followed by what can only be described as farting noises...followed by more farting noises! The whole of Birmingham, expecting to hear the words of HM The Queen, was instead being treated to trumping sounds coming from 96.4FM.
By this time I had almost drowned with laughter - but what the hell was going on?
It dawned on me at about exactly the same time as it dawned on the folks in the studio.
Someone had put the tape on back to front, and we were listening to the strains of "God Save The Queen" ....only backwards! I could only imagine the frantic rush by Jimmy to stop the tape. The bum-clenchingly excruciating part of this was knowing that Bob Hopton, the big boss, was in the studio watching his chances of a New Year's Honour going out of the window as his senior tech-op tied himself up in knots trying to turn a 3 1/2 inch reel-to-reel tape around in double-quick time.
Back up went the mic fader - Ed was told by Jimmy via talkback to fill.
As it was Christmas Day there wasn't much by way of news, no lists of "what's ons" to run through - just the upcoming schedule. So Ed, ever the trooper, started again to tell us all about what was coming up later in the day - only at half speed - pausing a lot - trying to pad for time - and undoubtedly watching the pandemonium in the control room with utter disbelief.
Rereading that schedule must have been the longest couple of minutes of Ed's career.
Eventually the tape was reversed - and Ed was freed from his misery to cue in the Queen's speech correctly.
Brendan came on 8 minutes later to start his blooper show - knowing one of the best bloopers of all time had probably occurred 10 minutes previously, right in front of him.
None of the people involved in this have ever been knighted, although Ed did receive an MBE. And as boss, I've tried to avoid being anywhere near a studio on Christmas Day ever since!
Merry Christmas, and may all your bloopers occur in the middle of the night. In June!
Friday, 23 November 2012
Think I'm gonna run into bad weather...
I posted a tweet earlier this week:
"Loving the T&T / weather service on@wearefreeradio this morning -and other local stations too. Not hearing much info on Spotify tho!"
This was a little dig at the streaming service because in an earlier blog referring to the radio festival, I had commented on the business model of Spotify, and had been criticised in return by fans of the service. Fair enough, it clearly is very popular, but what irks me about Spotify, and I know this is true of US broadcasters and their American equivalent Pandora, is the claim that this is somehow a "radio" service.
No it isn't. Computer-driven automatic streaming of music is most definitely NOT radio. It might be good, or bad, profitable or a money-pit, but however you describe it, please don't use the word radio.
Once again the good people who work at Free Radio and Gem 106 have spent the past three days coping with a massive increase in information relating to the current bout of bad weather. School closures, impassable roads, traffic incidents, dangerous flooding have all contributed to a significant increase in the amount of local information we have been broadcasting. And I'm not claiming any special work ethic from my guys - staff at local radio stations the length and breadth of the country will have been coming in early, staying late, manning phone lines, getting information into the studio and on-air, and posting information online now as well, in order to deliver the sort of service they know local listeners want, need and deserve.
And in particular it is the unique nature of local radio that makes responsiveness to bad weather so powerful. Local radio comes into its own during these periods. because it is live and immediate, responsive to listener feedback, capable of being delivered to people whilst they are on the move, and geographically focused - it is the perfect medium to cope when conditions turn inclement. I live in rural Warwickshire, and Radio 5 Live, brilliant service though it is, can't possibly tell me that the main road through Marton is flooded, or that Leamington Hastings Primary School is closed this morning - but JD did on Free Radio.
In the USA, where weather conditions can become dramatic (Hurricane Sandy, New Orleans etc) local broadcasters are very sensitive to their perceived response - and then make great political play out of that fact. No post-hurricane political speech goes by without the relevant authorities thanking local broadcasters for their efforts. In the UK, the weather conditions, whilst occasionally severe, are probably not quite so dramatic, and our very tendency as a nation to prefer reserve over bombast means we as local broadcasters don't ask for praise, or expect it, as often as our transatlantic cousins.
Which brings me to the main point I want to make, which is that in a period when regulators (OFCOM, DCMS, Competition Commission) are all engaged in critical decision-making which will have a long-term impact on our broadcasting eco-system, are they really giving enough thought to the health of the core tier of local radio in this country given all the other competing voices? Looking forward to the next few bouts of rain/flooding:
Will Local TV be as useful in similar circumstances?
Will a multiplex full of music-intensive DAB services spread over the entire country, with huge footprints and no local presence, be as responsive?
Will the remaining small local stations, possibly stripped of much of their resource because larger radio groups (and local TV) have out-competed them for listeners and advertisers, be as able to respond.
Local radio is currently a vital presence in our communities, and will remain so for as long as it can commercially survive. We are, however, in danger of letting a rush to a digital, online, multi-media future damage the very basis of what makes local radio so unique and important. The very nature of these trends represent huge threats to the future of local radio - particularly the smaller services, and all of us in broadcasting run the risk of the whole radio system being devalued in the eyes (and ears) of listeners if we let the local tier wither away during the next few years.
So, whilst I am genuinely in favour of larger radio groups; network brands; sensible platform migration; growth in online services etc, at the same time we must ensure that in designing our future we recognise and protect the role that local, predominantly FM, radio can play in supporting local communities.....so they can still be around as a source of information and advice next time we ".. run into bad weather.." (c. S Wonder!).
"Loving the T&T / weather service on
This was a little dig at the streaming service because in an earlier blog referring to the radio festival, I had commented on the business model of Spotify, and had been criticised in return by fans of the service. Fair enough, it clearly is very popular, but what irks me about Spotify, and I know this is true of US broadcasters and their American equivalent Pandora, is the claim that this is somehow a "radio" service.
No it isn't. Computer-driven automatic streaming of music is most definitely NOT radio. It might be good, or bad, profitable or a money-pit, but however you describe it, please don't use the word radio.
Once again the good people who work at Free Radio and Gem 106 have spent the past three days coping with a massive increase in information relating to the current bout of bad weather. School closures, impassable roads, traffic incidents, dangerous flooding have all contributed to a significant increase in the amount of local information we have been broadcasting. And I'm not claiming any special work ethic from my guys - staff at local radio stations the length and breadth of the country will have been coming in early, staying late, manning phone lines, getting information into the studio and on-air, and posting information online now as well, in order to deliver the sort of service they know local listeners want, need and deserve.
And in particular it is the unique nature of local radio that makes responsiveness to bad weather so powerful. Local radio comes into its own during these periods. because it is live and immediate, responsive to listener feedback, capable of being delivered to people whilst they are on the move, and geographically focused - it is the perfect medium to cope when conditions turn inclement. I live in rural Warwickshire, and Radio 5 Live, brilliant service though it is, can't possibly tell me that the main road through Marton is flooded, or that Leamington Hastings Primary School is closed this morning - but JD did on Free Radio.
In the USA, where weather conditions can become dramatic (Hurricane Sandy, New Orleans etc) local broadcasters are very sensitive to their perceived response - and then make great political play out of that fact. No post-hurricane political speech goes by without the relevant authorities thanking local broadcasters for their efforts. In the UK, the weather conditions, whilst occasionally severe, are probably not quite so dramatic, and our very tendency as a nation to prefer reserve over bombast means we as local broadcasters don't ask for praise, or expect it, as often as our transatlantic cousins.
Which brings me to the main point I want to make, which is that in a period when regulators (OFCOM, DCMS, Competition Commission) are all engaged in critical decision-making which will have a long-term impact on our broadcasting eco-system, are they really giving enough thought to the health of the core tier of local radio in this country given all the other competing voices? Looking forward to the next few bouts of rain/flooding:
Will Local TV be as useful in similar circumstances?
Will a multiplex full of music-intensive DAB services spread over the entire country, with huge footprints and no local presence, be as responsive?
Will the remaining small local stations, possibly stripped of much of their resource because larger radio groups (and local TV) have out-competed them for listeners and advertisers, be as able to respond.
Local radio is currently a vital presence in our communities, and will remain so for as long as it can commercially survive. We are, however, in danger of letting a rush to a digital, online, multi-media future damage the very basis of what makes local radio so unique and important. The very nature of these trends represent huge threats to the future of local radio - particularly the smaller services, and all of us in broadcasting run the risk of the whole radio system being devalued in the eyes (and ears) of listeners if we let the local tier wither away during the next few years.
So, whilst I am genuinely in favour of larger radio groups; network brands; sensible platform migration; growth in online services etc, at the same time we must ensure that in designing our future we recognise and protect the role that local, predominantly FM, radio can play in supporting local communities.....so they can still be around as a source of information and advice next time we ".. run into bad weather.." (c. S Wonder!).
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
It's Grim Up North
Well I wasn't planning to go to this year’s Radio Festival. I went
last year, and the debates do tend to come round a few times, so I
thought I'd sit this one out.
But then I got a call from John
Myers asking me to be on a panel defending local radio. You can't really
say no to John - so off to Salford it was.
The festival started
on Monday afternoon with a keynote speech from Tim Davie, the departing
BBC Head of radio. Or rather it didn't, as Tim had already departed to
become acting DG and was busy walking off a Sky News interview when he
should have been on stage. His place was filled by BBC stalwart and R2
controller Bob Shennan. He played a straight bat apparently, not tripped
up by anything contentious. I didn't actually get to the festival until
a little later, and sat down to hear the chap from Spotify tell us how
wonderful they were. When the time came for questions I really couldn't
be bothered to put my hand up to ask when they could ever hope to become
profitable - because I knew there wouldn't be an answer I could
understand. Let them carry on is my view!
The head of Twitter for
round here (or European VP as I expect he is really titled) was on next
- and he was brilliant. I love twitter - and he explained why. He was a
radio guy himself, and had tailored his presentation to press all the
right buttons with us radio folk (unlike Mr Spotify, who I don't think
realised he was even speaking at a radio conference).
Up at the
Tech-con conference David Lloyd was chairing the biggest engineering
brains in the industry baffling us with science. I went up and caught
the tail end of an interesting presentation from an American explaining
how programmers over there were using the people meters to develop more
insightful thoughts on output. Apparently very few people tune out
during ad breaks (less than 10%), songs get progressively more popular
(i.e. less switching) and then in time less popular (who’d have thought)
- and finally the local post-game sports phone-in is much more popular
when your team has won than lost. Not so reassuring for Tom's phone-ins
with some of our teams then!
I was invited to the posh dinner
hosted by Radio Academy Chairman Ashley Tabor. And very nice it was too -
although you felt the BBC bigwigs there would rather have been anywhere
else - not a good time to be a boss at the corporation right now!
Jeremy Vine was there and told some great stories from his book. Myers
too was on form, and started a round of Kelvin McKenzie tales - I
contributed my own - which I will not repeat here for fear of breaking
some blasphemy law or other.
Yesterday started with Stephen Miron
on stage, being lightly grilled by the Telegraph's Emma Barnett. Emma
also works for Global which meant she was more insightful about - but
perhaps a touch easier on - Stephen than say an interviewer like Steve
Hewlett would have been. Just as Bob had done successfully the day
before, Stephen avoided any career limiting utterances.
Anyway - with my usual luck, I was on next - being interviewed by Steve Hewlett!
Actually
I was one of four "local bosses" and I spent my time explaining the
decision to change to Free, and how it was all going. I suspect Steve
has been so distracted by Newsnightgate (he has been an ever present
pundit on the state of the BBC for the past month) that he didn't have
time to do his normal level of research to properly skewer folk, unlike
last year. Then, I was on stage with Andrew Harrison on a general
commercial radio panel, and Steve metaphorically pinned Andrew against
the wall and fired pellets into his head. I sat, arms folded, and hoped
Steve would run out of pellets before he got to me. This year I think
Steve's pellets have all been fired at BBC apparatchiks and he's not had
time to reload the gun.
After my bit we had the wonderful Fru
Hazlitt in conversation with Linda Smith. Fru calls a spade a shovel at
the best of times - and as she now runs lots of important things at ITV,
she felt suitably unconstrained during her conversation. In the nicest
way she is a bit batty, which always livens up a stage. Sadly no youtube
link exists to Fru's forthright views on the Welsh, expressed at a
previous conference, but Linda did find some video on the comments which
amused those in the hall.
David Joseph, the boss of Universal,
was up next. He gave a really insightful presentation into the music
industry, and was broadly positive about the future, which was good. He
couldn’t resist asking commercial radio to do more to support new music,
to which the cynical response might be - here's our rate card - buy
some advertising, like other folk wanting to promote their products.
Last
up before lunch, we had Jeremy Vine interviewing John Myers about his
book. Apparently John had interviewed Jeremy the day before about his
book. They are moving in together next week.
John was his usual
larger-than-life self, and much mirth was had about just how egregiously
John used to break OFCOM competition rules. I don’t think there is a
statute of limitations on fiddling callers – and I demand an inquiry.
After
Lunch, Frank Skinner told Adrian Chiles why he loves radio - and I
thought he was really passionate about the medium. He also name checked
Tony Butler (and the late Tony Trethewey got a mention too) along with
Les Ross, and the wonderful "yesterday never comes". Almost brought a
tear to my eye.
I left at that point, and so missed the gala
dinner, which apparently featured Sir Alex Ferguson giving a music award
to Mick Hucknall, with Peter Kay looking on - that sounds all a bit too surreal for me, and not at all grim either.
Friday, 31 August 2012
Don't Stop Believing
Well,
We are testing Free Radio 80s - and it sounds great.
It's particularly poignant for me to be launching a new station on 1359 and 1152 am, as these were the original frequencies for Xtra AM, which was my first station launch, back in 1989. Free Radio 80s will actually cover a much larger area, being also available on the Wolverhampton/Shropshire AM frequencies too. The Shropshire 1017 AM TX is in particular a "big stick" (technical term) which means folk as far up north as the Wirral should be able to tune in if they have a decent medium wave radio. I think the predictions from Arqiva are that over 5m people will be able to hear the station during daytimes!
Why have we done it though?
Well, we inherited "Gold" on AM when we bought the Orion stations, and really didn't have the time at first to do much with the frequencies. Gold has been quite successful in audience terms, with over 100,000 listeners regularly tuning in across the patch, and both David and I are actually fans of the station itself - it does what is says on the tin, very effectively.
In our patch, the audience for Gold has actually increased under Orion's ownership, and we think a fair amount of the station's recent success is because of our investment in football commentary, of which more later.
However, three years in, we faced a real dilemma. Nearly all of our transmission agreements were up for renewal (on both AM and DAB), and in truth although the Gold service was doing OK from an audience perspective, it was losing us money hand over fist. The TX contracts, and sports rights deals, were costing far more than the station was bringing in in ad revenues. And our own sales teams were finding it difficult to sell, because it was a disconnected national station with no relevance to our local FM output.
So we faced a choice. Close the transmitters down and hand the licences back, or see if there was a way of doing things differently. We decided to have one last go at making a predominantly AM service workable. We've negotiated long and hard with our transmission partners, and been prepared to compromise in order to bring our TX bill down. We've also redone our football deals to make that element of the output most cost-effective. The final element was to make the station one our sales teams could go out and sell easily as an add-on to our FM output.
Changing our FM stations to one brand gave us the opportunity to create a new sister brand - and that was how Free Radio 80s was born.
Why did we go for 80s?
Well to be honest we decided we didn't want to replicate a pure 60s/70s/80s oldies type service, as we are sure Gold will still be available to oldies fans on DTV, online, and possibly back on DAB. We needed to create a station which lived within our format parameters (Oldies for people aged 35-54) but which was distinctive and could generate good word of mouth (as we're not planning a big marketing push) and which felt like it was genuinely "the next station along demographically" to Free Radio FM, making joint selling possible. 80s jumped out in our brainstorming, and we all felt comfortable with it from the start.
Sitting here writing this I am listening to the tests - and it sounds absolutely great to me. Pure pop from a great music decade.
The station itself will have a bunch of real DJs - Dave Sherwood, David Francis, Tim Disney, Fresh, Ed Nell and of course Tom Ross. We'll be running local news, weather, travel for the West Midlands during peaktimes, and of course Tom will be running football commentary across the station for all of our local teams, splitting output across the frequencies when appropriate.
Changing stations and brands is always a risk - and Free Radio 80s represents a considerable investment by Orion in keeping some transmitters going with quality output when we could easily have just switched them off - but we think it'll work out just fine.
And listening this morning, I'm feeling very positive.
We are testing Free Radio 80s - and it sounds great.
It's particularly poignant for me to be launching a new station on 1359 and 1152 am, as these were the original frequencies for Xtra AM, which was my first station launch, back in 1989. Free Radio 80s will actually cover a much larger area, being also available on the Wolverhampton/Shropshire AM frequencies too. The Shropshire 1017 AM TX is in particular a "big stick" (technical term) which means folk as far up north as the Wirral should be able to tune in if they have a decent medium wave radio. I think the predictions from Arqiva are that over 5m people will be able to hear the station during daytimes!
Why have we done it though?
Well, we inherited "Gold" on AM when we bought the Orion stations, and really didn't have the time at first to do much with the frequencies. Gold has been quite successful in audience terms, with over 100,000 listeners regularly tuning in across the patch, and both David and I are actually fans of the station itself - it does what is says on the tin, very effectively.
In our patch, the audience for Gold has actually increased under Orion's ownership, and we think a fair amount of the station's recent success is because of our investment in football commentary, of which more later.
However, three years in, we faced a real dilemma. Nearly all of our transmission agreements were up for renewal (on both AM and DAB), and in truth although the Gold service was doing OK from an audience perspective, it was losing us money hand over fist. The TX contracts, and sports rights deals, were costing far more than the station was bringing in in ad revenues. And our own sales teams were finding it difficult to sell, because it was a disconnected national station with no relevance to our local FM output.
So we faced a choice. Close the transmitters down and hand the licences back, or see if there was a way of doing things differently. We decided to have one last go at making a predominantly AM service workable. We've negotiated long and hard with our transmission partners, and been prepared to compromise in order to bring our TX bill down. We've also redone our football deals to make that element of the output most cost-effective. The final element was to make the station one our sales teams could go out and sell easily as an add-on to our FM output.
Changing our FM stations to one brand gave us the opportunity to create a new sister brand - and that was how Free Radio 80s was born.
Why did we go for 80s?
Well to be honest we decided we didn't want to replicate a pure 60s/70s/80s oldies type service, as we are sure Gold will still be available to oldies fans on DTV, online, and possibly back on DAB. We needed to create a station which lived within our format parameters (Oldies for people aged 35-54) but which was distinctive and could generate good word of mouth (as we're not planning a big marketing push) and which felt like it was genuinely "the next station along demographically" to Free Radio FM, making joint selling possible. 80s jumped out in our brainstorming, and we all felt comfortable with it from the start.
Sitting here writing this I am listening to the tests - and it sounds absolutely great to me. Pure pop from a great music decade.
The station itself will have a bunch of real DJs - Dave Sherwood, David Francis, Tim Disney, Fresh, Ed Nell and of course Tom Ross. We'll be running local news, weather, travel for the West Midlands during peaktimes, and of course Tom will be running football commentary across the station for all of our local teams, splitting output across the frequencies when appropriate.
Changing stations and brands is always a risk - and Free Radio 80s represents a considerable investment by Orion in keeping some transmitters going with quality output when we could easily have just switched them off - but we think it'll work out just fine.
And listening this morning, I'm feeling very positive.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
We're all going on a Summer Holiday (from the regulators)
I haven't blogged for quite some time, but I have been a) busy; b) on
holiday and c) at the Olympics. So a word about b) and c) before returning to
a)
Holiday was lovely. Mallorca. I miss going to Florida (which we did a few times when the kids were small & the call of theme parks was overwhelming) because whilst there I got to hear a couple of weeks of US radio - always interesting to hear how things are going there. I'm sure Spanish radio is equally interesting (I know a couple of consultants here make a good living advising in Madrid) but I don't really speak much, if any, Spanish, and the music mix is not of great appeal - so it becomes a two week radio-free zone (as opposed to Free Radio zone!) except for the daily diet of emails you would expect me, as a classic Type A, to respond to.
Then we got back just in time for the Olympics. I got to go the the Ricoh once, and the Olympic Park twice. I'm not sure I can add much to the general commentary that it was all brilliant etc etc.
If I have one observation as a grizzled 30 year music radio veteran (!) it was that the music within the final closing ceremony didn't quite work for me as a celebration of 50 years of our creativity. Not much Beatles, no Stones, no Led Zep, no punk (I heard Clash "should I stay...." this morning on our Free Radio hall of fame and thought how good that might have been in the closing ceremony). There were some questionable inclusions too (George Michael's second song, Beady Eye, One Direction). In the end I'm sure the guys who put it together did the best they could with the acts that were prepared to perform (at least there was no Cliff) - I just think it could have been even stronger.
Anyway - I've been busy. I'm currently working on three separate pieces of regulatory work (everyone's eyes glaze over) but they are all important from the perspective of how we shape our industry for the next 10-15 years.
One piece is our submission to the OFT and OFCOM with our thoughts on Global's deal to buy GMG Radio. It is important that all radio owners, and other interested parties, get their chance to share their views on this with the regulators. We are a democracy and run a free market, private enterprise economy. One of the hallmarks of that is appropriate jurisdiction of markets, which includes letting people express their opinion and address their concerns when major deals are being executed. That paper has gone in and although it would be wrong of me to publicly discuss our views, one aspect of the deal which I didn't talk about in our submission because it doesn't affect the Midlands is my personal view that, taken in isolation, the rumoured creation of a national AC brand should Global be allowed to retain the Real licences and convert them to Heart, would be a good thing. This is a long-standing view of mine. My good friend John Myers is writing a book, and I know in it he will refer to the numerous times he and I tried to get a merger between Chrysalis Radio and GMG Radio sorted out and failed - so that looks like one point to Ashley, nil ponits to the big men! That Chrysalis/GMG deal never happened for reasons too complex to mention here - but the driving force behind our thinking was the creation of that single AC FM Network. I think the whole of commercial radio would benefit from a major music competitor to R1/R2. Of course this view does not mean I have examined this deal on a market by market basis in the Real areas in terms of the other assets Global owns, and whether this specific deal can stand - that is a matter for the OFT - I just do feel that we need a "national" pop music station of some description in the commercial sector - and this seems our best shot at getting one.
The second piece is a response to OFCOMs cost benefit analysis of DAB. This is the sort of thing that thinking about too deeply really will make your head explode - but if the economic boffins don't look at the future of radio in the right way, we can easily end up making the wrong decisions as an industry, and heading down the wrong path completely. I'm a contrarian on DAB - I think it's great, and here to stay, but I'd keep all local radio off DAB and on FM, use that DAB spectrum for more national services, and foget about FM/DAB switch-over and leave both bands to find their natural equilibrium. At the moment I'm in a very small minority with this view - but I will keep plugging away.
The third piece is some thinking for our political masters at the DCMS. We were due to have a new communications bill in the next year or so. That's been put back, but the DCMS still want to know from the industry what we think of formats, localness etc and if there need to be further changes. I’ve been asked to go to a seminar on the subject at the DCMS in September so am trying to get my thoughts in order.
The trick of course is to say things to the OFT on competition, and then to OFCOM on DAB switchover, and then to the DCMS on localness/formats, which when read together look like they make sense as part of a whole.
I'm getting there, but as David Lloyd said to me the other day after a diary full of HR and H&S meetings "... was this really why I got into radio?" I don't think I got in because I wanted to spend my days writing to regulators - but if it makes our business better going forward I'll do my best.
I'll need another holiday at the end of it all though.
Holiday was lovely. Mallorca. I miss going to Florida (which we did a few times when the kids were small & the call of theme parks was overwhelming) because whilst there I got to hear a couple of weeks of US radio - always interesting to hear how things are going there. I'm sure Spanish radio is equally interesting (I know a couple of consultants here make a good living advising in Madrid) but I don't really speak much, if any, Spanish, and the music mix is not of great appeal - so it becomes a two week radio-free zone (as opposed to Free Radio zone!) except for the daily diet of emails you would expect me, as a classic Type A, to respond to.
Then we got back just in time for the Olympics. I got to go the the Ricoh once, and the Olympic Park twice. I'm not sure I can add much to the general commentary that it was all brilliant etc etc.
If I have one observation as a grizzled 30 year music radio veteran (!) it was that the music within the final closing ceremony didn't quite work for me as a celebration of 50 years of our creativity. Not much Beatles, no Stones, no Led Zep, no punk (I heard Clash "should I stay...." this morning on our Free Radio hall of fame and thought how good that might have been in the closing ceremony). There were some questionable inclusions too (George Michael's second song, Beady Eye, One Direction). In the end I'm sure the guys who put it together did the best they could with the acts that were prepared to perform (at least there was no Cliff) - I just think it could have been even stronger.
Anyway - I've been busy. I'm currently working on three separate pieces of regulatory work (everyone's eyes glaze over) but they are all important from the perspective of how we shape our industry for the next 10-15 years.
One piece is our submission to the OFT and OFCOM with our thoughts on Global's deal to buy GMG Radio. It is important that all radio owners, and other interested parties, get their chance to share their views on this with the regulators. We are a democracy and run a free market, private enterprise economy. One of the hallmarks of that is appropriate jurisdiction of markets, which includes letting people express their opinion and address their concerns when major deals are being executed. That paper has gone in and although it would be wrong of me to publicly discuss our views, one aspect of the deal which I didn't talk about in our submission because it doesn't affect the Midlands is my personal view that, taken in isolation, the rumoured creation of a national AC brand should Global be allowed to retain the Real licences and convert them to Heart, would be a good thing. This is a long-standing view of mine. My good friend John Myers is writing a book, and I know in it he will refer to the numerous times he and I tried to get a merger between Chrysalis Radio and GMG Radio sorted out and failed - so that looks like one point to Ashley, nil ponits to the big men! That Chrysalis/GMG deal never happened for reasons too complex to mention here - but the driving force behind our thinking was the creation of that single AC FM Network. I think the whole of commercial radio would benefit from a major music competitor to R1/R2. Of course this view does not mean I have examined this deal on a market by market basis in the Real areas in terms of the other assets Global owns, and whether this specific deal can stand - that is a matter for the OFT - I just do feel that we need a "national" pop music station of some description in the commercial sector - and this seems our best shot at getting one.
The second piece is a response to OFCOMs cost benefit analysis of DAB. This is the sort of thing that thinking about too deeply really will make your head explode - but if the economic boffins don't look at the future of radio in the right way, we can easily end up making the wrong decisions as an industry, and heading down the wrong path completely. I'm a contrarian on DAB - I think it's great, and here to stay, but I'd keep all local radio off DAB and on FM, use that DAB spectrum for more national services, and foget about FM/DAB switch-over and leave both bands to find their natural equilibrium. At the moment I'm in a very small minority with this view - but I will keep plugging away.
The third piece is some thinking for our political masters at the DCMS. We were due to have a new communications bill in the next year or so. That's been put back, but the DCMS still want to know from the industry what we think of formats, localness etc and if there need to be further changes. I’ve been asked to go to a seminar on the subject at the DCMS in September so am trying to get my thoughts in order.
The trick of course is to say things to the OFT on competition, and then to OFCOM on DAB switchover, and then to the DCMS on localness/formats, which when read together look like they make sense as part of a whole.
I'm getting there, but as David Lloyd said to me the other day after a diary full of HR and H&S meetings "... was this really why I got into radio?" I don't think I got in because I wanted to spend my days writing to regulators - but if it makes our business better going forward I'll do my best.
I'll need another holiday at the end of it all though.
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