Opportunity Knocks

Recently, my most favourite shoes gave up the ghost.  After years of loyal service, the black leather numbers I’ve been thumping about in for as long as I can remember kicked the bucket and landed in the bin.

WHAT TO DO?!!

My immediate reaction was to get straight back to Clarks to buy a new pair of the same pair.  But, you know what?  I didn’t.  I looked at ‘the whole of the market’.  I compared and contrasted.  THEN – When I realised there was nothing that took my fancy QUITE as much as the original leather uppers, I went back and bought a new pair from the original shop.

What happened with my footwear is human nature.  When faced with change, we look around, reflect, and take stock.  Is this what I want?  Should I take this opportunity to try something else??  Is there something ELSE I can do???  You might change tact and try a different path.  You might realise you’re on the right track and carry on.  It’s a kind of purgatory really, isn’ it?  A quick ‘wait’ before continuing on ‘the journey’.

Come January, millions of Radio 2 listeners will go through the process noted above.  They’ll notice the soft tones of an Irish ‘ex-pat’ have been replaced by the cocky sound of ’yoof’.  And whilst he might well be the best thing on the air and the most suitable listen for their tastes, the majority of these listeners will STILL have a little tune about.  They’ll see what else is on offer, they’ll see if they’ve been missing out on something else over the past year and they’ll “Try Something New Today”.

Terry Wogan leaving Radio 2 is what commercial radio has been waiting for.  The fact they’ll replace him with an equally brilliant broadcaster (Chris Evans) is completely irelevant.  It presents commercial radio with an opportunity, an ‘IN’.  Those first few weeks of 2010 are the competition’s chance to showcase what they have.

Whether or not they’ll take that opportunity is quite another matter.  At this very moment, the regional Heart stations should be looking at EVERY breakfast show they’ve got on the air and asking “Is the best we can offer”.  If it isn’t, NOW is the time to change their acts.  They can get a two month headstart and lay on a show that’ll ‘gain and retain’ those listeners who leave Radio 2.

I’m not suggesting that Radio 2 are handing commercial radio their audience on a plate.  It’s just my experience shows me that the brief ‘turmoil’ a new show causes brings a shift in the tide.

I really hope commercial radio does three things over the next few weeks:

1. Ensure they have the best of talent working to the very best of their ability at breakfast.
2. Asks their breakfast talent, kindly, NOT to take any leave in the first 6 weeks of 2010. Listeners are effectively relaunching their habits – commercial radio needs to seize the unique opportunity.
3. If they’re not satisfied with their breakfast show, and the gut feeling is it wont work – change it. 

Expect to see changes at BRMB in the next week with Robin Banks being announced as the new breakfast presenter.  It’s also being suggested on Digitalspy that at least two breakfast shows in the Anglia Region of HEART will change in the new year.  I think they may well be right.

Yes

Earlier this year, I read ‘Yes Man’ by Danny Wallace. As is so often the case, the true story is ruined by Hollywood and you really do need to read the book to get the full sentiment. If you’ve not read it, the essence is simple. Say ‘Yes’ more.  By doing so, you open yourself up to experiences you never would have…err…experienced.

Still with me?

No – me neither.

Radio Today’s weekly ramble arrived today.  It was most brilliant . A passage within it was beautiful:

“…we also don’t want Ofcom …clamping down on our ability to try things. For the many great pieces of radio we’ve all heard, a few have to go wrong along the way”

How very right they are.  As an industry, radio DOES need to try new things and to experiment.  It needs to say yes…MORE!  Otherwise, we’ll all spend four hours in a studio saying hello to ‘Ken in Uxbridge’ and saying the word fabulous too much.  Sound familiar?!

But with experimentation and ‘say yes more’ comes the need for common sense.  After all, I’ve never walked off a cliff.  It’d be a new experience, and it’d make new and revolutionary radio.  However, I’d wager money on the fact it’s not what a radio audience wants*.  It’s also quite an irresponsible thing to do.  By all means try new things, reinvent, revitalise, reinvigorate and re-everthingelse, but exercise a little caution whilst doing so.

My comments on the previous blog were not supposed to be a personal attack at Neal Veglio, the presenter in question.  For what it’s worth, I know very little about him.**   It’s simply that ‘Taste and Decency’ is something I hold as dear.

But, you know what? I’m glad we’ve had snog-gate***.  It’s forced many of us to look at what we do, and to see whether we can do it any differently.  It’s also brought me hate-mail for the first time in my career.  Win.

 

 

 

*it is, however, what Neal Veglio would want.

**apart from the fact he executed the strap-line ‘Young, Gay, Fresh and Funky’ with enormous vigour

***his words, not mine.

JACKfm – Kissing Who We Want

Over the past few months, I’ve become increasingly irritated with the attitude, tactics and mindset of jack FM.

It began with a funeral procession for Fox FM.  On paper, the idea sounds a bit silly but plausible.  To the anoracks on Digitalspy it was better than kissing a real girl.  To those in the industry, who knew a bit more about it, it was ridiculous.  What could have been a full procession was actually a lanky kid with some paper flowers and a chalkboard sign.

Then there are the constant references to being Oxfordshire’s only TRUE local radio station etc etc.  That’s correct, all your output originates from Oxfordshire.  Go have some tea and medals.  Look at it closer, and you’ve got one proper show; half of which is presented by an antipodean.  How I love irony.

What next? Oh yes – the travel plane.  We’ve all had to suffer jack FM constantly ‘wanking off’ about their eye in the sky.  They’re so proud of it, they even released a video and set about profiteering from someone’s untimely death on the M40.  THAT, is poor taste.

Today, once again, the joke’s on them

http://twiturm.com/jsan

As a jock, I sat and counted the opportunities that Trevor Marshall evaluated, and ultimately boycotted, to kill this appalling piece of radio.  It appeals to nobody…CERTAINLY not in their target audience. 

It wasn’t as if it was even delivered in a funny way.  It was perverse, not amusing.  I’ve got the most childish sense of humour going, but this made me feel physically unwell.

This audio will be of particular interest to OFCOM.  Whilst, yes, it’s only radio… there are several breaches of Taste and Decency here.  The other thing which OFCOM consider is whether or not the audience would expect such content A) at that time and B) from that station.  The answer to both is categorically NO.

Breakfast time listing?  I don’t think so.  Watercooler moment?  Yes – but for ALL the wrong reasons.

So, jack FM.  I ask you, get your OWN house in order… try and regain some of that tiny, but original, audience…and leave the incest alone.

Viva La Radio Revolution

Earlier in the year, under one pseudonym or another, I posted on a forum that 2009 would be the year of the revolution.  Whilst Global went about the revolution of the former one network, I predicted we’d also see a changing landscape with the smaller stations. 

I am NEVER right: so this morning I’m extra smug.

Having seen The Revolution bought by Steve Penk, Banbury Sound purchased by Dale Collins et al…Then Fire FM was bought – NOW Kick FM in Newbury was purchased yesterday by neighbouring Andover Sound.  An excellent move if you ASK me, but not if you ask everyone.

You see, many in the radio industry are still of the opinion that radio stations can only be successful with large group support and with deep pockets.  Perhaps that’s because we have different definitions of successful? Surely, if a radio station is turning a profit (or at least is ‘washing its face’) and is supported by a decent sized loyal audience, then it’s worthy of its place on the dial?

Groups like UKRD and Tindle have ‘looked up to’ their larger rivals like GWR/GCAP for many years now; mimicking their sound (albeit 5 years afterwards) and replicating their staff structures.  What they failed to realise is small stations (with smaller profits) can’t support expensive Group Programme Directors with unreasonable chinese food habits.  Why should, for example, Star Radio in Somerset pay £20,000 PA towards an MD, PD and Station Producer when the money could be spent more effectively ‘on site’?

That’s how these new ‘independent’ stations can succeed.  By owning 2 or 3 neighbouring services, they can take advantage of the relaxed networking rules…retain local and regional resonance… hope to make a profit…all WITHOUT paying for unnecessary senior ‘trophy’ staff.

You can expect to see Tindle Radio sell more stations in the coming months, with UKRD-TLRC also looking to offload a few more sites before the year’s over. 

Good luck to the new owners, and viva la revolution.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

If it wasn’t for Digitalspy… life would be quite, quite boring.  We’d all be forced to get hobbies, meet women and speak honestly. Quite at odds with the ‘DS’ way of life.

A thread at the moment providing me with much enjoyment is entitled “Heart should be playing…” .  This discussion is dedicated to all the songs that the great unwashed anoracks of the UK think Heart ought to be playing.  To be completely fair, SOME of the songs on there would work.  But, you guessed it, there are some utterly ridiculous suggestions on that thread. (of course there are, it’s Digitalspy)

What every single person has failed to put in response to the opening gambit is this.

Heart should be playing ‘exactly what they are at the moment’.

Obviously, the product’s not yet perfect.  I think the management at Leicester Square would be the first to admit that.  OFCOM’s yellow card earlier in the year meant a pretty big rethink had to happen quickly.  So, with that in mind, last weeks RAJARs for ‘the network’ should be met with extra praise.

Sadly, it’s become fashionable to ridicule and knock and ‘Heart bash’.  I’ve seen it for myself, on discussion forum’s AND Heart presenters Twitter accounts!!  But, credit where credit’s due.  I’ve only really started to digest the Heart RAJAR results over the last day or so, and there are some very, very impressive results.

(Look – I’m no mathmetician, but I think these are right…k?!)

• Heart Colchester – Best EVER weekly reach for 96.1 since RAJAR began
• Heart Somerset – Now have more listeners than ANY service (BBC or Commercial) in their TSA.  Wow.
• Heart Kent – More than 400,000 listeners for the first time since 2006
• Heart Dunstable – More listeners than Radio 1, listening for longer than Radio 1
• Heart Northampton – 40% increase in reach (45,000 new listeners) with a 30% increase in total hours.

There are others, but I wont bore you!

So, congratulations to all involved.  I know that’s unfashionable of me – but hey, I was never cool. 

I think these results are beginning to prove me right (I love being right).  The Heritage names had been abused so much that, at the end, names like 2CR and Hereward FM meant nothing to anyone.  They’d been AC stations, Pop stations, Hot AC stations and CHR stations all in the space of three years.  Now, the ‘Hot Tap’ theory is being put to the test.  So far, so good.

1Xtra – You Can’t Be Serious??

Yesterday some pretty big news broke through the industry: Steve Lamacq leaves Radio 1.  As I said, prettybig news.  The bigger stuff was actually buried in the same article over on Media Guardian: that Tim Westwood gets Drive on 1Xtra. 

Yesterday I mentioned the mistake that BRMB made by putting a balding, forty something man on a station with a target audience half his age.  Yet, even better than that, we have Tim Westwood (who’s nearly 52…and particularly white) on a station aimed at 15-24 year olds. 

Miracles never cease.  I only hope I’m ‘playing the hits’ whilst enjoying a daily dose of betablockers and viagra.  Knowing my luck, I’ll be on the 22nd century equivalent of Tops Tiles Radio.  Great…

BRMB

Figures don’t lie.  That old saying about ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ is…frankly…bollocks.  Particularly in the case of RAJAR, the method used to measure radio audiences in the UK.

OK, so you can’t just use one RAJAR report to judge the successes of a station.  But the trends don’t lie.  A shop might have one dire January, but if the rest of the year is ALSO void of footfall and turnover you know you’ve got a problem.

Which brings me onto BRMB.

BRMB Market Share Graph

BRMB Listening Hours Graph

A picture like THAT – Can’t lie.

If you’d told Les Ross 10 years ago that Galaxy would Birmingham’s Number 1 commercial radio station, he may very well have ‘had you seen to’.

So, what could BRMB be doing SO wrong?  Well, my theories include Australians, Middle aged men, Constant rebrands, a divorce from Birmingham and a couple of school kids.

The appointment of Duncan Campbell to BRMB a few years back BAFFLED many in the industry.  His track record with GWR was, at best, meh.  My own opinion is his idea of radio was, and still is, outdated.

Then we had a fascinating situation with a 40 something man trying to connect with an audience half his age.  Fortunately, Trevor Marshall departed as quickly as he arrived.

Anyone who’s listened to BRMB over the past few years will know that, without fail, it’s had a ‘rethink’ every year and become something slightly different each time.  Had it spent the last 10 years being what it’s supposed to be, I fear we’d be in a far better place.

And so we’re in 2009… with the figures illustrated above.  What does Birmingham’s Number 1 Hit Music Station use as it’s weapon against the strengthening competition?  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you – Adam and Ruddy. http://www.brmb.co.uk/sectional.asp?id=33348 Two kids, using a music radio station to serve up the kind of drivel you’d expect on a Student Radio station.  I URGE you to give them a listen.  It is, frankly, terrifying.

However, whilst their ability on air leaves a lot open for questioning, you can’t knock their commitment to ‘Team BRMB’.  This picture is moving through the radio industry quicker than Swine Flu.  For those not familiar with Adam Newstead and Joe Rudd, here they are urinating on the door of rival station Mercia.

Sadly for Adam and Ruddy, Orion Media now own Mercia… and BRMB.  Oh dear. Or to paraphrase the Chuckle Brothers… Oh dear oh dear.

(The usage of the Chuckle Brothers there was purely coincidental)

So, BRMB and Orion: We’re watching you.  My advice, get back to basics…play the hits, play them well, and get shot of the two children.  They’re not helping.