"Because Your Station Is Worth It..."

As we're getting closer to the World Cup, radio stations in those countries involved in the action are plotting their different ways of reflecting the excitement, fun and national pride that the tournament generates.

One piece of imaging caught my ear last week. It's from BBC Radio 5 Live (I know... I must stop writing about them!)

Imaging Producer, Stephen Mackay, and the rest of the team there have recuited the voice of Stuart Hall (familiar to those in the UK) and written some real stand out pieces of production that just grab your attention because the set up is very different.

When I emailed Stephen asked about the promo, he said that they've gone for the 'off the wall' approach and are going to "...up the weirdness as we get closer to the tournament!"

I look forward to that. But in the meantime, enjoy this short piece of imaging and the very creative approach they have taken to hook you in the the subject.

Funny stuff...

How To Increase Your Ratings In One Easy Step...

I’ve cracked it. The thing we’ve all be searching for, for all this time. It’s called “How to increase your ratings in one easy step!”

Here is the step.

1. Announce that the station may be closing
2. Err... that’s it!

There will be outcry that the much beloved ‘jewel on the radio dial’ would be sorely missed. Campaigns will be started, Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags will be in surplus and all the kerfuffle will cause a massive surge of interest in your station.

Economic theory shows us that often when something is in short supply, then demand increases. So, more and more people will then tune in to see what they’re about to lose, and hey presto... ratings increase by 50%!!

‘Surely some sort of drug fuelled fantasy caused by an overload of rolling news and too many late nights Nik’... I hear you say? Well – no... not really. Look at the following graph I borrowed from the lovely Media UK.

Those of you not familiar with BBC 6 Music, it’s a national DAB station playing an eclectic mix of new music and cooler classics. The BBC have threatened to close it as I’ve talked about it on this blog before. And hey presto... after the announcement, the latest figures out this week, show a huge rise is both listening share and reach. The ratings have rocketed!

So there we go. How to increase your ratings in one easy step!

**Disclaimer – Do NOT try this at your radio station. Your radio station may be at risk if you do not keep up investment in content or fail to apply appropriate levers to generate audience.

Don't Mention the 'E' word!!

If you tune in to any UK radio station today (particularly from abroad to hear about the General Election) you may think that we're a bunch of very untopical and disconnected people, hardly bothering to mention the election at all. Well, just so you know, the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (the UK broadcasting regulator) forbids all broadcasters to discuss the election on election day itself. There are all sorts of other election laws in the UK that relate to broadcasting. Here are the relevent bits of the Ofcom Code...

6.4 Discussion and analysis of election and referendum issues must finish when the poll opens. (This refers to the opening of actual polling stations. This rule does not apply to any poll conducted entirely by post.)

6.5 Broadcasters may not publish the results of any opinion poll on polling day itself until the election or referendum poll closes. (For European Parliamentary elections, this applies until all polls throughout the European Union have closed.)

As you can imagine, press and the internet and not so tightly regulated, so it's a bit of a free for all in that area, but all us responsible people (!) in TV and Radio try and abide by the rules. How very British of us! Good sense of fairplay and all that...

It's quite funny really. We're at the peak of election fever, you can't really talk about it other than mentioning that the polls are open!

I will be popping along to my local Polling Station later to cast my vote later. It seems quite quaint that it's in my village hall, next to the village pub about 100m away from my office, where I'm typing this blog from now! All very Enid Blyton and not very high tech / 2010 at all!

Fear not however if you're feeling starved of coverage. Come 10pm and there will be an explosion of 'Icelandic Volcano' proportions from all media outlets declaring that... well... we'll see!