Snow Business

When it's snowing badly across the UK, you want your local radio station to swing into action on air. But are they also using online to give the more detailed info of school closures, advice to listeners etc...

Perhaps like this...


Well done Key 103 in Manchester. Front page... nice and big... job done!

'Networking' - A Trump Card?

As soon as UK media regulator Ofcom announced in February that it was relaxing the rules on the amount of local programming it required stations to broadcast, it was only a matter of time until the bigger radio groups took advantage of this. ‘Global Radio’ were the first out of the traps with the move to network all output across Heart, aside from breakfast, mid-morning and Drivetime. ‘Galaxy’ have kept local Breakfast and Drivetime shows, but networked everything else.

Next was GCap (soon to be Global, so they’re pre-empting the inevitable really) who announced a new 3 hour daytime show across the One Network, details of which are still a little sketchy to be honest! And recently the three Xfm stations in London, Manchester and central Scotland announced they’re going to network another three hours of programming on weekdays, taking the local output from 10 hours to 7 hours. Lots of smaller UK radio groups are also taking advantage of the rule change and going a step further to relocate stations in central ‘broadcasting hubs’, with the obvious economies of scale that this brings.

So far Bauer have resisted the temptation to go for any daytime networking, with their ‘In Demand’ evening show being the only real networked programme. So what’s the deal? Is this good for listeners… good for the radio station… good for advertisers? Who benefits?

Yesterday, at the Radio 3.0 Conference in London, outgoing GCap Chairman Richard Eyre had some thoughtful insights about networking.

"Piping in a mega-DJ from London would mean sacrificing the key element of local radio: localness. The economics of radio in 2008 will mean that companies will not be able to resist. But it's still handing over one of our best assets to reduce costs. The economics say delocalise. But the relationship says keep it local."

With comments like that, it seems a shame that he’s the outgoing chairman really. I can’t help thinking that despite the best efforts of some radio executives to convince me otherwise, it’s all about saving money in the short-term during an economic downturn, and not thinking about the long-term effect of stripping localness from radio. I’m sure Global Radio have in their top drawer a plan to turn lots of their newly acquired GCap stations into the ‘Heart’ brand. How long before we hear a station’s positioning change to … “Fox FM – The Heart of Oxfordshire”. And we all know what comes next.

It’s quite easy to be snobby about the quality of some stations when you have a portfolio that includes well resourced brands like Heart and Capital on your books. And yes, the quality of the smaller stations could be improved in many places. But is the answer just to network this ‘mega-DJ’ from outside the area. Surely investing in training and development of new talent and programming skills on a local level is a more important long term objective? Go to places like Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds and imagine a world where Radio City, Key 103 and Radio Aire were pseudo-national stations with perhaps a local breakfast show as the only indicator of their true parentage. Sure you can use smoke and mirrors all you like to give the impression the output is ‘local’… but for me, you can’t beat the real thing. It doesn’t matter how good your smoke screen is, because local radio is best when it’s local… and not pretending to be local.

The next 12 months will see the inevitable ‘character-stripping’ out of many truly local stations, with some of their output replaced with no doubt well-produced, slick, but rather soulless programming. The radio landscape will be painted magnolia… designed to cause least offence, but not engender a reaction of any kind. Is this the type of local radio listeners want?

One of the great clichés about succeeding at programming a local / regional station is “Play the local card”. It seems that the deck is about to be rigged.

"We Are Fam-i-ly..."

LBC are getting a little bit of a marketing push it's been announced this week. There's going to be a couple of weeks of print ads, and some viral stuff. So what?

Well, as part of a helping hand for LBC, their friends on the other floor at Chrysalis Towers, Heart 106.2 have said... "We'll run some promotion for you too!" How very nice!

Many of us remember the days in the late 80's where you'd tune to a heritage ILR station, and you'd hear the immortal words "And for full commentary on that game, re-tune to our sister station... " etc. Lovely!

Cross promotion was usually for sport, or occasionally to remind old ladies of the location of that rather crusty Sunday morning DJ who'd been shipped off to AM at the first opportunity. "Don't forget, you can now here (insert suitable old school name here) on our sister station..." etc. (But not for long as we're about to ship him off to somewhere we hope he'll never return from... the BBC Local station)!

Then, sometime in the mid 90's, commercial radio decided that it was terribly uncool to cross promote. "Why do I want to send my listeners somewhere else? What if they can't find their way back?" Hmmm.

It seems those days are gone and Chrysalis are taking a sensible portfolio approach. Better to have a Heart listener try LBC for news than go to say, Five Live.

But how far could you take this?

After playing a particularly hot Hip hop tune, will a Capital DJ say "And if you're loving the hip hop and RnB, check out our sister station Choice FM for all the big tunes... or should I say 'flavas'..."

And after playing a particularly raucous rock song, will the DJ on Key 103 say "And if you like your rock loud and your hair unwashed, then Kerrang! Radio on DAB is the place for you my smelly, deodorant-dodging, rock loving satanist friend... This is Key 103."

Hopefully not.

I think we need to credit listeners with the fact they've made a choice. They're listening to the station they are because they like it. If they wanted to listen to another station, they'd probably find it. I don't think commercial radio should start selling their listeners something else... another radio station owned by that company. There's enough over selling going on on some networks already!

Heart are only running ads for LBC it seems, which is a step back from the DJ live read admittedly... but we'll hear how it sounds in context.

"Meanwhile, if you want to read another radio consultants blog, re point your browser to...."