Baby You Can Drive My Car...

Outside Broadcasts on Breakfast / Morning Shows can sometimes be a bit hit and miss. But what about doing it from the hosts house?

Well - if you have a great reason, and a garage full of the most valuable cars in the world that you're going to let listeners drive, and the resources of the BBC... to make it all work... then why not?

Here's a great summary of the 'Drive and Dine 2010' Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, live from Chris Evans house in the beautiful Berkshire countryside.

V Festival - Live on Absolute Radio

Making the most of the content you have available to you is really key for all radio stations nowadays. Especially when it comes to coverage of live events.

I say this confident in the knowledge that Absolute Radio will be ensuring they use all the cleverest technology available to them to engage listeners with their coverage of the Virgin Media ‘V Festival’ taking place this weekend in the UK. They’ll no doubt be uploading videos, stack of photos, interviews and doing a who load of live shows from the festival, plus I hear they’re bringing the full Oasis and Snow Patrol sets live on the radio too. Pretty good stuff I'd say.

The festival line-up is impressive. The aforementioned Oasis and Snow Patrol, plus Razorlight, Lily Allen, Keane, Katy Perry, Fatboy Slim... the list goes on and on. Take your pick. It also features a return from the great band Ocean Colour Scene, who I was reminded played the first festival that the station really covered live (back when it was called Virgin Radio)... V2000.

Having attended the event the year previously (in 1999), I realised that there was a whole load of great bands and fantastic potential on-air content and we weren’t really doing anything live from the event. So the then S&P Director (Rob Ramsey) and I (Head of Music for Virgin Radio at the time) decided that if he could get the coverage of the event sponsored, I would work on putting together a massive Outside Broadcast from V2000.

He stuck to his side of the bargain and duly got Sky Sports to sponsor it, so I headed the team that put together the music and programming side of things. 12 months later, and cue... one big tent, one mobile radio studio and production facility, lines to all the main stages, mobile trucks to do broadcast mixes of live sets, an acoustic stage, and furious negotiations with record companies to get all the appropriate rights.

Sure enough, that year the radio stations coverage of the V Festival was born, and I’m delighted to say, 9 years later it still continues, allbeit under the stations new name of Absolute Radio . Ocean Colour Scene came to play for us on our acoustic stage that year, and I sure hope they’ll be making a return visit to the Absolute Radio area this weekend.

Back in 2000, we were joined by quite a new band that I thought were pretty good and deserved some exposure. They were called Coldplay.

Whatever happened to them then?

So tune in this weekend if you get the chance. I’m certain the team at Absolute will do a great job

Radio 100FM at Smukfest 2009!

Here’s a short video showing you some ‘behind the scenes’ action of the Radio 100FM coverage of Smukfest 2009!

And here are a couple of Outside Broadcast tips that working on this event reminded me of...

Planning
Plan, plan and then do some more planning! You can never be too prepared.

Technical
Invest as much as you can in the technical setup. If everything works well technically, then producing great content is always a lot easier

Location
Choose your location carefully. Too tucked away and you won’t get the visibility you need. But if you’re right in the centre of the action, it could be more difficult to control the environment

Roles
Make sure everyone knows exactly what their role is in pre-production, and on site. If everyone’s doing their assigned job, things should go smoothly

Brand Interaction
Have a reason for people to stop by and spend some time with your brand. At this event, we had an internet cafe where people were checking out their email and Facebook all day

Detail
It’s the small things that can make the difference and really make your brand look good. A fridge stocked full of cold beer for bands who drop by, or handing out branded umbrellas if it starts to rain

If you want to see some more videos and pictures from the event, you can visit the Radio 100FM Smukfest pages here

Smukfest Update!

It’s Sunday morning. 15 hours of live coverage from Denmark’s Smukfest 2009 completed... and 7 hours still left to go.

The weather’s been great... the festival’s been great... and more importantly, I’m delighted to say that the coverage on Radio 100FM has been flawless.

The OB unit has really served its purpose well, both in terms of functionality and visibility.

And the content has been really engaging. You can see and hear a lot of it right now on the Radio 100FM website.

Interviews, live sessions and a fantastic array of ‘colour pieces’ have captured the unique spirit of this festival and communicated that to listeners right across the country.

The video camera has been in action and I’ll post some of the video I shot in due course and also share some of the ‘learnings’ that we’ve got out of the experience. Any major outside broadcast is always a challenge and it occasionally throws up the unexpected. Being flexible and being able to deal with issues as they arise is vital and I’ll provide you with some essential OB tips!

But for now, here’s a great way to ‘camp’ at a festival. In a Pig Pen!! They’re waterproof, equipped with electricity and camp beds and all the mod cons. What else would you expect from one of the major exporters of bacon in the world!

It's Festival Time!

I’ve just arrived in Denmark where I’ll be spending most of the next 7 days in a field. Let me explain.

Smukfest is one of a plethora of great festivals that Europe has to offer over the summer. A place called Skanderborg on the island of Jutland (about 3 hours drive west from Copenhagen) will be transformed into a mini tented city as hundreds of thousands of lovely Danes enjoy one big party, entertained by the likes of Kylie Minogue, Fatboy Slim, The Streets, Editors and also the finest Danish bands currently on offer. And Aqua.

Radio 100FM (where I’m Consultant Programme Director) will be presenting over 22 hours of live coverage of the festival and bringing listeners across Denmark the music, action and vibe of Smukfest 2009. ‘Smuk’ means ‘beautiful’ in Danish, and the setting is precisely that... beautiful. Acres of gorgeous woodland topped off with an idyllic lake, opposite which our OB wagons are being set up.

And why are we going to such lengths? Why do radio stations cover music festivals?

Visibility
It’s important for your brand to be seen, especially in the right places. A well planned and highly visible OB acts as a huge 3D billboard for you radio station if executed correctly

Music Image
All stations need to constantly reinforce their music image, and this can be effectively done by positioning the radio station alongside the right kind of event, both in attitudinally and musically. If you play a lot of Coldplay, being at a festival where they are appearing is probably a good idea. Your P1’s will see this as confirmation they’re with the right radio station for their tastes.

Content
Music festivals provide hours of great content for both on-air and online. If you’ve tied up the rights correctly, you can have exclusive performances from core artists to your station recorded from the main stages, interviews with some big stars, acoustic sessions and live shows that offer a real point of difference

Listener Engagement
Radio stations are often guilty of ‘hiding’ in their industrial estates or beautiful media style offices in the cool part of town, and as a result, the staff don’t get to speak to listeners enough. Having an opportunity to talk to and ‘touch’ listeners is a very powerful tool

Sponsorship Opportunity
Commercial stations can create a unique opportunity for a sponsor to be associated with the on air-coverage of a really cool event. Build in ticket giveaways, ‘best of’ shows, online coverage etc, and the value of the package can be quite substantial and deliver a welcome boost to revenue

There are plenty of other reasons to be there, but these are some of the main motivating factors that drove me to plan this Outside Broadcast. I’ve got a fantastic team of around 18 people working on the production, so it’s a large piece of activity to stage, but I’m confident that we’ll produce some quality radio for our listeners.

As the event unfolds from Thursday onwards, I’ll try and blog some updates with from the OB, and share with you how my vision for the coverage for Smukfest 2009 is turning into a reality.