RAJAR - Q3 2011; "Here are the votes from the UK radio listeners..."

The latest UK listening figures are out, (RAJAR Q3:2011) and again we find out which stations are a little more 'tasty' than others. There are some nice headlines to be read, including the fact that listening via a digital platform is up again with 22.8 million people now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver; so that could be on DAB, on Digital Television or over the Internet. The growth of digital inevitably continues. If you want to read some posts about the changing nature of radio in the UK and the growth of digital businesses, you'd be hard pressed to find better analysis than that provided by two people who look forward to this day with an unbridled and somewhat unnatural enthusiasm, for which we are all grateful... Matt Deegan and Adam Bowie.

Meanwhile, the market I get asked about most whilst on my travels, London, sees another game of musical chairs. Last time Magic had the best of it in the commercial world, holding top spot in both Reach and Share, but nothing stays the same for long in this market. Capital have jumped back up to Number 1 in Reach, and Heart have leapfrogged the contenders to become Number 1 in Share.

'Reach' (or Cume for our American readers) always seems to be the most quoted of figures, so here are the Top 10 Commercial Stations in London based on Weekly Reach for Q3:2011

1. Capital London 2.17 Million

2. Heart London 2.02 Million

3. Magic 105.4 1.99 Million

4. Kiss 100 FM 1.70 Million

5. Classic FM 1.40 Million

6. LBC 97.3 841,000

7. Absolute Radio 771,000

8. talkSPORT 717,000

9. Smooth Radio 612,000

10. Choice FM London 562,000

If you add in the BBC, things look a little different...

1. BBC Radio 4 2.77 Million

2. BBC Radio 2 2.29 Million

3. Capital London 2.17 Million

4. Heart London 2.02 Million

5. Magic 105.4 1.99 Million

6. BBC Radio 1 1.80 Million

7. Kiss 100 FM 1.70 Million

8. Classic FM 1.40 Million

9. BBC Radio 5 Live 1.31 Million

10. LBC 97.3 841,000

Capital no doubt benefited from the exposure that the Summertime Ball gave them, proving once again that visibility is a key ingredient in the mix... a theme I'll return to in the not too distant future. And the BBC once again show that they still produce quality radio, all be it with a rather expensive price tag.

It would be rude of me not to mention 'in dispatches' Absolute 80s. First, because it gives me another blatant opportunity to mention my weekly show on a Sunday morning from 9am-12pm that I present along with Dan McGrath, called 'Cafe 80s'. Subtle plug huh? However, that's not why I mention them on this occasion. It's because they have become the Number 1 commercial digital-only station in the UK, with 1.01 Million listeners a week. That's a rather healthy increase of just over 80% year on year. A rather 'peachy' result... so well done to all the team there.

Finally, if you're that way inclined, you can look at some pretty graphs for all stations on Media UK.

Right - that's enough 'numbers stuff' until February 1st 2012!

Back To School...

September always feels like the 'back to school' month after the long, hot, balmy summer that we had here in the UK. Well... not really, but anyway...

And with that comes a glut of conferences to attend, clients to see and projects to develop.

At the tail end of August, it was great to hook up with all the guys from P5 in Norway at their summer conference. It was an opportunity for all the team to be updated on the current state of the market, new initiatives moving forward and what lies ahead for 2012. But even more than that, it was a great ‘team’ event. It’s easy to be cynical about these kind of get togethers, but I witnessed first-hand the great effect that making members of your station ‘walk the plank’ can have!! If your station doesn’t do events like this every now again, start doing them!!

There’s a good buzz about the nextradio.io conference in London in a couple of weeks time. There’s a fantastic line-up of speakers and I also have my allotted ‘9 minutes’ to deliver some sage words to the assembled crowd. I hope this event proves to be an annual get together, offering a forum for new, fresh and innovative ideas in radio.

Cyprus is a country I’ve not been to before, and I’m really looking forward to speaking at the ‘Radio Breakfast’ at the end of September organised by Dias Media, who are one of the big media players on the island. Any opportunity to drive home the benefits of using radio as a great medium for advertising is one that I can’t resist, and they tell me the sun always shines in Nicosia this time of year!!

Denmark’s annual get together of the good, bad, and erm... ‘damn good looking’ of Danish radio takes place at the start of October. Radiodays Denmark (from which Radiodays Europe sprung from) is always a great day, and the fact it’s combined with the Danish Radio Awards on the same night ensures it’s a hell of a party. I’m doing a session with the PD of London’s Number 1 Commercial station – Magic 105.4, Pete Simmons. We’re looking at “The Magic Behind Magic” (the title was too easy I know) and we’ll be dissecting the factors that have made that station consistently perform well in a tough market.

So, in between all that, I think some visits to client stations in Austria and Slovakia are in order, as everyone is now ‘back to school’. Plus **plug alert** my Saturday morning show on Absolute 80s (‘Cafe 80s’) which I present along with Dan McGrath, is going great guns and keeping us busy... so I guess that it’ll be a pretty busy month ahead.

Plus there’s another very exciting project in development... but more about that when the time is right!

Welcome ‘Back to School’ everyone!!

"And You Can Tell Everybody..."

We all love a good ‘list’. Lists help us to define and order the world we live in, giving us a sense of what's good or bad. In an over-communicated world, lists are a kind of a cultural shorthand.

So I always enjoy it when any radio station does a list of any kind. Sometimes, a classic idea just keeps on working.

And when you can tie in a TV partner too, it works that much better by providing additional marketing and promotion for the radio station along the way.

With all that in mind, Absolute 80s and VH1 are teaming up to bring you “Your Song of the 80s”. Pick your favourite from a pre-determined list of 60, and then on the pre-determined bank holiday (Monday 29th August), both radio and TV will “count ‘em down”.

I mention this not only because I like ‘lists’ on the radio, but when I hear the promo, it reminded me of the classic ‘montage technique’; get as many songs as you can in to represent what you’re trying to communicate – in this case, great 80s songs.

So take a listen to the promo, and see how many great 80s songs you can spot. I counted 13, but there may be more!!

Disclosure: I produce and present a weekly show, with Dan McGrath, on a Saturday morning from 9am on Absolute 80s called 'Cafe 80s'. You can listen here

Sony Radio Academy Awards - 2011

Every year, I’m amazed at the quality and range of programmes in UK radio, celebrated and rewarded at the ‘Sony Radio Academy Awards’... the UK’s “Radio Oscars”.

The news from the night has already been pretty well covered. You can see the full list of winners here, and read some good reviews online.

The one thing I always leave the Sony’s with (apart from a large dent in my wallet. 'How much for a round of drinks?!!') is a renewed sense of optimism that in the UK, we have a radio industry that thrives on creativity and innovation, and is home to so many passionate industry professionals that want to keep creating brilliant programmes and formats.

From Ronnie Wood through to BBC 5 Live Breakfast, the range is just superb. So, if you don’t live in the UK, and want to experience the 'Best of British Radio'... take a look down the winners list, and track down some of their shows. You can hear a lot of live and previously broadcast shows here on the Radioplayer.

So... as Dan McGrath and I (pictured) prepare for our new radio show ‘Cafe 80s’ on Absolute 80s, which starts this Saturday at 9am... we have something to aim for next year!

New Weekend Show for Absolute 80s - Cafe 80s

They say that the ‘radio presenting bug’ never quite leaves you, and dwells deep within your bloodstream, before eventually breaking out years later, in a virulent case of ‘on-air activity’.

Well, I can confirm... that is very true!

This morning, Absolute Radio issued the following press release:

New Weekend Show for Absolute 80s – Cafe 80s
Absolute 80s is launching a brand new weekend morning show, presented by Dan McGrath and Nik Goodman – Cafe 80s.

Cafe 80s will air Saturdays from 9am – 12pm and will be an entertaining and light-hearted show with fun features and the best music that made Absolute 80s famous – this is the land of Human League, U2, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, Prince, ABC, Depeche Mode, Blondie and Bon Jovi, with a sprinkle of timeless tunes from artists such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and Culture Club.

The show will also feature guests from all walks of life who found fame in the 80s – be they from the world of music, film, TV or sport all with a 2011 take on the 80s. Dan and Nik have over 40 years of radio experience between them – they grew up in the halcyon days of the 1980s and share the same memories, experiences and growing pains, as the station’s audience of reluctant adults.

Cafe 80s is Absolute 80s first regular commission and will launch on Saturday 14th May. The commission demonstrates Absolute Radio’s commitment to personality and entertaining, unique content on its family of decade brands.

Dan McGrath was part of Chris Evans’ on air team throughout The Big Breakfast, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, TFI Friday, Radio 1 and Virgin Radio days. In 2001 he set up his own company (Cannon Studios) to supply music, audio production and presentation for all aspects of media, which (among other things) lead to him writing the theme tunes to a raft of high profile TV shows including Strictly Come Dancing, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, the ‘Lloyd Webber, BBC Star Search’ series.

Nik Goodman started his career in radio working alongside the legendary record producer, Pete Waterman, at Radio City in his native Liverpool during the late 1980’s. He has had a successful career in radio which has included drivetime show on Power FM, programme director at Virgin Radio (where he first met Dan), Kiss FM and Capital Radio. In 2006, he founded a creative media consultancy focusing on music, programming, and content development for radio stations and now has clients in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and India.

Cafe 80s set to be a show our Absolute 80s nostalgic audience will love!

So, the headphones are being dusted off as we speak and I'm really looking forward to presenting this new show. Dan and I will get to play some fantastic 80s music on a Saturday morning, speak to some fun people from that era, and have a bit of a laugh on the radio. What could be better?

I'm already getting through lots of song suggestions and ideas for the show from my 30-50 year old friends! And the more people I introduce the station to, the more people tell me they love it.

I'd like to say "Saturday mornings will never be the same again"... but that's not true. They will be. They'll just have 2 guys who love playing songs from the 80s on the radio.

So stop by and have a coffee! Cafe 80s starts on Saturday 14th May at 09:00.

RAJAR Qtr 4 2010; "The numbers are in..."

So it was listening figures time again in the UK this week... and what did we learn?

Well, there are some nice headlines about 90% of the population listening to the radio every week and of course every group or station puts a shine on their particular figures, so no-one seems to be real loser (although of course they can’t all be right!)

A few things caught my eye.

First, I was disappointed at the rate of growth for Digital Listening with a rather modest 0.2% rise in the quarter to a 25% share of all listening via platform. As part of that, DAB was up 0.5% quarter on quarter, and still remains the most popular way of consuming digital radio (15.8% share), but I can’t help feeling that the momentum has slowed a little, and being a firm believer in the importance of radio to ‘go digital’ in future, it’s frustrating to see such slow progress.

What’s the answer? Well... more unique content and stations on DAB would help. It was encouraging to see the continued growth of stations like Absolute 80s (up to 665,000 weekly reach), Absolute 90s (cuming 295,000) and even the recently refreshed Planet Rock (with a new high of 827,000) doing so well. It shows that when there is great content or a different offer on Digital, listeners will gravitate towards it. Niche formats on digital seem to be the way forward. Just make sure your niche is big enough!

Talk radio is proving more and more popular in the UK with the growth of TalkSport as a format (now reaches over 3 Million a week), BBC 5Live gaining record audiences (now over 7 million), and 97.3 LBC in London (almost reaching 1 million a week), radio audience are lapping up mainstream and populist speech content. BBC Radio 4 has always delivered great audiences, but it’s a very different offering to the former 3. It would be great to see the success of speech radio in a local form in the commercial sector outside London; a trick has proved quite difficult to perform so far. Perhaps as some mainstream music radio does less and less speech, the ‘talk sector’ will benefit more in the future.

Meanwhile in London, Magic continue to outperform its commercial rivals taking top spot in reach and share. Its consistent blend of ‘light favourites’ and inoffensive links seems to be just the job for stressed out Londoners! As I write, they’ve just played Amy Winehouse - ‘Back to Black’ into Candi Staton ‘Young Hearts, Run Free’. Lovely ;-)

Capital are just behind Magic, and still sounding good. The benefit of their big TV campaign and the impact of the networking will be felt next quarter. Kiss have overtaken Heart into 3rd place in terms of reach, which is a great result for Kiss and will be naturally disappointing for Heart, who have really lost touch with Magic now. Next in Kiss’s sights will be Capital, and you can hear how tight the battle is between those two simply by listening to how close the music formats are in the daytime. Want Tinie Tempah, Bruno Mars, Rhianna or Mike Posner? Well either station will suffice right now!

So as the number crunchers do their thing, and stations up and down the UK have an explosion of PowerPoint and Excel, it’s nice to know that above it all, the UK is one of the most vibrant and creative radio markets in the whole world with some fantastic formats, and some superb broadcasters. There really is always something great to listen to... and the continued growth of ‘listen again’ / on-demand / podcasts etc, means that you don’t even have to worry that you missed a particular show.

It’s radio that waits ‘till it’s wanted.

Now that’s Magic! ;-)

"So this is Christmas..." 2010

It’s snowing outside my office window in the beautiful English countryside, so it must be time to write another ‘end of year posting’ as we come to the end of another exciting year in radio.

2010 has been a challenging year for many radio stations and many radio industries across the world. The difficult economic circumstances have meant a tough advertising market to operate in for the commercial stations, and many public service organisations having to make large cost-savings, which often affect programming departments and the ‘end product’ for listeners.

However, against that backdrop we see a sector that is as popular as ever with consumers. Taking the UK, the latest RAJAR (audience measurement) figures show almost 91% of the UK population tune in to radio every week, with digital radio listening hours up 23% year on year, and DAB ownership is up 10% year on year to 18.3 million adults.

And if we look at radio services delivered by the internet in the UK, we can see that 2.2 million Smartphone owners have downloaded a radio app with 16.3 million listeners claiming to have ever listened to radio via the internet.

Non-linear services are becoming increasingly important with a real growth in “radio that waits till it’s wanted”. 8.1 million adults in the UK have downloaded a podcast, and 44% of users say they listen to them at least once a week, showing how advances in technology is helping to maintain the relevance of radio and audio entertainment in a ever-changing mediascape.

The argument about the importance of radio having a multi-platform future with a strong digital broadcast backbone is, I believe, academically won. The challenge for 2011 is winning the ‘hearts and minds’ battle and the PR war that is currently being fought. Obviously, different countries are at different stages of digital adoption and it will be interesting to see how they develop over the next 12 months, but the signs are encouraging with announcements like the launch of DAB+ services in Germany in 2011.

Why does this matter for programme makers and radio creatives?

Well, for several reasons. Ensuring radio continues to be relevant for consumers is important for the healthy future of the radio industry in every country. Developments in technology mean more stations, more formats and more creative possibilities. That’s a good thing is you have great ideas and want to find a home for them. I look at the success of Absolute 80s in the UK in 2010, that has grown from ‘nothing’ to over half a million listeners across the UK on DAB in a very short space of time. That’s a niche format that has found a tribe of happy fans of 80s music on digital radio. (And it’s now joined by its siblings Absolute 90s and Absolute 00s too)

The other development that has started to take shape in 2010 in the UK is Radioplayer. It’s a simple, consistent way for users to access UK radio stations of all shapes and sizes and grow online listening as a result. It’s a partnership between the BBC and many of the big commercial radio groups and is a great example of where collaboration between public and private sectors in radio provides benefit to the industry overall. I look forward to seeing it really take off in 2011.

So, like it or not, we can’t get away from the fact that technology now shapes our industry more than ever before, but embracing this change rather than denying it has got to be the only way forward.

The good thing that hasn’t changed though is... ideas. We’re still an industry that revolves around great ideas. Great ideas for shows, great ideas for promotions, great ideas for outside broadcasts, and great ideas for music features... and the need for those great ideas is never greater.

So, let 2011 be a year we all work on generating even more great ideas for our radio stations!

Finally, in an Oscars style thanksgiving, let me thank all the clients I’ve worked with in 2010. I’ve boarded over 120 planes in the last 12 months (!) and flown all over the world to work with some great people who all love radio as much as I do, and it’s been a real pleasure to work with you all. And to those of you I’ve yet to work with... 2011 might just be the year!

So, as the snow gets thicker and I throw another log on the fire, and I hear the carols drifting from the windows of the snowy village pub... let me say Happy Christmas and Seasons Greetings to everyone... and here’s to a great 2011.

See you next year!

Absolute 80's

Fans of 80's music... standby! A new radio station launches today at 18:00 GMT at www.absolute80s.com with back to back 80's hits. The full schedule, I'm reliably informed, launches in January.

An over-enthusiastic review will no doubt follow right here!!