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! ;-)

"My name's Nik and I'm an addict..."

I have a confession to make. I think I’m an addict. Not to crack or ‘Meow Meow’. No... something far more addictive. It’s BBC Radio 5 Live.

Maybe it’s down to the UK General Election and the natural amount of news that is circulating as a result of that, or perhaps it was the recent volcanic ash cloud and the ability of radio to really convey the changing nature of the story minute by minute, but I’ve probably spent more time with 5 Live than any other station over the last few weeks.

For those of you not resident in the UK or not familiar with it, let me try and explain what it does.

• It’s a speech station
• It’s main areas are News and Sport
• It also covers entertainment and popular culture
• It’s not stuffy
• It’s very conversational
• It doesn’t always rely on the ‘phone in’ as its main tool
• It has a sense of humour
• It employs some of the best speech broadcasters in the UK
• It has appointment to listen programmes
• It’s broadcast on Medium Wave (!) which is how most listeners hear it, but never mentions this fact on air!
• It’s also available on DAB, online, and all the other platforms too...
• It’s bloody good! Sorry - did I already mention that?

I have a lot of conversations with stations at the moment about how the ‘speech content’ is more and more important as a weapon to a music station these days than ever before. So my appetite for speech stations has grown considerably over the last few years, so perhaps that explains the current love affair with 5 Live.

But I thought I would cheat a little bit on my new found love the other day when I travelling in the car, and tuned into London speech station LBC 97.3, where James Whale was doing the afternoon show live from Bristol where the 2nd Leaders Debate was happening that night. Nice move to put the show in town, but after about 5 minutes of a pretty good interview with William Hague, the show went rapidly downhill with some formulaic callers and then the mother of all technical cock ups where presenter could not hear callers, but callers were on air and then the engineering talk-back went loudly into the headphones, bleeding on air, putting off James even further, until eventually the talk back actually went live in air! (It gets funny from about 4:40pm onwards and it was last Thursday 22nd April if you have access to a London station logger!)

Now, the point of telling you this was not to put a downer on LBC. Nick Ferrari at Breakfast is a great broadcaster and knows his audience very well and really connects with them fantastically on a daily basis, as do many of their other presenters. The point was to point out how difficult really great speech radio is to do and then to heap large amounts of praise on 5 Live, saying that they get it right, day in, day out.

Now, before you cry foul, I know they have “jacuzzis of cash” and a huge team to make it work, but I’m delighted they do, and as a listener I enjoy every bit of it. From 5 Live Breakfast to Richard Bacon, from Danny Baker to Tony Livsey, and from Fighting Talk to Simon Mayo’s Movie Reviews. It’s all good.

It’s far too easy for us who work in the industry to be overly critical when listening to the radio and give opinions on how things could be done differently or done 'far better’... but sometimes we don’t take time out to give praise where praise is due. So I thought it would be nice to do that once in a while, and this is blatantly one of those occasions. (Maybe it's the sunshine or the bank holiday 'feelgood' vibe that has gone to my head!)

I’ve never worked for 5 Live, but I know a couple of people who do. I hope they’re having as much fun working at the station as I’m having listening to it currently.

Happy weekend!

Reach or Share?

If you looked at last week’s RAJAR figures released in the UK, and perhaps read a few of the press releases, you may have been slightly confused as to who is Number 1 in London?

Well – nothing’s changed insofar as the devil is in the detail and if you’re doing well in one metric you shout about that... and if you’re doing well in another, you shout about that.

Magic 105.4 are number 1 commercial station in share, with 6.1% and Heart 106.2 are number 1 commercial station in reach, with 1.881 Million listeners a week

And although they don’t shout about it as much, as they’re perhaps a little more restrained about such crass self-promotion (due to the “unique way they’re funded”) BBC Radio 4 are actually the number 1 station in London in both share and reach, with 14.7% share and 2.380 Million listeners a week.

At breakfast time, Capital have the largest breakfast show with 1.231 Million listeners whilst nationally, Terry Wogan’s much publicised last quarter delivered 8.102 Million listeners.

The biggest surprise was the growth of London talk station LBC, which has overtaken Capital and Heart to become Number 2 commercial station in share terms, with a highly respectable 5.7%. There’s no doubt that LBC is the star performer and gets the teachers 'Gold Star'!

So what can we glean from all this?

Capital’s current format is always going to deliver stronger reach than share. CHR always tends to do that, due to the deliberately repetitive nature of things. The average hours of 5.5 a week are actually pretty good. But Capital has historically always been about reach, so that’s the most important metric for that station I believe. Remember...reach before revenue!

Heart’s format should allow it to generate more average hours and 5.7 a week feels a tad on the low side. As we know, their ‘variety’ position is more of a myth (sorry... marketing position) than reality, as they tend to play a pretty tight bunch of songs over a week. So perhaps they’re playing more of the reach game than the share game currently.

Meanwhile, Magic seem to have got the formula right and although they may not play significantly more tracks than Heart in any given week, the image of being a ‘you can listen to us for ages’ station seems to have cut through... hence the 6.1% share. Plus there's no real significant difference between them in terms of reach and the other 2 competitors.

Meanwhile LBC’s average hours are up at 13.6 a week! They’ve got a growing cohort (841,000) of fans who just love that station. I didn’t know London had that many cab drivers!! This figure compares really well with say BBC London, who have 7.4 average hours a week and actually beats BBC Radio 4 nationally, which is at a mere 12.6 a week.

Often it’s smaller or more niche stations that have really high average hours. LBC has some way to go if it’s to be Magic 1152 in Hull (15.2), 107 The Bee in erm.... Blackburn, I think (15.4). And finally, come on down Premier Christian Radio with average hours of 16.6 a week. I know it’s difficult to compete with GOD. And some of those sermons go on forever...

So reach or share? Which is more important? Well of course, the answer depends on which one you’re doing the best in... and whichever that is, that’s the most important!

Actually – they’re both important. Lots of listeners, listening longer. And in London, this time, without sounding like Paul Daniels, you’d have to say... “That’s Magic!”

Speaking Frankly

I love when something that happens on the radio makes the news.

And last week’s incident where Frank Lampard called London talk station LBC to have a go at presenter James O’ Brien, showed the radio’s still a medium that can generate headlines.

I’m sure if Frank Lampard had written a letter to a newspaper, or commented on a website about the topic, that it wouldn’t have garnered so much attention. The fact is, he picked up the phone and dialled a radio show to vent his anger. The audio is really powerful. You can listen to the whole thing here.

Frank makes a really good point where he acknowledges that radio ‘phone in show’ hosts deliberately say something controversial in order to get people to phone in to argue their alternative viewpoint, which is very true. They do.

James O’ Brien effectively described Frank as “weak” and “scum” due to the situation regarding his breakup and his kids, which, on the anniversary of Frank Lampard’s mother’s death, obviously tipped Frank over the edge and caused him to call up LBC.

Now, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the case (and I guess no-one really knows what happens inside someone else’s relationship) the LBC audio certainly made me think twice about the power a radio presenter has, and how within that power, there lies a responsibility particularly towards commenting on the very personal lives of celebrities.

Was James O' Brien putting across a legitimate topic for discussion or merely adding to the tabloid feeding frenzy around showbiz stories, which inevitably leads to less than accurate reporting.

I’m not really sure... but one thing’s for certain...

It made great radio.

Snow Patrol

Us ‘Brits’ love a crisis. It gives us something to complain about... and we’re pretty good at complaining, and then usually finding someone to blame. If complaining were an Olympic sport for London 2012, we’d get ‘Gold’ for sure. We’re also pretty good in the media at creating a great sense of ‘national disaster’, particularly when it’s anything to do with the weather.

For my foreign friends, especially those of you in Europe, a little bit of snow for you is ‘par for the course’ and doesn’t exactly ‘put you off your stroke’. In fact, one Euro-PD friend of mine carries a spade in his boot just in case he needs to dig himself out of a snow drift... so he claims!!

So this morning’s snow across the UK has been greeted with a general sense of hysteria by the media. Now, I realise that we only get this amount of snow about once every 20 years, and it’s always more of a story if it effects London more, where all the national media are based! And yes, it causes a massive amount of disruption. (My flight was cancelled this morning, but at least I live pretty close to the airport so was able to pop home without too much trouble...)

But I think there’s a fine line between covering a story really well in news and programming... or pushing the “we’re all doomed” button.

Once I returned from my aborted trip to Heathrow Terminal 5, I whizzed across the radio dial in London to hear what was going on. Johnny Vaughan on Capital seemed to capture the tone really well. Obviously, it was the major talking point, but he spun some nice content from it by getting drivers of SUV’s / 4-Wheel-Drive cars who were feeling smug, to call in and say so!

“Everyone normally hates you. You pay over the odds for it all year long... but today you can feel rightly smug if you drive a 4 Wheel-Drive!”

Spot on. (He also did some nice 'Carry On' style jokes about leaving the house with 9 inches!) And the news and information blocks were spot on too. The weather and all its implications was the only story that ran on an extended 9am bulletin on Capital. (Extended so long that the 5 minute news bed ran out during the travel sequence!)

Meanwhile, over on LBC, they seemed to be going for it big time! Nick Ferrari at Breakfast renamed the station “97.Snow”... which... erm...doesn’t quite work really Nick. And he started claiming that LBC was your ‘Official snow station for the blizzard of 2009’! Haha! Do me a favour..!! Again, nothing wrong with keeping listeners utterly informed and making it the main talking point, but don’t turn yourself into ‘The Day Today’ in the process. Please.

Later on in the morning, one presenter had a ‘gritter’ on the line and implied that country grinding to a halt was practically all the fault of this poor chap! The problem will rolling-news and speech stations is that they need to keep feeding the beast and anything becomes a talking point, even the most dubious content. “What kind of brush is best to use to clear a path? Call us now...”

However, extremes of weather always seem to do ‘radio’ as a medium, a favour I believe. Despite many stations pushing the drama of the event to excess, radio still seems to act as a focal point for the pubic to get up to date information quickly and first, to share experiences, and then inevitably to complain and play the blame game. (Social Networking sites are great at the personal photos, but why don't radio stations get listener pics and galleries on the front page straight away? BBC News have already had 16,000 photos in at the time of writing)

I’d love to hear if you have any other examples of local stations going slightly hysterical with the snow. Meanwhile, I’m off to start my lovely 4-Wheel-Drive SUV and feel smug as I go to the shops to stock up on essential provisions to last me ‘till the spring.

I hear a blizzard is-a-coming...

"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...."