Thrilling Radio

As I arrived home last night from spending the week in Copenhagen I settled down to watch to the BBC 10 O Clock News, saw the Michael Jackson story break at around 10:20pm and soon realised that we may be on the verge on something quite considerable.

Out came the laptop, on went the kettle and BBC News Channel / Sky News... and communications were established with the radio station I had just left. As I was hearing about the story on the TMZ website, which were the first to report Michael Jackson was dead, I started planning for the morning ahead.

I even managed to capture a screen grab of both TMZ and The LA Times as I went along ... a kind of strange ‘breaking news’ collector’s item of a momentous culturally significant event.

The timing was quite convenient (if these things are ever convenient, particularly to the person dying!) because it meant that most listeners in Europe switching on the radio in the morning would be hearing the news first from their favourite radio station, that Michael Jackson had died.

Therefore, there was a great opportunity to plan a ‘content packed’ show throughout the night and be ready for 6am... which is exactly what I did!

As consultant Programme Director for Radio 100FM in Denmark, I took charge of providing direction for that particular station in areas such as tone of voice, music, production etc... but I was backed up by a fantastic team who all came in early to ensure listeners got the best possible product. For good measure, all client stations received a bespoke 2am ‘advice’ email! :-)

What were the key ingredients?

Information – people needed to hear the facts about what had happened
Reaction – getting reaction from both listeners and celebrities on the breaking news
Mood Music – reflect the passing of a musical icon by playing lots of his songs
Tone of Voice – ensuring we found the right voice to demonstrate a genuine sadness at someone’s passing without being overly sentimental or mawkish
Production – capture the feeling and significance of the event with production the caused an emotional reaction

After 90 minutes sleep and a hastily arranged 4:30am conference call, we were up and running. The team on the ground put together a really excellent show and listeners were provided with some first class radio, balancing all the key ingredients.

I thought I’d share with you the some imaging that we had on air this morning, (produced by Imaging Director Bjarke Rasmussen) which has cuts of the station’s newsreader, a famous Danish TV host commenting on MJ’s death, clips of the press conference and of Michael himself, and a simple yet effective script. This was followed by an appropriate emotive Michael Jackson song and played at the top and bottom of each hour all day.

A sad day, but a great opportunity for radio to do what it does best.... react quickly to changing events, deliver information and capture the public mood. I hope your station took that opportunity.

"Now it's not time to catch up with the news in your area..."

I’ve just been to my local farm shop in the beautiful Berkshire autumn sunshine, right on the edge of Windsor where I live, to pick up a few vegetables for the weekend / logs for the fire etc. Most of their produce is grown and farmed locally. It’s a business on the rise as the trend for finding alternatives to supermarkets continues, and the zeitgeist continually moves towards a greater interest in the providence of food. There’s a genuine belief that local is good. Going to the shop strengthens a feeling of identity and community. In a world that’s collapsing around our eyes and ears, there’s something reassuringly nice about ‘local’.

I say this because, as you may have heard this week, Global Radio in the UK is axing its daytime local news bulletins across most of its stations. Local news will now only feature at breakfast and Drivetime and there’ll be a 1 minute long national bulletin from London throughout the day. Local it seems is not good in the world of Global Radio.

I suppose this is the final, inevitable nail in the coffin for truly “local radio” across the daytime for all of these stations. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for rival stations broadcasting to the same area, that do have locally produced news, to bang the drum about their product being made locally, featuring local stories that are actually relevant to the area. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like me to write you a series of promos!

I still can’t help feeling that Global Radio is missing a trick by ditching all their daytime local content. Stuff happens in the day too. It’s not just at breakfast and drive! But more importantly, it just reinforces the message that across the day there’s no local content at all… apart from the adverts. Radio listeners in a capital city like Cardiff deserve better than a 60 second bulletin with just some national headlines that frankly, you can from any number of sources these days. Might as well not bother… Or maybe that’s the next step?

Jonathan Richards, Global’s Head of News, was quoted on RadioToday.co.uk as saying…

"No local story will be missed. In the event of a major local story all stations have the autonomy to break away from the network, and should there be a local disaster such as a flood or major crash, additional journalists will be drafted to the scene. This is about raising standards of news for commercial radio."

I love statements like that that go unchallenged! Saying that “no local story will be missed” seems to be pushing it quite a bit! Getting all those good local stories into Breakfast and Drive might be a bit of a squeeze I think. And how removing local daytime bulletins equals a “raising of standards of news for commercial radio” is incomprehensible? He seems to be implying that the standard of the local news bulletins on many of these stations was poor… so the answer was to just take them off completely! Who knows?! Don’t get me wrong… bad local news bulletins are cringe-worthy. But well-trained, passionate, local radio journalists with an interest in reporting the goings-on in an area, produce some fantastic local news. Just listen to the multi award-winning Radio City News for proof of that. (And imagine Radio City broadcasting news bulletins across the day that didn’t once reference the ongoing trial for the murder of schoolboy Rhys Jones)

One thing I do know is that we now have lots of local stations trying to sound like national ones, which kind of defeats the object of local radio really. How long will it be before Drivetime is culled from Ofcom’s local requirement, and the last remaining hurdle before for Global can run a quasi-national network, will be Breakfast?

And all this, at a time when The BBC Trust is considering the findings of a public value consultation over proposals to create video based local news websites in 60 regions across the country. Let’s hope this isn’t the start of commercial radio just handing over the ‘local’ card to the BBC as well.

When Terror Strikes...

Local radio is great in times of disaster. At least that's what I thought.

On Sunday morning I listened to Radio Clyde (Clyde One to be precise) in Glasgow to get an update and local perspective regarding the events at Glasgow Airport. After all, it's (thankfully) not that often that a terrorist decides to drive a bomb through the revolving doors of your local airport.

I was hoping for perhaps bulletins every 15 minutes or so, as the attack was the previous afternoon... but as it was the start of the Glasgow holidays, lots of people would have been trying to fly away, so cue lots of local info.

And what did I get?

"Ross King... Live from Hollywood"

Surely some mistake?

Nope... Ross King was chatting away about nothing in particular from his LA studio and for a large portion of the show I heard, there was nothing relating to the events of the previous day. Had I missed all the action?

The midday news rolled around and at last, some local coverage... but not to the level and standards I would have expected from a station as large as Clyde, and with such a heritage of providing great news. The bulletin I heard could have been broadcast live from the airport, for example; Just something to make me feel that my station was connected to my area and the story that was still unfolding was being covered from every angle.

The purpose here is not to bash Clyde, as I'm hoping they did lots of marvellous bits of radio I didn't hear relating to the terrorist attack. In fact, I'm sure they did. The point is, if something major happens in your broadcast area... GO BIG!

Never underestimate the audience's thirst for knowledge and their desire to turn to their trusted local radio station as a friend in time of crisis. You can really reinforce your stations credentials as THE local station to turn to.

It works for things like extreme weather (The Radio Forth Snowline in Edinburgh was hugely important for many years) and national stories with a local angle... like murders, kidnappings, riots etc. (A happy topic this one isn't it!!)

I was Programme Director at Capital Radio in London on July 7th 2005 and the attempted bombings in London last week brought back the memories of that day. The skill, dedication and commitment of the whole team at Capital meant that Londoners got all the information they needed to know at any point that they tuned in during and long after the attacks of July 7th. News Editor, Matt Schofield was instrumental in driving forward the information agenda for the station, and Capital regained many lost friends as a result of its actions on, and after July 7th.

I'd rather that people didn't try and blow us all up, that the kidnapping of children didn't happen and that floods didn't cause bodies to float down the river... but if these things do happen, I want my local radio station to really over-deliver in every way possible. That's surely the benefit of being local.

And while we're at it... Ross King wasn't very good either!