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! ;-)

Russell At His Best

Some of the best radio is when naturally entertaining poeple just talk... and one subject leads to another. Take a look at this clip of Russell Brand recording his show for TalkSport, and see how they get from reading a basic news story in the local paper about someone impersonating a policeman... to discussing the Nazis.



It's a great bit of radio and obviously relies heavily on Russell's unique talents, but the roles that Matt Morgan and Noel Gallagher play are actually really important in the whole thing too. Noel has 2 short, yet really important interventions and comments, and Matt plays the part of "questioning sidekick" really well. Radio is at its best when it can be this natural... and you don't need a big expensive studio to do it in either! Recording it in some backstage dressing room will do just fine!

"Can You Kick It?" - Absolute Football

The Premiership football season in the UK starts again this weekend, and there’s something slightly different about it this year. Not only will you be able to hear live commentary of certain matches on BBC 5Live and TalkSport, but there’s a new player on the pitch. Absolute Radio.

Absolute Radio has won the rights to broadcast Barclays Premier League football commentary as part of a three year deal that kicks off this weekend. The station will bring live commentary from 32 exclusive Premiership matches during the 2010/11 season.

So – there are a few things to discuss here...

1 - Does adding football commentary to a music radio station blur to definition of the brand, or add another exciting dynamic to it?
2 - Has the strategy to launch an additional DAB channel, Absolute Radio Extra, to host to the commentary, and the 'split output' been effectively communicated so far?
3 - Will it work, both in terms of audience and revenue?

Let’s deal with the ‘brand’ thing first. Absolute Radio is a music radio station first and foremost. But there are 3 additional factors here. First, it’s a music radio station aimed at men, who traditionally are likely to enjoy football more. Second, it’s a station that has driven the concept of providing ‘entertainment’ in all sorts of forms, particularly in the digital space. And finally, the station has a long connection and heritage with ‘football as entertainment’, with the “Rock n Roll Football” brand being invented by Chris Evans back in the old Virgin Radio days. (The ordering of the 'Saturday afternoon take-away' on air was always a highlight!)

So adding football to the mix on Absolute Radio seems to be a perfectly logical thing to do, and in my view, it falls well within the brand boundaries of the station, and certainly adds a new dynamic to it, and will potentially drive some new listening, as well driving more brand awareness through natural talkability amongst fans.

Regarding the communication strategy... I was slightly confused about how to listen to be honest. I know from listening to the station over the last week, that live commentary is happening on Saturday, but it won’t be on 105.8FM or the national DAB signal I listen to. However, there is the usual Rock ‘n’ Roll football show from 3pm on those channels (Music and goal flashes etc). If I want to hear the live commentary, I need to tune to 1215AM, or listen to Absolute Radio Extra (a new DAB station), from 1:30pm, where I’ll hear commentary of Aston Villa v West Ham, presumably with a 90 minute build up. Then from 5pm, I can hear new signing, Ian Wright’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Football for 90 minutes, which presumably will be similar to 5Live’s ‘606’ show... comment, analysis, phone-calls etc. This, however, will not only be on Absolute Radio Extra, but on 105.8FM and the Absolute radio national DAB channel. Still following?

As one presenter said on air yesterday, "You need a flow chart to follow what’s going on!" I’m not sure if enough has been done to explain this all to listeners, or if it will just naturally fall in to place? I believe that real fans actively ‘seek out’ live commentary, so if a Villa fan tuned in to 105.8FM and couldn’t hear their team’s game, I’m sure they would try and work out where it was. Plus, I’m believe it will be heavily cross promoted at the time. E.g. “For those of you wanting live commentary, re-tune now to our sister station etc...”. After all, it works for BBC 5Live Sports Extra quite well. But even today, I heard some talk up of the commentary, and no mention was made of the fact that I will need to retune waveband or find it on another DAB station etc.

So, finally... will adding football commentary work in terms of audience and revenue

In terms of revenue, having unique content that can drive a decent sponsor is always a great starting point, and the Premier League comes from the top drawer of content (even if they are the 2nd pick of Saturday afternoon matches). So it’s a no brainer for Sky Sports to sponsor the live commentary Rock ‘n’ Roll Football, and all the pre and post match shows as well as having an online presence. (They’re doing the same on TalkSport). This will bring in a healthy amount of revenue to Absolute. The price the station paid for the rights hasn’t been made public as far as I can tell, but presumably the sums add up to make it a worthwhile enterprise, as well as the invisible value it brings to the station. Will their notorious transparency extent to letting us know how much they paid for the rights? ;-)

In terms of audience, we shall see. Commentaries are a funny thing, as they tend to drive loyalists to those teams, but don’t always attract the masses. Splitting the output may well be the wisest thing to do, as there’s now a choice consumers can make. Football... or er...football with music! We shall see this time next year how much of an impact it makes, however I suspect that this is not all about pure ‘generic reach’. It’s about the value of a listener that has a deeper connection with specialist content... and that’s worth a lot more to advertisers.

So – I look forward to hearing the coverage this weekend, as we’ve been promised "an alternative style of football commentary", and the commentator, Jim Proudfoot, is a really excellent communicator on radio. (Believe it or not, he used to read the sports bulletins when I was on the radio about a hundred years ago!!)

Good luck to all the team at Absolute Radio this weekend. Let’s hope they get a home win / score goals with the audience / are top of the ratings table / bag 3 points every week... **insert your own footballing cliché here!**

Come and have a go if you think you're smart enough...

I’m in Copenhagen this week and being a Liverpool fan, I thought I’d see if the Chelsea v Liverpool match was on the TV tonight. Sure enough, it was on Danish channel TV3+ (hosted by Denmark’s own version of Gary Lineker... the legend that is Peter Schmeichal! Very good he is too!)

As good as the TV presentation and commentary was, I thought I’d check to see if it was being streamed anywhere on UK radio. Sometimes the matches are... sometimes they block them to international listeners, due to licence restrictions. However BBC London were streaming. So I listened, and although the web stream commentary was about 20-30 seconds behind the pictures on my TV, it was nice to hear the analysis.

The commentary on BBC London however wasn’t particularly good as radio commentaries go. (And I’ve listened to a fair few in my time). But beggars can’t be choosers I thought.

Then it went to half time, and the commentator made a pointless and smug remark about the whole of the second half being live on BBC London 94.9 and went on to say, and I quote... “Crackle, commercial and claptrap free...”, an obvious reference to national commercial station broadcasting on AM, TalkSport.

Now I didn’t know that TalkSport were running live commentary of the match. (In fact, I didn’t really think of TalkSport, so maybe that’s a marketing issue for them) But due to a petty and cheap remark from the BBC guy Phil Parry, I was alerted to another way of listening to the match... tuned in... and enjoyed the commentary of Jim Proudfoot and entertaining analysis of Danny Kelly of TalkSport much more.

I know knocking the competition can be a bit of fun and there are lots of historical and current examples of it, but is it just an ‘in’ joke that only makes radio types chuckle? It can backfire and it did on this occasion, as BBC London lost about 1 hour of listening time from me, by directly alerting me to another station to listen to.

Plus it annoyed me that BBC London felt they needed to have a swipe at a commercial competitor? For what reason was it really necessary?

So... PD’s and Producers... before you write all your witty liners highlighting your competitors alleged weak spots.... just think twice!!

PS – Even though we lost, it has to be was one of the best games of football I've ever seen... ever... in the world... ever!