Not so Fresh Radio

Over recent months – well years really – I’ve been reading about the what seems like the prolonged death of Fresh Radio, a small commercial station in my old hometown ok Skipton. In the past year reports have suggested that staff haven’t been paid, the tax man has taken them to court and transmitters have fallen silent.

(Read This)

A casual reader may conclude that the recent woes are just that, a result of their takeover by Laser Broadcasting – who to be fair don’t always have the best reputation in the industry but even this seems to be an all time low point. Continuous music seems to suggest the back-up CD is playing and posters to MediaUK, would back this up. So, it’s probably more of a technical issue than a management or programming one; something’s broken or something’s not been paid. Again, this is a real low point but one that has probably been on the cards for sometime.

This is where I reveal my past. I worked for this station in the dim and distant past. in 1995 I spotted a little article in the local paper saying there was going to be a short term radio station on the air just up the road from me. As someone who knew a bit about radio and had worked in the business and currently working as a freelance hack I went along and found myself made the News Editor. As a group of people they were really passionate about local radio, they’d had some experience having put Stray FM on the air some years before and wanted to do the same in Skipton. I freely admit at the time they had me, I agreed. Radio should be local, it could be about more than music etc etc etc…. and in an ideal world that’s how would it be.

So, the licence comes up for grabs. 3 applications go in and they win. They approach me and offer me a job, which I accept as the college I was working was slowly falling apart round my ears and I wanted to be back in Yorkshire and in radio. I suppose the writing was on the wall early on. No dry runs happened as the studios weren’t delivered as the board didn’t want to pay insurance to soon and so on. The most experienced on-air presenter had shifts at Stray and the AA. No-one had a regular daytime experience. There was no PC. The MD did breakfast but he was new to paid radio as well and brought his dog into the studio. It had a certain charm I suppose and I was no better in some ways. Launch day came and despite agreeing what the first song was some months before (it was the last we played as an RSL) half an hour before we went live we realised no body had bought a copy. This was the reality.

Within about a year, most of the launch day staff including me had gone, some were pushed, some walked. The problem is the staff were blamed for what were much more  widespread issues. The station lacked focus, it needed better PR, it needed management who knew how to make money from radio and a board with the guts to wait for the audience to come. To me that view about real local radio clouded all this. The area is also a problem. Geography stands in the way of making it truly cohesive. In the southern part the valleys run north to south (roughly) so people head south to shop etc. Further north they run east to west, so people generally go to the nearest big town. Either Penrith or darlington, neither of which is in the TSA and this is the problem it’s an area created by licensing not community.

Over the years that station had some programming success and a few coups: foot and mouth coverage, awards and so on. But is never made money. New studios were built and transmitters added but the PR effort never seemed to lift and programming still seemed woolly, old fashioned even. The board bailed the company out, shareholders were asked to buy more shares to add liquidity and resources were sold off to raise capital. The area could support a radio station I am sure but it needs a group who can support it and know how to eek out a profit of smaller or more difficult markets.

We’ve already seen bigger stations using networking and automation to fill the day and save money but Fresh seemed all too keen on live voices, which makes good radio but not always business sense. On a small station automation may not always be ideal but it saves a few pennies, keep those to pay the bills, promote the station and people will come. They tune in, hear music and stay. If the money comes add more live presentation, if it doesn’t you still have a sensible base. Local radio is expensive and requires skill. I wanted more speech on the station when I was there and it didn’t always happen or presenters didn’t always have the skill to be able to pull it off, which is no fault of theirs because speech is hard and needs training.

It may be a little early to write an epitaph but if it needs one then something like ‘ it could have been really good’ would do or maybe ‘they tried’ is more apt.

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Working in Radio

I’ve been engaged in another one of those debates over on the Media UK forums this week, where the value of education gets called into questions. It’s actually not been the hostile one I’ve seen to be fair, in the past I used to feel like I was banging my head against a wall such was ferocity of the attacks against media education. The tide has turned… a bit.
This time it’s about Journalists, the shockingly poor wage some of them get and the fact that there’s an awful lot of journalism graduates out there for seemingly less and less jobs. Which means students spend lots of money on a course in the hope it will get them a job…. and it doesn’t. I can see why they’d annoyed. The thing is though often they’re priced out of the market by the work experience kid who’ll do the same job for a pittance just to work in radio. I can see why, if I didn’t have kids I’d love to jack in my job and go and work in radio again. It’s great fun, the people are lovely and it can be the best job in the world and because of that people will do it for free…or almost free.
As a graduate, you’ve done the living in shared houses with people who don’t wash-up or spend 45 minutes in the bathroom every morning. You want a life and that means a living wage, it’s only fair after all. But if someone will do the job for less than a decent living wage then commercial stations will go for that, they’re in business to make money so any savings they can make, they will. It’s been the case for a long time that in journalism at least there’s a hierarchy of stations~: small commercial > Larger commercial > BBC or national commercial > National BBC. The Beeb pay better and have more people, so you can actually get on with some proper journalism. OK, so this is a generalisation.. but it’s true.
So, who gets the blame? This is where I come in and why I say we’re back to the old debate. Universities were getting the blame here, so pushing out graduates with false promises into a market where supply exceeds demand. That’s true. But then that’s usually the case in labour markets. Now, normally what happens is that employers choose the best (cream floats and all that) but what seems to be happening is that graduates are being offered silly wages or aren’t getting that far. I really don’t believe this is because there are too graduates but simply that they’re being priced out of the market. It was suggested that we set quotas. Ok, so that in theory means the cost of the job goes up, because you need to pay well to get the staff… in reality it means employers will look to the work experience kid, send him on a 2 day legal course and call him a journalist… paying him peanuts because he lives with his mum and dad and will do anything to work in radio. I’d have done the same. So, if we set quotas nothing would change and who sets them? and who tells HEI’s that they have to limit one part of their business? If they make academic sense, eg limit the class sizes so staff can focus on students or they all get access to resources then that’s all fine but anything else is daft.
It does annoy me when I read that graduates can’t get jobs, it’s sad and irritates me that colleagues at other places have sold students a line, promising great careers if they take their degree. Sure, we all tell candidates ‘this is what our graduates are doing’ … the parents ask us and it’s part of the sales patter. But I always balance that by saying you need to something else as well, get work experience, make yourself stand out and when I can I’ll help students with that.
Maybe it’s a case that we need to lobby the radiocentre or even ofcom to set guidelines for minimum wages in radio, as surely paying peanuts gets monkeys and certainly doesn’t buy loyalty.

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Global buy GCap

As expected Global Radio have bought GCap for £375m thus meaning that not only has the UK’s newest radio group has bought the biggest but also that the majority of UK Commercial Radio is now in private hands. This might be really interesting as private owners won’t have to slash cost to keep the city happy, although the investors will want their money back.
This might be interesting for other reasons as well. As reported here the new group may well have to dispose of some of the stations to satisfy competition rules. In London and the the Midlands both GCap and Global have stations, which means the new group will have more than one station. For example, Heart, Galaxy and BRMB in Birmingham. The rules say that in any given market no-one group should have unfair dominance of the ad business, which is interpreted as ‘2 + the BBC’. Which in Birmingham and London is the case, as both H Bauer and GMG have stations. GMG also operate Smooth Radio in the East Midlands but the speculation is that the new group will divest the older stations formerly part of Gcap in the east and west midlands. These would be a good fit for Bauer, as they could roll out the Big City Format on FM and expand Magic on AM. This would put Bauer on a better footing as they could sell advertising across a larger footprint.
Of course, this could all spark lots of consolidation in the sector as this one group will now have such a huge dominating effect that the other groups will be minnows by comparison and so will lose the bargaining power they once had with big advertisers, which of course means that one of them might want to pick up anything that the Global/Gcap want rid of or that they merge with each other and so further consolidate the industry.

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Who’s got it right John or Fru?

Not so long after GCaps Fru Hazlitt pulled back from their commitment to DAB Radio, reducing their commitment from being part-owners of Digital One and operators of 2 National DAB channels to effectively only offering relays of London stations to the regions, plus local services FUN Radio (A partnership with HIT) and Chill. A commitment, yes but nowhere nearly as big as it was. Their reasoning? (I summarise) DAB isn’t working the future is online… of course, as we all know the move was more to do with persuading shareholders to stick with them and not sell to Global Radio who are still circling ready to pounce with a new offer to buy the group.

But whilst GCap are cutting back it’s interesting to note that here in the North East GMG are launching a new service, which promises not a relay but locally generated content. GMG have a real history in using DAB to develop their brands, Smooth was launched (and I assume tweaked and improved) on DAB before rolling out on FM when Jazz FM was consigned to the radio graveyard in the North West and London. They now of course have rolled the brand out further, using to rebrand the Saga stations. Rock Radio is already on the air in Scotland (a rebrand of a purchased station) and will launch on FM in Manchester in May.

So, GMG are using a brand they have and are rolling it out on local DAB… nothing new here but rather than hearing content from wherever the relay is coming from (don’t you just love hearing the travel news for London on XFM or Kiss?) but it’s locally created, which means investment. It won’t be huge as the group already run 2 stations in the region but still it needs resources both physical and human. So, well done John Myers the new saviour of DAB.

It’s also worth pointing out that Jazz FM does live, but online where to be fair it always had a big audience but not within it’s licenced areas but overseas, especially the US (I’ve seen the numbers but can’t find them now) Now, this is where GCap have a point but the lesson here is that big brands work best on the platfoms where people can hear them (like FM and to a lesser extent DAB) but niches work best online where the coverage area is bigger because it’s global…

Rock On

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Tags: radiorock jazz GMG GCap

Charlie Bit Me

Charlie bit me

OK, this is nuts. A really funny family video, posted on YouTube that somehow has gone around the world gaining mainstream attention and listing alongside the PR spin for US primaries and Indiana Jones. At time of writing this video has been viewed close to 7 million times. Even assuming some of those viewers came back it still means this one video has been viewed by more people than watch the BBC News at Ten (BARB data) OK, so this is sod all to do with radio but the world is changing, I’m currently reading Andrew Keen’s ‘the cult of the amateur’ and he largely dismisses this as a waste of time and erosion of culture. In that the mediated media controls what we see, gets ride of crap and focuses on the accurate and the quality.

We assume here of course that the media ever really did that. It will look for mass audiences and media around the world have all used videos of babies biting little children to bring in the audiences. So, the only difference we don’t get sent £50 and we get to keep our tapes. I agree there’s a lot of rubbish out there bu give anything space to breath and there will be, there will always be bad restaurants in amongst the good ones but that doesn’t mean that only the big chains should own them all?

Anyway, I’ll post more when I’ve read the book.
/muse

Regretting the Podcamp

I’ve just been looking at the videos from last years podcamp and sort of now regret not being there, partly as it looked interesting but partly as it might have given me the kick up the arse I need to get my book finished off and out of the way.

I did watch Trevor ‘Radio Academy’ Dann’s opening address and just like when he spoke at Lincoln Radio Conference a few months earlier I agreed with much of what he had to say about radio… and have said so myself in academic papers and in lectures here. There is an un-doubtable bond between Podcasting and Radio, both are auditory and both often use similar techniques. As Dann suggests so many Podcasters still say ‘hello and welcome to the show’ and use jingles just like they would in the radio. In some ways Podcasting is just another pipe to shove radio down and get it to the audience, where-ever and when-ever they might be listening. I’m fine with this, it’s a great way to use the medium especially for a public service medium or as a way to build reach for a particular programme. It might even make programmers invest a little if their investment hangs around longer than the moment in time it leaves a transmitters and shoots down our earholes. In an article a few years back in Media, Culture and Society, David Black argues that radio is in effect whatever we think it is. he’s talking streaming audio but we could extend that to podcasts on an iPod. If the listener *thinks* it’s radio, then it’s radio. It’s a good thought and for most people it’s right… but are blessed in some ways as Podcasting has a name, unlike Internet or Web Radio, which used a familiar term to explain it. 

So, as Dann suggests there should be a point of difference here and I agree with him (has he been reading my stuff?) Podcasts exist in a different time and space to radio, they don’t need fancy studios and in fact half the appeal is that they’re not radio as the ‘radio-ness’ of the medium is what made us find the podcasts in the first place! Free from time, advertiser and regulatory pressures a podcast can and should offer the audience what it wants. Something very niche and very in touch with the audience and all they want…. even if that’s a small group of your mates. It doesn’t matter, do what you need to do and celebrate the medium. A listener could be anywhere in space and time and that makes life interesting but because they’ve sought you out they’re already more loyal than most radio listeners and that too can be harnessed via blogs, forums, audio posts or social networking.

Anyway, sorry I didn’t go but there were reasons I am sure but at least now my brain is moving and sooner or later I’ll get time to sit down and start writing again. It would be good to see some thoughts here about you think?

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Tags: radiopodcasting technology

Journalists getting the ‘mojo’

I’ve just been reading Jeff Jarvis’ excellent column in The Guardian and whilst it’s naff all to do with radio and I did say something about it. To summarise… Jarvis writes about new media and about journalism, he’s great, he speaks sense and writes far better than I ever could. So, it’s worth reading. (check the blogroll folks)

Anyway, this week he’s writing about a neat adaptation of a mobile phone that Reuters are using for reporters in the field – the ‘mojo’ lets them record audio and video and upload from the field. This is exciting stuff, especially for geeks like me. You don’t need laptops, ISDN, satellite trucks or all the hugely and expensive pieces of kits we once had to use to get something back to the office or studio. Jarvis says this is great because it’s far less threAnd there is the first fundamental change brought on by the mojo phone:

It’s small, unobtrusive, unthreatening. You don’t feel as if you’re
talking to a camera and, in turn, to thousands or millions online.
You’re talking to a phone; how silly. Other Reuters mojo journalists
told me they had the same experience: It makes recording people more
casual and perhaps candid and certainly easier.

Of course you get the same with a little MP3 player and there’s evidence that these can work and that’s great, people are relaxed, they don’t perform and you get a good story. The risk of course in all of this is that sometimes you may lack the credibility or authority that you really need – we have had this HHB flash mics, even though they cost the same as portable recorder, because they’re small and look simple people do wonder how ‘real’ you really are! The issue is also in all of this rush to get content ‘out there’ do we miss out that crucial stage that we used to have… thinking about what we say, giving the story space to be told rather than letting the audience work it out themselves?

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GCap changes

Big news from GCap Media this morning, although not totally unexpected they’re pulling back from all but their ‘core’ business, which really seems to be London and Classic FM. They’re in the process of selling their share in Digital One to Arqiva, closing their 2 remaining national DAB stations (thejazz and Planet Rock) and disposing of the 3 Xfm licences outside London, either through sale or a hand-back. I’m guessing Global Radio could be in the wings here.

Before their merger with Capital the GWR group had really pushed ahead with digital radio, pouring (probably) millions into getting going and keeping it going despite still rather slow growth, there’s still only a few million sets out there and only a small (but increasing) percentage listen via DAB. According the last RAJAR sweep (Q4 2007) 9.9% of the audience listen via DAB by the 22.3% who own a DAB set… so either half the people who own a set don’t use them, don’t report them or don’t know their listening to it. But then this is the problem with radio, we listen to it all over. I have a DAB radio in my kitchen and one by my bed. So my night-time, morning and ‘while I am cooking’ listening is all digital. I have sky in the lounge and use that for radio too (like 3.1% of the audience in Q4) BUT… I have a normal analogue radio in the car, so all the listening I did whilst driving about this weekend was analogue. Unlike TV, where I do 99% of my viewing in the front room with sky… in fact I have freeview in the bedroom, my girlfriend has digital tv and so do my friends. I can’t think of the last time I watched analogue TV. For DAB to really take hold we all need DAB everywhere and that will take a long time. And that’s a problem for radio even before we start the argument about how crap the actual DAB technology is!

So, can we blame GCap for this? Well, yes and no. In business if it’s not maxmising your profits it goes, whether you’re tescos, a media giant or the corner shop. But this is about developing a platform and yes, it is taking longer than some thought to make the kinds of dividends the city would hope for. DAB also faces unexpected challenges, with almost 2% is listening online. In Q4 RAJAR also report that 8.1 million people listen to radio online (live and listen again) EVERY week. Radio is in more places and whilst RAJAR says that this has a positive impact on radio generally it doesn’t do much for poor old DAB… and could still be replaced by the better DAB+ being use elsewhere in Europe or the much lauded DRM. So getting out now and focusing on the tried and tested and new, cheaper online platforms make economic sense.

There always a promise of ‘Jam tomorrow’ with DAB, the money WILL come when the audiences and there… thing is they’re taking too long. It’s been a waiting game and one that clearly GCap is bored with.

It is always a shame when a radio station closes, the people who loved it will feel lost, angry and a bit detached. The problem is however bad, unprofitable a radio station is someone will still love it… a bit like a dog with a gammy leg and no teeth. It’s no use to anyone but someone loves it. The thing is, I know lots of people who like Planet Rock and some who probably love it. So, it’s shame to lose it. I never listened and maybe I should have done but in all honesty it would have made no difference, as this is about strategy and GCap deciding where it wanted to be and that wasn’t owning a huge chunk of digital real estate and 2 national radio stations – it has already closed Core and Capital Disney.

My only hope is that the one decent station they do run, Fun Radio a joint venture with Hit Entertainment WILL continue. I like it, my kids like and if that means they’ll grow up with radio then that’s a good sign for the future of the medium, DAB of no DAB

Thanks for reading

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Tags: GCAP, radio, DAB

Another day, another blog

OK, so I’ve had blogs before… tried Blogger (a few times) and almost kept it all up with myspace but having just installed Flock (again) I thought I should at least have a crack at using it properly and using all the tools. So, what am I trying to do here? Good question….

Well, I’ve called it ‘Radio Musings’ and it is, sort of, well a bit. I think what I want to do is somewhere (else) to reflect about radio but maybe as well to knock out some more theoretical ideas. It might help research (like I’ve time for that!!) but also my teaching and general anorockdom.

So, who knows what will happen but don’t place bets about me keeping this one up.

Rich
xx

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