You used to be able to listen to the radio and not have to do anything else. Now it's text this, vote that, call now, go to the website bla bla bla. My mum could ask "what is your favourite sweet" and get 500 texts and she could read them out, but who would want to hear that?  Just entertaining people is nice sometimes without all the "interaction"

I asked on Twitter and Facebook for the flaws of failing Programme directors. This turned into a list of over 100 items. One PD even shared what he thought his issues were! It's been sifted and edited to make the following Top 20:

1. Not communicating effectively with key station staff, especially the on-air team and sales team
2. Not understanding audience figures
3. Not reading what other, more successful programme makers are up to
4. Never learning from mistakes
5. Not planning ahead for special events
6. Expecting presenters to do what you want - without telling them!
7. never hotlining folks to praise good work
8. Failing to identify a USP for your own brand
9. Not understanding employment law and practices in your territory
10. Demonstrating that leading from the front means first to get your coat
11. Neither fully understanding your station’s technology - nor having someone on hand who does
12. Not knowing what extra skills your teams bring to the party
13. Not caring much about news - and believing your audience feels the same way!
14. Failing to organise deps/ cover
15. Actually beleiving that their experience and job-title means they know all the answers
16. Doing what you’ve always done, because that what worked in the past
17. Never kicking back and listening to their own station
18. Not listening to totally different formats/ markets for a clearer perspective and fresh inspiration
19. Only criticising mistakes - never praising excellence
20. Being more interested in the next gig than the current one

Coming soon, the best practices of successful programmers - let me know what you'd suggest!  

I'm a big fan of social media. We're probably already connected on Facebook, twitter and half a dozen other platforms. (I'm on Linkedin, but don't really 'get' it!). So it goes without saying that I use Facebook on air at Central FM in Falkirk. Primarily it's a way to personalise our content for the audience that chooses to be connected to us. I can throw in questions and comments - or use Facebook to set up content and phoners for later use. Often these are just the same items that we would have done in other ways before, but I love that way that when prompted listeners are prepared to offer up great content and ideas. It really works well for me and some others with listener generated content driving the direction of my programmes - often to places I hadn't even thought of! I really can't be bothered with the programme makers that don't treat this new medium as more than a place to put adverts and plugs. This demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how people use social media and what it's for. You see these guys simply plugging benchmark features or directing people to the station website in just the same way every single day. It's the equivalent of the adverts that appear to the right of the content. My take on this approach is that a listener wouldn't want to socialise with a person that can only say "look at me! I'm doing this!". These folks run out of mates very quickly. They're turning a valuable creative outlet into a mere piece of junk mail. The ones that say "what do you think about?" or "tell me something" actually engage with their "friends" and therefore have a stronger relationship with their listeners. So here's a scenario. I ran a "What Amy Winehouse track should I play?" thread the other day. Replies split down the middle, with the extremes being total loathing of the woman and suggesting tracks that showcased her talent. I did moderate the two posts that featured bad language, but was really happy that both sides of the story were expressed by listeners and that we had over 20 users engaging with each other. But music radio, which used to have a view that you should only ever be positive about everything, is still coming to terms with openness. So the post mysteriously vanished, probably because each reply wasn't bowled over with delight that I intended to play an Amy Winehouse track. Has the time come for us to engage with our listeners in a meaningful way  - and allow them to disagree with the host and each other? I hope so. Otherwise the listeners will find us out and seek real human company that offers a genuine relationship rather than stick with the digital version of Smashy & Nicey online. And without a meaningful relationship with our users, our future growth is limited.

A long time ago, in what seemed a land far far away, I programmed and managed radio stations for a living. When the quarterly audience figures came along I was always sick with worry about what they would bring. This was quickly followed by the presenters, who worried about their small part of the station. When things weren't looking so good, the standard thought was that the lead-in from the previous DJ wasn't what they'd want it to be. This neatly avoided the point that their job was to take the audience at the start of the show and keep it listening - better still grow it. But I digress. Since the launch of BBC Radio Five Live, I've been glued to them. This has begun to dissipate while it's moved away from news, but their 5am hour is an object lesson in delivering news. There's a very tight format for 'Morning Reports' and 'Wake Up To Money'  which gets the listener fully prepared for the day ahead. WUTM even brings in some excellent personalities and a panel of experts who expound on the financial news of the day. I used to listen to it on BBC Radio Scotland FM. Good Morning Scotland, which followed, had (at best) 90 seconds to grab me before I punched the AM preset and went over to Five Live. Invariably, I was gone before then. The advent of the Morning Briefing, with a super-slick and upbeat delivery has made me listen to what we used to call the 'National Network'. And now I find myself listening to 'Good Morning Scotland', which follows it. I only worked out why this is today. The Five Live programmes fed me the UK agenda - making the Scottish news sound somehow smaller. 'Morning Briefing' sets the world in a Scottish context, without concentrating on twee local stories. When GMS comes along my expectations have been managed and I'm into the Scottish agenda. I would say that I've become a core listener over the past few weeks. It's all because of the lead-in. A home-produced lead-in, done well, has turned me into a Radio Scotland listener. So I was wrong for all those years. The lead-in does matter as it sets expectations and the agenda. But programmes that follow beware - you're the lead-in for the next programme.

I'm 48. That means that in my teens I had the choice for staying with pop music, joining many of my school friends in an adoration of rock, or embracing the two new kinds of music that were sweeping the world - Punk and 'Disco'. I went down the road of Earth, Wind & Fire, Chic, Rose Royce and other. I found out all about music from my radio, which was mostly tuned to Radio Forth and Radio Clyde, with a smattering of Radio 1 and Luxembourg. This is when I got into radio too. The music attracted me, but so did the personalities. Needletime restrictions meant they had to talk, to entertain and to inform. Sometimes this was just nonsense, but over time personalities developed. As a listener, the best 'jocks' entertained with their passion and energy, not just the funny lines they threw into their links. And then the music - always the music. The art was - and is - in combining these elements to build a station that serves the needs of it's audience. I'm probably no more mature than I was back then. I'm older, but still want the same things from my radio I wanted then. I would say I have more disposable income than I had in my teens and twenties and even greater aspirations. Yet when I turn on radio stations that are designed for me, I'm left cold. Many of the presenters I grew up with are doing inoffensive cardigan-and-slippers radio, being careful not to talk over the music or play anything too loud. Yet at an important time in my life radio was high energy and the music of the punk era wasn't exactly quiet. I'm not dead yet and have no plans to be dead any time soon. And I watch The Sopranos and Underbelly on TV - hardly inoffensive. Neither is my regular fix of Viz. One radio group's AM stations do an excellent job of giving me a broad mix of music, but they miss the biggest current hits that I still enjoy, and some of the deeper catalogue stuff. Anyway, it's hard to enjoy the music when it's on medium wave. (I don't have DAB everywhere I go!) I think the radio industry is missing a trick. Stations for 35+ listeners should capture the energy and enthusiasms on their listeners. Jump on Facebook and look at the profiles of 'real people' from that generation. Check out what they're actually listening to. Don't, whatever you do, get a target group of "in-demo" listeners to tell you what they like. Actually research the market gaps. You'll be surprised. Some of them even embrace technology, rock'n'roll lifestyle and fun. They also don't smell of wee and very sweet perfume. In New York, WCBS is one of the biggest stations on the dial. It's an oldies format, delivered with energy and passion by heritage (older!) broadcasters. The music's a wee bit old for me and the presentation is a bit cheesy for today's teens, but it works and makes a profit. This in an interesting counterpoint to a UK industry which is ever more obsessed with driving younger and more female, despite the fact that that demographic is under more economic pressure than many others. I might just be time a proper, unashamed, big-sounding FM oldies station came to Scotland. One with a broad playlist and personality presenters. The talent's certainly out there, all it needs is a patient radio operator who wants to make great radio. And a profit!  

There's a reason I'm really proud of the first Drum podcast - and it's not the one you think. Andy Smillie is a former Reid Kerr student of mine who now studies at UWS. Nevertheless, he's stayed in touch with us and I was delighted to be asked to be asked to host thepodcast he's producing for The Drum. As an inaugural episode it has the odd rough edge, but I feel they'll be ironed out and we might even be onto something. Credit where it's due - he did all the hard work and I just turned up on the day! If you have some spare time, please download and/ or listen to it here and let us know what you think.

It was always going to be brave of Tim Davie, BBC's Head of Audio and Music to invite somebody from outside the BBC to look at how the big two music networks - and their digital siblings - are run. It was a braver move still to move away from the usual consultancy companies and bring in somebody from "the other side" to do the digging. John Myers did just that. There have been numerous posts from others around the subject, one of the better ones from Paul Easton. Most have majored on 'over staffing', duplication and the fact that continuity announcers don't read the news. I have a lot of sympathy for these thoughts, but they strike me as being more than likely to fall on deaf ears. Here's why. BBC lifers consider economics, but they regard 'quality' as being at the heart of what they produce. They really do believe in higher standards of journalism, technical quality, management and so on than anywhere else. One BBC producer suggested to me that "ILR jocks" couldn't make it on their station because they didn't have enough to say other than throw-forward and talk-up. The larger programme teams allow them to research better and do a better job of selecting their music. In the news programmes, the bigger teams are their to ensure that their programmes stand out and present a better, more balanced view. They can also do more original, in depth journalism. But I believe that the more balanced view is one that consider's John's observations and then embraces them. For the odd voice to criticise the corporation's size would be fair enough, but one of our most cherished institutions has become entombed in management-speak and self preservation. When I worked there, cutbacks occurred. Regularly. They were always accompanied by howls that quality would suffer. Any reduction in staff - in particular specialist staff - would inevitably make the stations less excellent. The cuts came. Scotland's specialist sound engineers were reduced from over 60 to less than 10. Radio Scotland survived. Many years later, BBC network radio is smaller than it was and at the peak of it's powers. In-house, there is a tendency to dismiss the "under resourced" commercial stations as formulaic and bland. In some cases they are just that. But in most cases, they are achieving creative excellence with a fraction of the resource. When they need to something large they either borrow or buy what they need. To address the big number - 52 - it's 49 more journalists than the average IR music station has. These stations should certainly have more journalists, but if we increased the teams to 5 per site, it would still be only 10% of Radio One's news team. But on a bigger level, the BBC does need to look at reducing budgets and not mistaking money for quality. The best people should be well-paid, but the teams are often too big. Sadly the way the corporation has grown into competing departments has led to far too much duplication. It's horrible for the individuals involved, but I believe BBC network radio could save 20% without the listeners noticing a thing.  If staffing was rationalised. After all, it's one BBC and it belongs to all of us.

The central belt of Scotland is a tiny thing. It's about sixty miles wide, fifty miles north to south and home to the vast bulk of the Scottish population. With two major cities and fairly well developed transport infrastructure, a huge number of people clog the motorways and train carraiges as they commute to Glasgow or Edinburgh. This has made life difficult for local stations away from the cities, who see audiences vanish beyond the reach of their transmitters for a key part of the day. So how do these guys get the benefit of these audiences, who tune in for the morning news, weather, travel news and gossip? It strikes me that a fixed 'appointment' listen with the 'local' latest would attract online commuter-listeners. It wouldnt take much work and could update commuters on their journey home. It might even develop the habit of online listening. But what about making a sponsored drivetime podcast? Some station highlights from the day, top news and sports and a heads-up for commuters? All the content has been generated so it wouldn't be hard. I know the material might date, but it would be more relevant than the competition to the lives of your listeners. Oh, and it would stop them listening to your competitor when they start their journey home. Does anybody do this already? UPDATE: Over on twitter, Connor Walsh reckons this is a decent way of repurposing content and out-of-tsa listeners engaged. But he points out that most normal people can't download into iTunes and then sync at work. Streaming is possible, as is setting up an email list and sending the file to play as an mp3 on a smartphone. But are there other, better technologies?

A really interesting article from Radio Today that provides an interesting counterpoint to my earlier post about talk - especially the breaks between the songs - being the way to make it more successful and relevant. Jack FM started out in Canada and quickly took the US by storm. It appeared in the UK a few years ago and has done very well indeed - especially in Bristol as Stewart Clarkson'e fine article demonstrates. It gets on with playing the music, lots of it. The stations are really well designed and programmed. They also only have one live show! If we can have strongly branded music stations on the dial, we need local stations that aren't afraid to be part of their audience's lives. In fact we need all sorts of radio stations. I'm wondering: what formats would you add to your market? [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="180" caption="(image borrowed from radiotoday.co.uk)"] [/caption]

 

Dave Manderson did me the honour of using a few pics from this site and my Facebook page to illustrate his post about our recent trip to Windhoek, Namibia. The annoying thing is that his post is so much better written than mine! I wonder if he'll ever blog about his love for Jo'Burg Airport?