Totnes Monster

If you ever get invited to a Focus Panel do go along. You’ll join 9 other people getting semi drunk at someone elses expence.

For possibly the first time in your life you’ll be told ‘your opinion counts’ and it will be true.

They might even feed you.

 

You will, however, be in a spookily matched peer group (the target audience of the studied product) and the mirror on the wall, don’t fool yourself, will be two-way. Brands do this, they casualise the environment (usually with wine) and ask you silly questions. Such as ‘If this radio station were at a party, what would they act like?’

 

Soundart Radio, in this setting, would be described as a skinhead with studs and facial tattoos, fretting over the last row on his hand knitted skirt. This row of stitches is particularly tricky, he’d say, because the needles are way too small. Interesting, yet slightly scary.

It’s a great party, they suggest, everyone’s here, What’s Palm 105.5 up to? And you’ll say Palm is leaning on the bar, sun-tanned, telling a pair of locals how her husbands company built a conservatory on a hill so steep you could barely get a digger up there. The planners said it couldn’t be done but Palm’s boys did it. Beautiful too, lovely view.

Heart‘s a novice ride and always draws a crowd of listeners. She cackles at a little Lambrini spill and rubs her red skirt with a paper napkin. Sure, she’s attractive (especially now you’re on the wrong side of tipsy) but you know somebody, somewhere, hates her droning on about the school run – and she’s the one with the bloody X5 (for the people I work with at Soundart Radio that means ‘a big car’).

We invited Jack from Bristol but he’s cool and doesn’t turn up. Hell he doesn’t even go to work outside of breakfast. Even drive-time is missing; The weekdays second-highest peak show they didn’t even try. Over the course of a day a listenership graph looks like a cub scout tent – with breakfast and drive as the poles. Jack only do Breakfast, the tallest peak of the two. On Saturdays they do sport. But only if the local team are playing, on Sundays a few interviews. For its first few years Jack Bristol employed just two presenters – a number they’ve since increased by 50%.

Sundays are a potential weekly peak. Although Sunday listenership is fickle and might just go to the beach instead. Some stations just lunch it out altogether (no pun). Others go for it and some weeks will be rewarded with ears. But no one does local overnight any more, too few people listening, and why take a risk that some upstart will lose you your licence? Why pay someone who could gain you little but could ruin everything?

Back to our imaginary party, I’ve another question for you: What behaviour do all the radio stations have in common? -Answer: None of them swear. Further, they don’t talk explicitly about sex (you’ve never heard a sex scene on radio) and they don’t do violence. Unlike TV where these titillations can be had from 9pm.

Why is this? Simple answer is the Watershed. On TV after 9pm it is deemed that children and the sensitive will be tucked up in bed and so the adults can indulge in something a little more graphic and challenging. On radio there is no watershed, bad language never has an excuse. This particular bit of broadcasting law was written before the internet. Children might have taken a radio to bed but they couldn’t carry a TV.

The internet is so portable it can be taken anywhere, making censorship of the airwaves an unnessessary nod in the direction of the past. Every kid’s got a web capable mobile phone so why restrain a creative industry such as radio?

Industry insiders now recruit fresh talent almost exclusively from student radio. The old route of the Graveyard shift at a local commercial station has long been closed. Hell, past 7pm and most radio stations simply plug in an ipod and go home (at Jack FM read 10:30am in the previous sentence). It’s simpler and cheaper that way. At the time of writing the BBC is seriously considering cutting all local radio outside of breakfast and drive time. Goodbye Judi Spiers? – Please No.  In ten years time all presenters could be college graduates but radio might lack a little heart and soul. Shouldn’t there be room for a bit of rough?

A watershed would give the UK radio industry a new lease of life, at a time when it needs it most. After 9pm we could be enjoying more on-the-edge comedy, drama and, I can hear it now – The Noise of Sex, a six part series. Perhaps an outside broadcast from the centre of Torquay 2am on a Sunday morning, swearing an’ all – Police, Recorder, Action!

Not only would we hear things never before broadcast on radio but the industry as a whole could slowly unfold its wings, as an adult. New talent could tread closer to the edge without risking the FM licence and a whole miriad of creative opportunities would open up. We might even see an upturn in evening listening.

When Palm FM won the 105.5 frequency in 2005 they won by a hairs breadth. I’ve paraphrased Ofcoms words a little: They won with a fifteen minute news bulletin at midday and a news roundup for drivetime. Half an hour of audio won these guys a business. 30 minutes Monday to Friday. That’s the thing that separated them from 4 other contenders. Who each lost 10 grand and months and months of prep.

If we have a watershed on British radio the next round of licensing will see some challenging applications – at a time when this industry needs a bit of the difference. British radio has always been distiguished – lets lead globally and do this thing.

Next time you find yourself on the innocent side of a two-way mirror, take a little more Dutch courage and be sure to slur the words ‘I want her to talk dirty to me’.

You might be interested to know my views on why Community radio shouldn’t be awful and why Soundart Radio isn’t, despite all the odds.

 

 

 

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