Totnes Monster

If you haven’t read my blog before you should note that the views expressed here do not represent those of the BBC or, for that matter, those of Soundart Radio where I actually work.

Radio Presenter required:

Middle class background essential – Early 20′s desirable

In 1983 a young Chris Evans walked into Manchester Piccadilly Radio having followed his hero, Timmy Mallet back from a roadshow. To a kid with no dad and a mum working nights, Timmy was the coolest thing on radio. Timmy had a team of 13 kids answering calls and doing on-air gags. Evans was quickly given more leeway until eventually gaining his own late night show.

 

Chris Evans would never get a job in radio if he was 16 right now.

 

Danny Baker started his first show on BBC Radio London by ringing a school bell loudly and shouting at the top of his voice ‘There’s a new sheriff in town!’, the mic levels maxed out and all listeners at home could hear was distortion. Suffice to say, on his first day at the job, Danny Baker knew nothing about radio. He was hired because they thought he had potential.

 

Danny Baker, starting out today, would be unemployable. Indeed the axe is being sharpened at BBC Radio London, where, for the moment, he works. He has tweeted on the issue @prodnose

 

Commercial radio no longer sports inexperienced jocks during the evening and over-night. Under the proposed BBC Cuts, local BBC radio won’t either.

Cuts could mean a loss of local content either overnight or for most of the day.

 

There is another major factor at play: National radio hires talent damn near exclusively from Student Radio, I know of no recent exception. From this we can deduce that Community Radio has failed to realise Ofcom’s wish for it to be a breeding-ground for talent, and that radio management either a. Don’t listen to Community Radio, or b. Think we’re shite. So have we failed?

 

The trouble with the proposed radio budget cuts is the fact that they don’t save much money per listener, compared to, for example, the ‘Red’ button in the corner of the TV, which is, per-user, a mind-fuck-buggeringly stupid waste of money.

 

Chris (Evans and Moyles) and Danny Baker all learned their skill at night when they could have plenty of room for errors. They also have another thing in common, they were working class. The proposed cuts in local radio, coupled with the national radio tendency to hire from student radio, will mean only middle class kids from uni will make the leap from amateur to pro. And that leap just got longer.

So, who gives a damn if the radio business is hard to get in to?

The world admires UK radio. We are pretty damn good at it but in ten years time it’s going to be populated almost exclusively with young graduates. In ten years time the UK radio industry simply won’t be so vibrant. Don’t get me wrong, it’s already in decline and I reckon it needs a bloody good kick up the ass. Shit, maybe the proposed cuts are that kick. And just maybe Soundart Radio is that ass.

We at Soundart Radio are at the bleeding-edge of development, we are working towards a new kind of radio. It’s an uncomfortable place, for sure, but here’s something to chew on before you throw the dummy out of the pram:

No one else is doing what we do.

I’ll leave most of you with these thoughts from Elizabeth Mahoney of the Guardian

That’s where Soundart Radio, a community and arts radio station for Dartington and Totnes in Devon, is so cheering: its setting couldn’t be further from urban cool – you can often hear birdsong in the background – and yet its output is resolutely challenging.
I’ve been hooked for quite a while, relishing its oddness, its risk-taking – anyone can volunteer for the station – and its blend of the highly local and impressively far-reaching.

 

 

Warning! The rest of this post is for radio geeks and may bore casual readers silly. You may wish to post your comment below, before you get distracted.

A breakdown of typical FM listenership through the radio day, or, When do people listen to the radio, why it matters and how to make the most of it as a broadcaster.

FM radio listenership tends to have a baseline from which daytime emerges. This graph shows listenership spiking from 5:45 am onwards, as people wake up to their clock radio.

More and more of us listen to the radio as breakfast progresses. The audience peaks around 8:15 am, when Chris Moyles plugs his big guest. Then Mr and Mrs Average walk out the door and go to work. Daytime listeners are  fewer but more constant, they are at work and the radio is on. Kind of a captive audience.

The figures rise again as people leave work and drive home listening to the radio. By 7 pm this average listener will averagely be doing something else – watching TV, cooking etc. From 7 pm till 10 is time for people who make appointments to listen. People who know what they are tuning in for, comedy for example, or closer to home: Lost in the Dark, every Saturday Night.

From midnight onwards through the wee small hours there is a baseline listenership. They are loyal. From a stats point of view the ‘Early Breakfast’ shows, which usually finish around 6 am, are unique. They will enjoy a hugely loyal audience overnight and then, at the end of their shift, they will enjoy a huge audience as the clock approaches 6am. This is a lesson in radio discipline as the presenter must stay focused and not alienate the core audience whilst jacking it up a little at the end of the show.

 

Chris Moyles starts his show, often with a full half hour of chat with his posse. They all get into gear in time for peak listenership, on the way plugging content to encourage you to listen in as your setting changes. So he tempts you at the breakfast table to listen when you get in the car. He tells you why, when you get to work, you simply must tune in again. I recently heard him entice children to get their teachers to call in just after 9 am. He pulled this trick at 8:50 am, plugging all-the-way to this announcement how cool your teacher is going to be.

 

What will the new BBC Local schedule look like and does it matter?

The missing local content would be replaced by either regional, i.e. Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and the Channel Islands carrying the same content, or, all local stations carrying national content on these off-peak hours. In both cases 5 Live will be aired in the early hours.

The lay-listener will notice an improvement in quality as off-peak programming will feature well resourced content delivered by regional and national class broadcasters. In ten years time though people will wonder when radio fell apart – why is it you don’t get those really skilled broadcasters like we grew up with? In the words of Richard Horsman who trains radio journalists ‘the BBC should take care not to kill the grassroots opportunities for getting into the industry. Without local radio news shifts, offpeak specialist programmes, regional current affairs, and the rest – the whole, delicate, organic system for growing future talent will wither and die’.

He’s talking about news talent but I reckon he’s on the money all round the studio. I wouldn’t say the future of radio brightened recently but Soundart has a least a supply of candles. We are perhaps alone in shaping radio future and now is not the time to lose our nerve. I’ll say it again. No one is doing what we do.

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