A couple of stories I read this week got me thinking.

Steve Penk owner of Oldham’s Revolution sacked one of his jocks over a row over Armistice day silence. This got a front page splash in the local rag.

Meanwhile on air and on the revolution’s website all reference to the departed DJ disappears overnight.

Meanwhile while browsing through the blogs I subscribe to I spotted this one, not only is one of Absolute Radio’s jocks leaving we are getting advanced notice.

I know this is not exactly the fairest of comparisons one being sacked the other just moving on (or coming to end of contract or whatever it may be) but taking it wider what do you do when someone moves on?

In this connected age there are a number of interesting things to consider.

In the old days it was a lot simpler. I recall in my more youthful days back in the summer of 1991 listening to an entertaining young jock on MFM by the name of Mike Toolan who announced he was leaving for a new job in Leeds. Nice and simple, the listeners were not going to suddenly tune in one night to find him missing and in the pre web streaming days the station was not going to loose any listeners with fans following him to an out of area station. The jocks who followed in his place, the likes of Elliot Webb and Gregg Burns were even able to make reference to their predecessor. I’m afraid twenty years on the exact chronology of the MFM line up escapes me – see my footnotes, but it worthy of note of that the above jocks, and others, spent formative years in local radio in Wrexham before moving onto to bigger things.

So what do we need to consider these days?

The average listener (not just the anoraks and industry bods) can not only very easily get info on where the DJ has gone on the web, they may well be actively interacting with the DJ on social media and can find out before they even tune into the radio station.

Therefore as a radio station you need to ensure the station is as big as the individual personalities. Why should the listener stay with you and not follow the jock to their new gig? Just pretending they never existed is putting all your faith in the strength of the station brand at the risk of alienating listeners by treating them with contempt.

How to handle succession is an interesting one. Every so often you’ll read the press coverage mulling over what will happen when Moyles eventually leaves the Radio One breakfast show. How many of his fans will be lost to Radio One? How many of those who interact with Radio One via social media will be lost. Similar experiences can be drawn of when Chris Tarrant left Capital, and how will they handle Johnny Vaughan leaving?

The same applies on a smaller stage. To take my 90s jock example and bring it up to date. Now Toolan is a major attraction as breakfast host on Key103. My unchecked reckoning sees Mike, in his two stints on Key breakfast as the longest serving breakfast host in Piccadilly / Key 103′s history. When he moves on will Key have to deal with things differently than MFM did?

Question one is the obvious question of what to do on-air, however the further, more interesting questions are to do with social media.

One thing that Key are arguably doing right is channelling social media through station and “Key103 Breakfast” accounts. However it’s fun to see that Facebook recommends ‘Capital FM’s’ page as similar to Key 103.

Say in our example that Toolan follows in his Key breakfast predecessor, Steve Penk and buys his own radio station, assuming it’s local to Manchester he could be promoted right on Key 103′s prime outlet for social interaction with their listeners. No simple answer to this one, but food for thought.

I must point out I’ve absolutely no information about his career plans, I’m using Toolan here as nothing more than an hypothetical example to illustrate the point by way of bringing us full circle to were we started with Steve Penk.

Footnotes
I’m recalling the MFM line up from memory and may have my evening and late shows mixed up.
I wrote the first draft of this article last Friday morning on my phone while commuting. It’s a shame I never completed it as this would have made this even more timely as later that day Capital Radio announced Johnny Vaughan had just done is last show, where from what I’ve read he didn’t acknowledge on air he was leaving. It also shows it is a small world as we hear that Gregg Burns is depping in the slot in the meantime.

So at what many people would deem to be “tea time” I embarked on what I thought would be a nice simple, and relatively swift job.

Your starter question, how many ‘Windows Updates’ would you expect to be pulled down onto a XP Pro laptop that hasn’t seen an internet connection since mid December 2010?

Your answer – 64!  (This will include MS Office updates as well as Windows) -  that is before the countless other updates in the way of Firefox, Flash Player,  Adobe Reader, Java and other countless sundry bits and pieces – though thankfully these are all automated.

Next uninstall some of the assorted junk that’s found itself onto the machine and I’m two hours down the line before I get to the main task in hand, loading the 500MB download of Quickbooks 2010 software. Quickbooks is a popular accounting software package.

Now my experience in the past is that Quickbooks is notoriously fickle. However on reading up on-line while I was waiting for the myriad of updates to load it seems that Intuit have finally come into the ‘real world’ of corporate computing and made Quickbooks run as a ‘limited user’ (I guess because they’ve got to do this to have vista/7  support were even an Admin user is not running ‘administrator’ rights all the time).

Good news after much loading time (including various .net frameworks, some Office 2003 integration tools and other various bits and bobs as well as Quickbooks itself) all seemed to work, bar the fact that the install was anything but ‘quick’. I’ll stand-by to eat my words about it “all working” once our finance guy has got his mits on the laptop.

So onto the other two points of my title for this post.

All this extended evening activity lead me to a couple of listening opportunities, the first was to a radio programme that I’d not normally tune into and found myself fascinated by an Iranian drama piece on the Persian Seda programme. I didn’t understand a word of it, but found myself drawn in by the drama of the different tones of voices. Although it was spoken word there is almost a musical quality to the delivery.

This is a great example of were radio works uniquely. I’d never think of downloading a Persian podcast or search out such content on a streaming audio service, but did discover something I enjoyed via the radio.

Once I’d concluded my software wrangling duties at what some may call “supper time” I could finally jump on the train and got out my Walkman (by such I don’t mean I’m retro and playing cassette tapes, rather it is my Sony ‘iPod clone’) and “discovered” – Burst of the Worst – which gave me some much needed light relief and a few chuckles. Now this was another nice discovery but in a different way. I’d made a deliberate decision to download these podcasts, most of which are somewhat different to this “Christmas tape” edition. An interesting thought for podcasters why not occasionally throw in something a little different. The listener can always just skip past it. Obviously in this case Jonathan Marks is podcasting archive radio programmes, so perhaps decades ago him and his team were doing just this on the radio.

Here’s an e-mail I recently sent to the Community Media Association’s mailing list you may find of interest:

Again my personal views….

On 23/04/2011 20:56, ROBERT TYLER wrote:

In any event, all of national advertising is sold based on RAJAR data,
in other words, no RAJAR no interest.

Just pondering – in the last RAJAR figures, ‘other listening’ counts for 6% reach.

This ‘other listening’ consists of:

Non RAJAR subscribing stations – i.e. many Digital only, Community, Student, Hospital and Pirate stations.
‘Out of area’ listening (i.e. if I ticked Liverpool’s ‘Radio City’ as a Manchester listener I’d be in ‘other listening’ as I’m outside their TSA).

Also RAJAR state that 25% of listening is via Digital Platforms.

Therefore you could argue that discounting 25% of the 6% of ‘other listening’ – leaves us with Community Radio having ‘the best part of’ a 4% audience reach.

Of course some Community Radio listening is via Internet – which is Digital in the RAJAR survey and there are many other non Community ‘other’ stations.

The biggest, of many, blows to the statistical validity of this 4% figure is that there is not universal enough coverage of Community Radio. We are all so different that if a respondent in Town A listens to a Community Radio station, we can’t justifiably assume that a similar demographic non surveyed listener in Town B listens to their local Community Radio station.

Even if you take a margin out of the ‘other listening’ for listeners to non Rajar, non Community Radio, a 2% reach brings us in line with the reach of BBC 6Music – but still this is pretty dodgy ground to claim with any validity. In any case in the commercial world there’s only Premier Christian Radio, Kissmat, Buzz Asia, Gold Devon and Yorkshire Radio at such low reach figures (the first three being niche broadcasters, the last digital only and we can only assume Oldies on AM is not a mass market attraction in Devon.)

So depending on how you spin it 2% may or may not be that ‘attractive’ a statistic.

However I believe the reach of Community Radio will be greater than this – but a significant audience will only tune in for one or two specific programmes.

The Rajar methodology will never work for this as the survey size is just many a factor (I’d argue at least hundreds times) too small to catch all these niche one or two hours a week listeners. BUT it is perfectly “statistically valid” to “gauge” the audience of large mainstream radio stations.

Anyway this is some food for thought – I’m sure some Rajar gurus might be able to pull apart some of this argument as I don’t claim to be any expert!

Phil.

As I’m not a big one for doing Twitter and such like I thought I’d share on this blog a few interesting little things that have crossed my path over the past week or so.

To be honest I’m not one for wadding through pages and pages of “social media comment” on the events over in Japan – reading the papers and the TV and Radio bulletins give a good over view. However one on the ground report I found was this one: Japan Earthquake – a full diary which I found from a pointer from John Myers blog.

Over on the CMA mailing list (the place were you often skip over e-mails from “Office -ccr fm”) I spotted that the guys at Canalside Community Radio have produced this Promo which they have offered freely to other Community Radio stations to play. If you do use it please contact the guys at Canalside Community Radio to let them know.

As part of my weekly Tuesday commute I normally listen to the Podcast of Talk Talk Radio, this weeks programme had some interesting chat about the events in Japan as well.

Finally I caught on TV yesterday morning this episode of BBC Click – looking at the use of the internet and technology in the quake. I hope the link I’ve given above is a world wide friendly link, rather than the UK geolocked iPlayer version.

There has been a lot of talk about the loss of more ‘heritage radio brands’ as Capital FM is rolled out quasi-nationally. Of course this will get the radio anoraks putting on their rose tinted glasses mourning the losses of all that was great before.

There has been plenty written about Global Radio’s master plan for the ‘Capital Network’ and lots of analysis from radio people who can and have written things much more enlightening than I can.

Today’s loss of the ‘Galaxy’ name in Manchester takes me back just over 13 years when there was concern over the loss of an equally respected at the time radio brand ‘Kiss 102′. Here’s a clip from a broadcast in Manchester in October 1997:

stormfm-oct-1997

The re-brand from Kiss to Galaxy came very quickly following board room manoeuvrings and the new owners being unable to licence use of the ‘Kiss’ name. There was much concern at the time over what this meant for the loss of some of the more notable Dance Music output on the station – given this was well prior to facebook campaigns there was not the opportunity for a major public outcry, only much smaller mumblings.

So how much of a loss to Manchester was loosing Kiss FM – here is a list of Radio Stations in the Manchester Area back in October 1997:

BBC National Network Radio’s 1-5
Classic FM
Local Radio:
BBC GMR (Or possibly still in it’s 1997 ‘GMR Talk’ incarnation) launched as Radio Manchester 10 September 1970
Piccadilly 1152 – launched 2 April 1974 as Piccadilly Radio, later Piccadilly Gold
Key 103 – launched 3 September 1988
Signal FM – launched 17 February 1990 as KFM, then became Signal Cheshire, dropping the ‘Cheshire’ tag in 1997 (Now Imagine FM)
Lite AM – launched on Sept 9 1996 (Previously est 31 May 1994 as Fortune 1458 , later became Big AM, Capital Gold and now Gold)
Kiss 102 – launched 16 October 94
Jazz FM – launched 25 July 94 (Now Smooth Radio)
Asian Sound Radio – launched 29 April 96
Wish FM – launched 19 April 1997

What’s interesting to see is the variety of stations in Manchester back then, I suspect only bettered in the capital.

It’s also interesting to note that other than BBC Radio One that Kiss 102 was the only outlet for Dance Music and certainly the only local outlet.

In the meantime we have the addition of many other radio stations in the Manchester Area:

Century 105.4 launched 4 Aug 98 (later became Real Radio)
Tower FM launched 14 Mar 99
96.2 The Revolution launched 16 Aug 99
Wythenshawe FM launched 22 Mar 02
AllFM launched 22 May 02
XFM 20 Feb 06
Oldham Community Radio launched 1 Mar 07
Salford City Radio launched 20 Sep 07
Tameside Radio launched 25 Sep 07
Rock Radio launched 8 Apr 08
Pure Radio launched 6 Nov 08
Bolton FM launched 27 May 09
North Manchester FM launched 12 Jun 09
Peace FM launched 27 Jul 09
Gaydio launched 8 Jun 10
Unity Radio launched 21 Jul 10

Again we can now comment about the wide variety of radio stations (possibly now not even beaten by the capital). There is also many more outlets for various specialist Dance Music programmes on the Community stations such as the established ALL FM and the cities latest addition Unity Radio.

Therefore if there was little outcry back in 1997 about the loss of Kiss 102 perhaps there is less reason for a public outcry over the loss of Galaxy 102. Of course for the pass year of so Galaxy has been migrating itself from ‘Dance and R’n'B’ to a ‘Hit Music Station’ so the people listening to Galaxy up to yesterday will probably be more mourning the loss of local identity than the loss of the Dance music. Which on a commercial front should be good for Key 103 if they push ‘Manchester’ and pick up some former Galaxy listeners.

It’s also potentially good for the Community stations if there is press coverage on the loss of ‘Galaxy 102 local radio’ then the Community stations should react with reminding the public that they are the real local service. They probably won’t pick up many ex-Galaxy listeners but might get a few new people trying out the station.

A few footnotes:
Sources of information on stations and launch dates:

Wikipedia
Some of the dates sourced from Ofcom will be Transmitter ‘switch on’ dates not necessarily the official station launch. Corrections welcomed.
I’ve only included stations based and audible in Manchester, not counted the several ‘out of area’ stations.
The embedded media player above doesn’t work in Firefox, as it’s an MP3 clip, it will either work in other browsers, or not display at all.
The audio was produced in 1997 so the Simpson’s sample might actually have still been cool.

No it’s not yet another new station from the nice people at Absolute Radio, rather this is a posting about a new software firmware update recently pushed to Pure’s ‘flow’ family of internet enabled radios, such as the one pictured above courtesy of James Cridland.

Earlier in the week I was listening to our Pure Siesta Flow, their rather niffty ‘alarm clock’ style Internet/DAB/FM combo.

As I came to switch off the internet channel I was listening to I saw it was asking if I wanted to update the software, so pressed ‘yes’ radio went quiet and I left it to do it’s business.

About fifteen minutes later I came back in the room and noticed that it had switched on again. Then a song or two later got a surprise ‘Absolute Radio’ ident -I assume that the radio had switched to the first station in the directory, rather than my previous station (I’ve not even got absolute in my presets/ favourites or whatever it’s called.)

Maybe I should I go off to set up “AAAAAAAAAARadio” internet radio service and get it listed in ‘The Lounge’ to grab all the unsuspecting listeners.

Of a more interesting note than firmware update unexpected issues, I’m assuming this update is to support Pure’s new music identification service, which once I’ve had a play I *may* get round to writing a blog post about my experiences.

Last year, our now Prime Minister, David Cameron made the legendary comment about Twitter. Admittedly on Absolute Radio not Radio 4 were he is pictured above* – but that’s not the point.

I was searching through twitter recently, looking up references to a particular radio station. I found a tweet from a presenter at the station, from their own personal twitter account, which if you didn’t know that the person was a presenter on Radio Smallsville you’d probably not know the connection.

That was until they tweeted that they had some “Professional publicity pictures for Radio Smallsville taken yesterday” which they were not impressed with (you got the feeling they are one of those people who hate having their picture taken.)

So having wetted my appetite I checked out their other tweets – the next one “went out and got completely wasted last night” (or something along them lines – it may have been worded a bit stronger than that.)

As far as I know this presenter has never promoted the fact that they are on twitter ‘on-air’ – nor made any pretence that their Twitter feed is officially endorsed by Radio Smallsville. But never the less to the end reader just finding the person they heard on the radio on twitter “could” by association of taking about the radio station and their behaviour outside the studio make the radio station be seen in a negative light. Of course it could just reinforce to the reader that the presenter is a real person just like them.

Adds another dimension to what a radio presenter should and shouldn’t be posting on-line in a personal capacity, and what station management should be requiring their presenters to do.

Now as you may have guessed the Radio Smallsville presenter in question is a volunteer – so raises even more interesting issues when it is not a contacted employee you are dealing with.

* I’ve used the photo of Mr C at the beeb as they have published this under a Creative Commons licence – thus I can use it here, were as I couldn’t find an Absolute Radio picture under similar terms.

Just one that amused me – PSquared’s music scheduling software, Autotrack, has an option to do a web lookup on a track’s details.

Above is what I got when I wanted to check the date of The Cult’s classic “She Sells Sanctuary”.