LBC is now Leading Britain's Conversation

LBC goes from local to national

LBC radio goes national.  From 11^th February LBC will start broadcasting nationally on DAB, using the D1 channel recently vacated by Jazz FM.  After forty years the late Sir Christopher Chataway’s dream of having national commercial news talk radio has been realised, sadly just a week after his death.

LBC had been available on a number of regional DAB services and that service was removed in 2012, prompting social media anger among the UK listeners that had been enjoying the service:

“I heard the terrible news that just a few days ago LBC has been pulled from several parts of the UK on DAB.

My parents who are avid listeners to LBC, listened daily in fact every room within their house had a DAB radio that was tuned only to LBC.

Every station on FM and DAB is either music or sports oriented; in fact 70% of the stations in Lincolnshire is aimed towards the older listener. I've been reading through several website forums, which are filled with angry, upset and confused LBC listeners across towns and cities up North with utter disbelief.

Twitter and Facebook have again many comments and questions aimed asking why LBC has gone, yet they haven't even had the balls to reply with the fact LBC will not be coming back”  -

Orangeandlemon – Digital Spy

Well at least one listener and his family will be pleased at the news that LBC goes national on DAB.

#iTunes #Radio

about to launch in the UK? Some iPhone users in the UK report that it is turning up on their phones - but this could be just a 'glitch' according to MacWorld.  This is what they say: "iTunes Radio is a new service by Apple that allows you to play any song in the iTunes library. When will iTunes Radio launch in the UK is a question a lot of our readers have been asking, after all our US friends have had iTunes Radio for a while now.

Many Macworld readers have reported that iTunes Radio mysteriously started appearing in the UK in recent weeks. It seems that some users in the UK get iTunes Radio. This has led to much speculation that Apple is due to launch iTunes Radio in the UK.

Social Vandals

@archiveatBBC most of us are aware that during the late sixties and seventies the BBC television archive ran out of shelf space.  Rather than build more shelves they decided to perpetrate the most appalling cultural vandalism and destroyed or wiped many shows that would deprive historians and the public for the rest of human time.

I have my own story about the LBC and IRN archive - a new owner at LBC decided that we had run out of shelf space and that the archive was to be pruned down to just a handful of 'important' recordings. (Familiar story hey?) I along with Chris Lowrie (still at LBC)  and Derek Cole (Now at Sky) were given the task to fill a very large builders skip with archive tapes.

The three of us decided that this would be cultural vandalism.  Derek went hunting around the building and we filled the skip with all manner of junk - old sound mixers even a broken dishwasher from one of the kitchens.  Then we layered a thin cover of tapes on the top - to make it seem we had emptied out most of the archive.

Then came the tricky bit making the archive room look less full of tapes.  Well by shoving a lot of tapes closely together and sliding reels on top and by farming off the whole of the LBC show 'Cinema Screen' to its former presenter - Carol Allen - we managed to pull it off.

Writing this I can still see in my mind Carol Allen's old estate car driving away from the underground car park so weighed down that there were sparks coming from underneath as it caught the concrete floor.

Fast forward to another time and place and our precious archive was now stored at Kings Cross - a bid for lottery funding had been put in to have the whole of LBC/IRN recordings from 1973-1997 digitally archived.  The bid was successful and Bournemouth University took on the mammoth task of cataloging all the tapes.

A few weeks ago I was teaching a student who had a masters in Journalism - I asked what their dissertation was about? "Oh comparing the BBC radio and Commercial radio coverage of the miners strike during Mrs Thatchers time as Prime Minister, did you know there's a fantastic audio archive of commercial radio on the University Library system?

As a footnote 'Cinema Screen' and all its tapes that had been sitting in Carol Allen's garage were lovingly collected by the British Library and now reside in their archive.

R2 D2 #DAB #RADIO

A second national commercial radio DAB multiplex is expected to be announced on Monday. The question of who will be the gatekeeper of such a service and more importantly what the content of a national Multiplex might contain should give the radio industry and OFCOM much to think about.  

As usual 'John Myers' has written an insightful blog about the subject: 

"A strange week in Myers land. I was asked if I’d like to join a consortium to apply for the anticipated new national DAB licence called D2, although I’ve not seen anything official from OFCOM just yet. To be honest, when asked, I had to ponder for a moment. So much has happened since the licence was first awarded to Channel 4 in 2007…"  Read the whole blog CLICK HERE 

Meanwhile (A word I hate with a vengeance and really not needed in the middle of a radio news bulletin lol) 'Radio Today' have been speaking to Arqiva who run the current MUX and favour a low-cost smaller national commercial network (not sure what that is?) 

"We’ve heard speculation that radio groups and non-radio organisations will be bidding for the chance to control the overdue digital platform, although one company already has the network to expand upon. But would an Arqiva-owned D2 be allowed in this monopoly-aware industry…? Read the whole story CLICK HERE

Whilst today the government will be clarifying the plan to switch off FM Radio (are they mad? .. no need to answer that btw) and we also see next year the new local TV stations going to air on Freeview, including London live with a budget of £15 million and is backed by the London Evening Standard, so 2014 looks an interesting year for broadening listener and viewer choice in the UK.

It's in The #MixRadio

@nokia_UK have launched a music service with over 26 million songs available to stream for FREE.  Using a TiVo type thumbs up and down you can personalise the music you listen to.  There are also a bunch of playlists created by the likes of Nile 'Get Lucky' Rogers you can listen to.

So is this another nail in the coffin of traditional music radio?  Well I have just spent 11 very sunny warm days in the Canaries enjoying Telefonica's idea of broadband and 3G - I had enough trouble reading my email - so streaming even on WiFi was pretty much a no-go, without traditional FM broadcast radio my holiday would have been radio free.

BUT with the push for 4G that mobile operators are selling as a network that can stream - services like Nokia's MixRadio are surely going to take a slice of the market away from traditional radio?

Shout Out

Yesterday I talked to a real #radio #listener about #LBC973.  It was another day of @Greateranglia delays and my fellow commuters started to talk to each other as we waited 20 mins for a train to arrive. The guy who always stands next to my for the last two-years asked what I did? When I told him, he said I love the radio, I listen more than I watch TV.

When I said I had been working for LBC 97.3 the last couple of weeks he replied much as he loved the format he "didn't want people shouting him at the breakfast table in the morning."  At first I thought he was picking on the big man - Nick Ferrari, but what he actually meant were the shout with too many words commercials that still populate the radio airwaves here in the UK.

I have just read a very good book by Tony (Radio Operators) Hertz "The 7 Secrets of Creative Radio Advertising."  He agrees with me that shouting radio ads with too much copy squeezed in to 30 seconds never worked and as each day passes sound out of tune with the way we consume advertising now.

So how pleasing it was to hear The Lloyds Bank commercial this morning, no shouting just a narrative about a man who started a winery in Kent, that was followed by equally natural and understated ad for Waitrose unfortunately on the heels of Waitrose was a commercial for a secretarial service with a woman screaming the many and complex benefits - edited so there was not a single breath in her delivery.  The industry is getting better at making commercials but we are not quite there yet.

#Adobe #Hacked

Well done after forcing us all into the cloud to keep up-to-date with the professional software that us media people have to use from Adobe -  3 million encrypted credit card details, all passwords and possible un-encrypted credit card details have been nicked - as we say here in England.

I had my reservations about the Adobe Cloud, its been unstable on my iMac and has crashed a number of times, always when I had tight client deadlines. So I am now actively looking for something that will make quick radio production, produce HD video do some photo-editing - I can find an alternative to Prem Pro in Final Cut but have yet to find a better (quicker) software package to replace Audition.

If you are reading this and have some ideas, do let me know. Off to check my business account for 'unusual activity' as Adobe call it.

Bum Deal

How to do charitable appeals on the radio.  Bob Monkhouse died of @ProstateUK Cancer in 2003. I was asked to help create the radio version of Bob's very clever posthumous appeal for funds for Prostate Research Foundation - Some of the audio was pucker Bob and some was a very good vocal impressionist.

I had the pleasure to work with Bob's wife - Jacqui who thought humour would be a very good way to broach the delicate subject of prostate cancer - something that 40,000 UK men get diagnosed with every year.

The appeal worked very well and gave us an accessible platform to discuss the subject.  Despite getting a good response there were some calls to the radio station saying they didn't want to hear about middle age men and their bums.  When I replied that we openly talk about breast cancer you would usually get the answer that talking about breast cancer was OK.

In 1969 my grandmother died of breast cancer.  She was ashamed when she found a lump in her breast and did not want to 'bother' the Doctor.  When the lump was finally diagnosed as cancer it was too late and my Nan died.

Now it's OK to talk about breast cancer - and thousands of women's lives have been saved by a change in attitude .  I hope we can soon say the same of men who have prostate cancer.

FREE AUDITION

Adobe are giving away Audition 3.0 for free! The software is used by many radio and broadcast professionals because  it is stable, flexible and intuitive If you want to save over £300 on the cost of buying the latest version - or you want to 'upgrade' to an official and legit version of the software - download Adobe Audition and a serial number here.

This version of Adobe Audition 3.0 works perfectly well under most Windows operating systems, including Windows 7.

Official Adobe Statement

Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.

Thanks to Francis Currie Consulting for this post.

The Tuning Scales of Justice

A Colorado woman was charged with two felonies after allegedly calling into a local radio station and bragging about how she posed as mentally unstable to get excused from jury duty Read more:

Eye eye eye like you very much

New iPad was born yesterday a sexy slim thing with an eye for a great display. BUT the real reason that the iPad and iPhone are such a runaway success is CONTENT Get your content right and you can be king of the castle.  The Apple App store has had over 25 billion downloads. Apps are great and downright sexy I mean who doesn't love shooting angry birds at little green piggies?

The radio industry should adopt the Apple mantra for success.  Get the content right and you attract an audience and, if you are a commercial operation, - you make money.  I know some really great programmers who know just the right buttons to push to get an audience but have  regrettably also experienced programme directors who have pandered to the owners or managing directors little peccadillo's and put programming or played music that the bosses liked, knowing full well that it didn't make the station better or encourage audience growth.

Silly Plugger

Why Chris Evans is a brilliant little plugger.  Listening to Radio 2 this morning I caught Chris Evans teasing in detail the whole raft of specialist shows that BBC Radio 2 have on in the evening.  Which he described as a 'music school' for those who love all kinds of music.  He then played a song he had heard the previous night on one of the specialist shows, whilst cooking his dinner. 

It's so important to get listeners to extend their hours of listening it helps the Rajar and the revenue for commercial stations.  I just wish more talent followed Chris' example and skill at being the best plugger in town.

Something Sensible from the BBC!

"Radio is an art form and the best practitioners have a knack of understanding their remit on pure emotion and gut feel. Research can help but the best in the world only use this as a guide, it is never their slave." The Myers Report  Oh how I wish some PD's would have the guts to believe in this statement.

R.I. and P Please Bob

Bob Holness it was a pleasure to work with you.  I worked with Bob on 'AM' the LBC Breakfast Show which made the management at the BBC sit up and listen and discover that commercial radio could offer a credible alternative to Radio 4 in the morning.  I think it was both Bob and Douglas Cameron's meticulous way they worked - that gave me an insight on how a show should be presented.

One of the things that amused me with Bob is he would polish the studio - every morning about 30 mins before the show he would come in with a duster and Pledge the studio - lay out his scripts, set up his own personal yellow Sennheiser headphones and then Douglas would arrive and also set all his scripts up. Together they created a comfortable and creative space with which to do their show.

A true professional that was brave enough to return to LBC to celebrate 30 years of the radio station, despite the fact he had suffered a stroke he and Doug presented the Breakfast Show on LBC News that day in 2003 with style and panache,  Bob Holness 12th November 1928 - 6th January 2012 RIP

For local people only

BBC Local Radio to be hit hard by cost-cutting says the Guardian this week it would appear on the face of it that your local radio station will end up being anything but local.  But scratch the surface of this story and you will find parallels with commercial radio and the way that the larger groups are evolving network shows with local content.

So what makes local programming?  Is it that the DJ happens to be sitting round the corner from where you live, as they are in my case with BBC Essex (Why is there a golden transmitter mast in their front garden by the way?)  Or is it the news shows and information like travel news etc that make it truly local.

If it is the latter and I believe to a an extent this is true then technology can allow complex local programming to be created with a networked framework.  Very much the way Capital and Heart create their local identity within a networked show.

I have to say I'm not a fan of BBC Essex it is a very moribund sounding station the only question is will the DJ's expire before some of the very elderly callers do? Some more better crafted and compelling local content dropped into a network show sounds more appealing to me and would cut cost at the cost of course of jobs which is a whole different argument.

I have to say that my BBC local radio station costs more than some national commercial stations, they inhabit a large and comfortable looking building in a predominately, now, residential area and when I pass them on a Sunday afternoon a car park full of staff - I do sometimes wonder what they all could be doing as I can't hear the resources reflected in most of the weekend output?

Somewhere Special

Happy Birthday Essex Radio 30 years ago today I was just 20 years old and a week later  I started my career with them, catching a bus to Southend (I couldn't afford the train) I remember walking through the park to the bus station and I was so nervous I was actually sick in the bushes. 

Arriving at the radio station to work on the sports show I was met by Helen Rollason and newsreader Nicole Pullman then Roger Buxton the Sports Editor and Timbo the presenter. We were all in the same boat none of us had much experience of professional radio except Nicole who had worked for BRMB I think though that commonality drew us together and this was my first experience of working with a team. (And a brilliant team at that)

Essex Radio during those heady 1980s had an audience share of 55% and played a mix of older and chart records, how appropriate that the format that Heart Essex now plays is pretty much the 21st century version of our original format.

Happy birthday Essex Radio

Who?

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.  So said Oscar Wilde.  LBC Radio pulled of a bit of a coup this week in allowing Jacqui Smith former Home Secretary to stand-in for James O'Brien. The station has made the front pages of the national press and a quick search on Google news shows at least 227 articles about her and mentioning the name of the radio station.

To buy that kind of publicity would have cost thousands of pounds. But is it the kind of publicity the radio station wants?  It was supposed to be Phineas T Barnum the 19th century American showman who said: "There's no such thing as bad publicity."  and he is right.  Sometimes taking a risk, hiring a controversial host can raise the profile of both the host and the radio station.  

Recently working with a US Talk Show host has shown me the importance of getting the attention of the press in improving the awareness of the brand.  But don't be tempted to try and generate publicity for publicity's sake.  Most of us (journos included) see through those disingenuous marketing ploys.  

Face the music

The most powerful media owner faces a Commons media committee and it will be a compelling watch this afternoon.  My old boss Stuart Purvis was on SKY news this morning  Stuart is Professor of TV at City University where, once a year I guest edit a sequence of their live radio shows.  During the interview Eamonn Holmes asked an interesting question:

'How do you teach the students about the real world of journalism?' For instance that you might be offered a 'bung' in exchange for a story cover-up or your boss might encourage you to get in with the celeb crowd with an expense account that allows you to buy Class A drugs for them?

Purvis replied that at City they try and give the students real life scenario's and teach them how to cope with the situation.  I can vouch for this, as guest Editor on the radio station you are told to pull no punches and treat the students as you would colleagues in the real world, I hasten to add that I reminded them that this was still an exercise whilst criticising a short run show that just used some fill-copy to the end of the sequence, a film review that gave too much away and during my editorial meeting someone who was eating a sandwich whilst staring at the TV.  I told them in a real editorial meeting if you had done that in front of your Editor he would have thrown you out of the meeting, the poor kid looked shocked. 

But you can only teach so much and in an environment where sharp practice is the norm it's hard to stick up for ethical practice when nobody around you has any ethics in the first place.

Let's be Frank

Frank Bough I Took Drugs with Vice Girls - that was the headline in the News of the World that undid Frank Bough's cosy TV career and brought him to the door of LBC, where we welcomed him as he was an affable kinda guy and a bloody good broadcaster.

I have to say one afternoon we were having a cosy chat and he said something that has stuck in my mind all these years. He said: "You know it was The News of the World that ruined my career." I couldn't help thinking that it was probably the vice girls and class A drugs that did more damage and of course getting caught doing it. 

There are always hidden costs when you run those kinds of grubby tabloid stories, the cost to the wife or in another case of a friend of a friend the cost to his career when his wife was jack booting it up with a well known racing boss. It cost him his career and he played a very important role in the security service so he was a very great loss to the country.  I somehow think the loss of The News of the World will not upset the likes of Frank Bough, but don't get too complacent before The News of The Screws is cold in the grave the brand spanking new Sunday Sun will wing our way ...read all about it!

Round like a circle

Google + is a new social network from the Big G, hey didn't they have 'Buzz' for that?  Google are obsessed with circles, they think that your family and your friends should never meet or be able to interact.  So they have created a 'new' social network that will compartmentalise your followers and contacts.

If anything it is an indication that even mighty Google can't ignore The Social Network. The network that will eventually connect the world.  And everyone that can afford the internet will be talking to each other, what a ghastly thought. It also gives credibility to the importance of social networking in the 'back' channels of mainstream media.  Radio and TV shows should have social media connections that are as well-produced as the shows they represent.

They should run contemporaneously (bad radio word) with the show, look and feel the same as the show and most importantly say the same things as the show.  So many of the social media and internet sites for Radio and TV look like cheap bolt ons looked after by the intern and that's frankly not good enough.  Why the picture of a windmill? Go on you work it out?