Gary Andrews

Friday 27th August: The day the station formerly known as Lantern FM was finally killed off. Outside of North Devon it’s doubtful any tears were shed, but it’s just one of a number of Global FM stations that are disappearing off the map.

It’s a subject I’ve returned to often and one I have an avowed interest in. Lantern were one of the first stations to give me freelance shifts. I can’t say my reporting was that great (North Devon’s never been an area I’ve ever been overly familiar with) but the station got by.

One thing always struck me though: just how much pride North Devon took in their station. Mention you worked for Lantern and you were treated like royalty.

Lantern may have been a very small station in comparison to its sister stations and the news was often less than scintillating, but it knew its target audience and its target audience appreciated with plenty of love and respect.

In many ways North Devon was one of the more unusual patches a station could have to deal with. It’s not uncommon for local stations to be based around one major town or city and cover the surrounding rural area, but Lantern was almost completely rural, with several towns but none of them quite big enough to get top billing.

To the Lantern FM audience, Exeter was a world away and Plymouth may as well have been a different planet. Hyperlocal mattered more to North Devonians than the rest of the county, even if the word hyperlocal hadn’t really been coined back then.

Lantern, so we were frequently told, was a profitable station (I guess local advertising was a pretty good way to reach a high dispersed audience). It was well loved. The RAJARs were decent. But it wasn’t exactly a sexy or enticing station.

So, as part of Global Radio’s plans to make local radio more profitable, Lantern was rebranded Heart FM and had more networked programming inserted into it. A small part of Lantern’s soul died, but listeners could still wake up to breakfast DJs Hopps and Chapple and find out where the roadworks were and if any schools were closed, and any of the other day-to-day essentials.

Then, as part of Global’s plans to make local radio more profitable, it was announced that the station formerly known as Lantern would be closing, along with other stations in Plymouth and the South Hams, and one Devon wide superstation would be created, based in Exeter.

Hopps will be departing, as will Chapple. Plenty of other talented local DJs across the Devon Heart network who live in and love their communities are also departing. There’s more networked programming. Listeners in Ilfracombe will probably, rightly, wonder what the hell this new station has to do with their area and when, or if, their northerly coastal town will ever get a mention on air.

Although it’s dangerous to interpret Facebook groups as a general popular groundswell, there’s currently 3,410 members of three separate groups to save Lantern FM. Not bad for a part of the country where internet usage is lower than the average.

There’s a demand for local radio in a place like, for sure. How to get it to pay for itself is another question completely. Former Lantern DJ Ian Starling has set up his own limited reach community station. It will be interesting to see if this continues to grow as disenfranchised listeners turn elsewhere for their local fix.

It’s a situation that’s being repeated across the country as local radio fans protest about Global’s decision to axe several stations. It’s unlikely these protests will have much effect.

As somebody who’s worked for plenty of local radio stations it’s heartbreaking to see what’s being done to once-loved local institutions.

I won’t disagree that local radio occasionally needs a shake up, nor that they may not always be profitable. But the continuing cuts are straight out of the manual of how to lose and alienate local audiences.

In an age of increased listening choice, local, more than ever, is a USP. More networked shows covering a wider area with little relevance to specific communities isn’t the most inspiring recipe for success.

It’s easy to sneer at the music, but this has never been the important bit of local radio. As long as there are familiar and catchy songs then people will listen. What really hooks them in is a good DJ talking about how much fun they had in Bideford a couple of days ago. Or a great ice cream they scoffed at Westward Ho!

A local councillor once told me that the local commercial radio stations were they first places she called when she wanted to highlight a campaign – because we’d talk to the audience in language they understood and could make it feel important to them, locally, she’d always see a huge rise in phone calls the next day from members of the public.

That was several years ago. I doubt if she gets the same response now.

Hopefully something will spring up to replace Lantern FM. And other local radio stations. And other local newspapers, that are also suffering, through a mixture of shifting readership and management incompetency.

Local media is much-maligned. It’s also the lifeblood of a large section of the community. And well loved too. I’m sad to see Lantern’s demise but not, I suspect, half as sad as a good number of people in North Devon.

written by Gary \\ tags: Devon, Heart Devon, Heart FM, Lantern FM, local DJs, local radio, North Devon

Last week’s news that Global Radio is to shut half of its local Heart stations is thoroughly depressing, not least if you’re in my old area of Devon, where the five local Heart stations in Barnstaple, Exeter, Torquay, Plymouth and the South Hams will be merged into one Devon-wide station based in Exeter. My thoughts go out to my former colleagues who will face a battle to keep their jobs.

Let’s put the sentimental aspect of a former GCap employee out of the way for a moment. This is a further blow to teenagers and graduates wanting to start a career in broadcasting.

Local radio, especially commercial radio, is an excellent breeding ground for new talent. In part because of the lean operation that most commercial stations run, anybody on work experience can be expected to get a chance to really immerse themselves and get proper practical experience. It’s great for inspiring a passion in broadcasting.

Similarly, for broadcast journalism graduates, local radio is a fantastic place to start your career (and indeed continue it).

Again, due to the lean operation, you get pitched into everything competing against other local media with far greater resources. It’s one of the best ways to learn the craft in a very short space of time.

As you can guess, I’m a huge fan of local radio. It may have plenty of faults and detractors, but when it’s done well it becomes an essential part of community.

Yes, I’m biased have started my career in local commercial radio, but it was one of the most enjoyable parts of the job when people told you how much they enjoyed listening, how much they appreciated the local chatter and the support for events that other media may well ignore.

And what really made it worthwhile were the times such as when a local councillor told me she’d always make a point of speaking to us first as when we covered an issue, she always had a surge of enquiries on the topic. Local radio can make a difference.

Obviously I’m coming at this from a journalism point of view, but everybody – the DJs, marketing team, everybody, played their part in making a station a hub and barometer of the community.

And that hub has gradually been eaten away at over the past few years.

Yes, we know times are tight. Yes, a parent company of a commercial organisation will always want to do what’s best to protect its bottom line. But that has increasingly come at the expense of what makes these stations unique: local content.

Without it, why would a local audience tune in to a station that plays the same pop music they can find elsewhere yet has little-to-no relevance to their area.

A well-run commercial radio sector is good for the industry, but a sector that cuts back and cuts back, takes away the most unique aspect of their offering and then complains that regulation favours their competitors isn’t going to win fans or listeners.

Interestingly, during my time in the South West, we were always told that the Devon stations were profitable and that they had the greatest local reach, especially in the more rural areas.

Quite whether that’s still the case, I have no idea. And commercial radio is always a lean operation that has to fight to make money.

And there are some DJs with a great local touch who, along with the journalists, know and care about their patch and connect with the audience. A ‘personality’ in a studio in London (or even Exeter, if you’re in Plymouth or Barnstaple) doesn’t quite have the same relevance.

I fear for the future of my old colleagues.

written by Gary \\ tags: commercial radio, Gemini FM, Global Radio, Heart Devon, Heart Exeter, Heart FM, local radio

It’s not a great time to be working in local radio at the moment. In fact, if you’re a fan of local radio, it’s probably not great to be a listener either.

After axing the distinctive Late Night Love show and DJ Graham Torrington, and rebranding virtually all of their distinctively named local stations across the UK as Heart, Global Radio (formerly GCap) have now announced further cutbacks.

Chief among these are the scrapping of local news bulletins between 11am and 3pm, to be replaced with a national news bulletin, and the outsourcing of its travel news.

Granted, this will save money. It’s also so short-sighted it’s beyond belief. By consolidating assorted operations, Global is slowly, bit-by-bit, taking away every last remnant of what makes local radio stations unique.

The rebranding of Heart was bad enough. Having worked for many different local radio stations over the years, one constant in terms of feedback was just how much listeners connected with the individual identity of each station.

It didn’t matter that the stations were owned by the same group. By having their own name and own identity, each station found its own particular niche to serve the community it broadcasted to. Take that away, and you’ve got a standardised, somewhat London centric service with a few local DJs.

But at least there was the local news to keep listeners up to date. Now that’s just limited to breakfast and drivetime. So, if there’s a breaking or ongoing story on that station’s patch, presumably listeners will be bereft of updates during the day (of course, this could be offset by fully utilising the web for breaking news, but I’m not holding my breath).

It also takes away another part of that local connection to listeners. Why should I listen to town X’s Heart when I can’t even find out, hourly, what’s going on in my area.

Given that I’ve got a vast array of internet or digital stations out there, or even alternative stations still on FM, what’s the incentive for me, as a local listener, to tune in? Less than there was before, that’s for sure.

I’m not entirely sure what the outsourcing of the traffic news will be, but this could be an even bigger mistake than cutting back on news.

Again, from my time in local radio, the traffic lines and traffic news was the one thing you’d be guaranteed to get listeners AND interaction. If we’d missed a jam or accident, you could be darn sure we’d get half a dozen calls letting us know.

Traffic news, especially for commuters, is vital. Reduce the quality of that service and you’re going to lose a significant chunk of your audience who tune in specifically to find out if they’re going to face delays on the drive home. This could be Global’s biggest mistake.

What’s more, cutting these positions (and the 25 jobs they estimate will be lost sounds like a VERY conservative estimate to me) will have an even worse effect on aspiring journalists.

There’s already more BJTC trained journalists than there are positions and cutting more news jobs will drive down wages, further depress an already demoralised workforce and make it harder for aspiring young broadcast journalists to find a position, unless they’ve already got something lined up with the BBC.

And for all the commercial stations complain about the BBC’s advantage in local radio, they hardly help their cause by greeting bland identikit stations that sound the same from Land’s End to John O’Groats and offer practically zero competition now to the Beeb.

The radio journalism industry is already haemorraging talented reporters. Of the group I trained with, I’d estimate between 1/5th and 1/3rd have already quit the profession and, speaking to others, I’d expect that percentage to rise.

I love local radio. I love the medium of radio full stop. It’s a job that I loved doing, and would have loved to continue doing. But, the more I see of the state of local commercial radio, the more I’m glad I got out when I did.

A few years ago, if anybody had asked me about getting into radio journalism, I’d have enthused and encouraged them into a wonderfully vibrant and creative industry.

Now, I’d simply tell them not to bother.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: GCap, Global Radio, Graham Torrington, Heart, local news, local radio, radio journalism

Newspapers, we’re constantly told, are changing, a dying breed according to the more gloomy. That conversation has been repeated ad infinitum and is still ongoing. But what about radio? The conversation around where to turn your Web 2.0 dial is a lot less loud, and a lot less straightforward. Nonetheless, like all traditional media, it’s a medium that has to adapt or feel the squeeze.

Times are perhaps never better and never worse for audio lovers. On one hand you have GCap laying off up to 100 staff. On the other hand there are more local radio licences being granted [1], while internet listenership has gone up. 

No here you have a bit of a flashpoint, and one that highlights the positives and negatives of radio. Unlike print, which traditionally used to have just on letters to the editor, radio has always had a high degree of interactivity with its listeners, so had an advantage over other mediums when it became apparent that interacting and conversation was at the heart of the web.

But commercial radio is doing a lot to squander this lead, assuming it hasn’t already been happened. To save on costs, commercial radio companies are increasingly networking shows, destroying one of the aspects that make commercial radio, especially local commercial radio, unique. It’s not the same interacting with a show that’s being produced, often pre-recorded, for a generic nationwide listenership as it is with a live DJ. The BBC’s DJs do this aspect incredibly well. Local DJs do this well. This is less apparent on networked shows.

If you’re sticking on a generic DJ or, even more extreme, cutting them out altogether, then you’re just left with the music, which is normally decent if unadventurous. And here’s another problem.

Anybody who’s worked in commercial radio with know the ‘target listener’ their station is aimed at (she’s normally called Jane [2], and has a couple of kids). Jane may vary slightly from station to station but she’s normally pretty constant on her music tastes, and the playlist usually reflects this. It’s perfectly listenable but with networked or no DJs it struggles to differentiate itself from other products.

As has been said elsewhere, if you’re just producing playlists then Apple does this better. If it’s about discovering music tailored to your tastes, there’s Lastfm. Then there’s a whole host of digital and internet-only stations that do a minimum of chat and play fairly narrow genres. Or if you just want to grab a few select tracks, YouTube does the job quite nicely. And we’ve not even touched on podcasts here. Already, it’s easy to see the challenges commercial radio faces.

There are two (well, two and a half to three quarters) ways of tackling this. Firstly, there’s the quality of the presenter. Martin Kelner has said:

“I think most people listen to the radio because they like the presenter. I don’t think people say ‘ooh, Russell Brand’s on radio 2, he’s going to play some banging tunes’.”

But a lot depends on the quality of the presenter. You can’t just stick any old celebrity in front of a microphone and expect decent radio. Brand, Jonathan Ross, Terry Wogan and others are in the job because they’re good at what they do. Then you’ve got the presenters who are DJs first and celebrity second – the likes of Moyles, Scott Mills, Steve Lamacq.

You might have noticed all of the above are BBC radio presenters, and that’s largely because it’s difficult to think of equivalents with as good a brand recognition nationwide, which makes their decision to axe Graham Torrington all the more baffling [3].

Johnny Vaughan and Jamie Theakston are both decent broadcasters and, personally, I’d rather listen to either of them than Moyles. But that’s just a personal preference. I can understand why Moyles is popular. You can see, to a certain extent why GCap and others would like to network more and compete with the BBC.

But that brings us onto the second of the two and three quarters: local. Whether Vaughan would work so well outside the capital is questionable, and it would really hurt where local radio performs well – their breakfast show.

It’s fair to say I wasn’t target audience at any of the commercial stations I worked at. But I’d still listen to their breakfast shows out of choice even when I wasn’t working. The music didn’t differ wildly from the alternatives, but the connection these shows had with their audience gave me a reason to tune in. I could relate to the chat, and the DJs clearly knew their area.

Getting out and about, chatting to and interacting with the audience, the local DJs scored a much higher name recognition than any of the networked shows (bar, naturally, Graham Torrington), even among non-listeners. It’s always been clear to me, and I may be wrong here, that local is such a strong part of the brand and is a great USP in a fractured marketplace.

Without local, you’re back to networked shows that have less relevance to the listener, you’re back to the music and you’re back to the hundreds of alternatives. It’s the strongest selling point for a local station. Reduce the number of local hours and it becomes just another radio station, with the same competition.

Local news, too, plays a huge part in this. It makes such a difference to hear a local story leading a bulletin (on merit, I hasten to add) rather than a national story. Local radio news may have its own issues with staffing, pay and the like. But no commercial station I’ve ever worked for has ever accepted the cliched local story of cat stuck up tree as news. The standards for making news relevant to listeners at commercial stations are as high as you’ll find anywhere – it’s practically beaten into you as a journalist to keep the news relevant to the target audience. It’s why many local radio stations excel when a national story breaks on their patch.

The other three-quarters is, unsurprisingly, the websites. Much has been written about the often poor quality of newspaper websites. Radio is often just as bad if not worse. The really poor sites do nothing but just tell you a bit about the station, a bit of news, and if you’re really lucky, a few photos from local events. There is nothing to keep anybody on the site for much longer than a few minutes, and in a Web 2.0 that’s just not good enough.

Even best the commercial radio websites – usually GCap – are a bit thin once you scratch below the surface. At least half the content is the same across all sites and offers precious little in the way of Web 20 interactivity (and this is different from traditional interactivity). News is very much dependent on individual news teams and their desire to keep the web updated. Elsewhere, there’s a couple of decent-ish local sections – usually the local guide and events – but given the number of listeners balanced against the chance to get a real community going, there are so many missed opportunities.

Part of this is the centralised format, where the template is set and it’s hard for individual stations to deviate from this. Interestingly, Roy Greenslade had this to say after Newsquest’s relaunch of their local newspaper websites:

“I still wonder whether all the regional chains – including Trinity Mirrorand Johnston Press - have gone about their website strategy as effectively as they should. Rather than centralising the design process I wish they had allowed individual papers to create their own sites and, at the same time, encouraged their local readers to have taken part in the process.

Internal competition, allied by public involvement, would surely have resulted in even better sites. Most importantly, it would have speeded up the process of change, allowing papers to make gradual improvements that would have retained and enhanced the loyalty of the audience.”

It’s a view I’d share, although I think tempered perhaps. By all means have a basic template, but give a lot more scope to play around with. If one station has a couple of active and well-received bloggers, allow them more space at the expense of something else. If another wants to add a Twitter or Flickr stream, or even embeddable video, let them. Regular podcasting should be a given, not an optional extra.

In fairness to commercial radio, the problem is endemic across most media. There’s no joined up 360 degree strategy and the web is still bolted on as an afterthought. That’s changing, faster in some places than in others, but it’s still not at the heart of strategies as it should be.

Despite all this, I’m still reasonably optimistic about radio. A lot of the engagement that drives conversations is already there in the form of the DJ. Texting, emailing, phoning, forums (if available) all add to the on-air product.

But if local commercial and commercial radio as a whole is to adapt to a world of Apple, Muxtape, Lastfm, YouTube et al when it needs to remember what keeps it unique, what drives the brand. That largely comes down to the quality of the DJs and, if for local stations, you remove more of the local hours, and with it the local interaction, then the question is ‘what is being offered that’s different from internet radio or Web 2.0 music broadcasters’? The answer is often, sadly, not a lot.

I love good local radio. Let’s hope it’s still around for me to love when I finally find a local area I want to settle down in.

[1] My hometown and old news patch of Exeter being one.

[2] There’s one station I know that, in jest, has a sign up asking “What would Jane do?” But the point is served with good humour.

[3] And since I blogged about Graham Torrington, that post has become my all-time most read post, and most searched for topic. Go figure.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: commercial radio, GCap, Graham Torrington, local DJs, local radio, radio

Anybody who’s grown up listening to commercial radio in the last decade will probably be familiar with Late Night Love, the rather cheesy relationship phone-in programme hosted by Graham Torrington. Networked across GCap’s commercial stations, it was like a cross between Jeremy Kyle and Radio 1′s Sunday Surgery presented by your embarrassing uncle and with the kind of people on the phone lines who most definitely should never have kids.

Needless to say it was, in equal measures, cringeworthy yet somehow brilliant.

When people found out I used to work in radio, one of the first questions I was always asked was “Do you know Graham Torrington?” Sadly, as the show was networked, I never got to meet the great man.

Which makes today’s announcement that Late Night Love is to be axed to be replaced by a new music show somewhat baffling. The show had fantastic brand recognition, even among non-GCap listeners. It retained a charm and distinctiveness in the world of commercial radio that few other shows had.

I have no idea what the show’s listener figures was like. Perhaps it had become the radio equivalent of Top Of The Pops – well loved by those who remembered it, but with an audience that had moved on, and was no longer culturally relevant in a digital world. Perhaps it was time to put the show out of its misery, as you would do to a family pet.

But even if that was the case, it still feels like a small part of the radio world has died today. Something that was different, irreverent and fun, and quite different from anything else on the air.

Perhaps, on the other hand, it just didn’t fit with GCap’s vision for the future. If so, it’s a very bold move. Hopefully it will be replaced with something just as distinctive because, while there are some talented DJs working in local radio, the last thing commercial stations need is another indistinguishable music show. Or perhaps I’m missing the point, and that’s exactly what it needs.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: GCap, Graham Torrington, Late Night Love, local radio

Breaking news stories are curious beasts. Not only do they often see the national media descend on somewhere most people would be hard pressed to find on a map, it also provides an excellent chance for local media to excel themselves, be it breaking news in hourly bulletins for the local radio station, or in-depth coverage and analysis by the local paper, often built on the strengths of intimate local knowledge and contacts.

As somebody who, on more than one occasion, has been part of that slightly smaller feral pack, I’ve never yet seen a paper or radio station disgrace themselves with their coverage in print or on air.

But, as we’re now in 2008 and on whatever version of Web 2.0.1.7.3 we’re on now, how do our local media shape up online?

Across the pond Rob Curley (via Martin Stabe) has a detailed account of how one local paper nailed their online coverage for a major event, including liveblogging, photos, video, and in-depth history, all before the event was anywhere near a close.

Curley also poses the question: how would have most local papers reacted? He then sets out five options, which are worth repeating here (although I’d recommend you click through and read the whole post):

“It seems to me that in 2008, there are probably about five ways a local newspaper might cover a breaking local news event like this:

• No. 1 — Throw some resources at it in real-time, becoming the definitive source online for the story as it is happening. Constant news updates. Great background info. Multimedia that is worth looking at — at the very least, some decent photo galleries if you’re not going to do video. I’m talking about web reports that combine speed, accuracy and compelling visuals with overwhelming comprehensive coverage in a way that creates something that shows your readers that your newspaper’s website is the only place to go for information on this story.
• No. 2 — At the very least, keep the web site updated. Even if in kind of a half-assed way.
• No. 3 — Run a big story in print with a big photo. The next day. After the story is over. Treat it like your print predecessors would have back in 1978, pretending that no one knows about the story until you tell them about it in print. The next day.
• No. 4 — Go apesh*t in print. The next day. But in the midst of the overkill print coverage, there are thoughtful analysis pieces that treat the story like a Day Two story. Which in 2008, it is.
• No. 5 — Do a mixture of No. 1 and No. 4. Treat the web and print like they’re both important, with print coverage that acknowledges that we live in a world where both CNN and the Internet have been around for at least a few years. Or maybe even a few decades.
  

So, the question is simple: How do you think your newspaper would cover a big-time, local breaking news story in 2008?

Would it be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5?

If it’s 2 or 3 (and possibly even 4), I’d be thinking about getting that resume ready if I were you.”

Although Curley’s dealing with America and newspapers here, his points are equally valid for local British print and broadcast media.

If you’ve got a story of national interest, it’s reasonable to assume that a large number of people both inside and outside the audience area will go to the websites of local media as the first or second choice to get information. If the online coverage is poor (and for radio remember that not everybody can listen at work, but chances are they’ll be able to do a bit of surfing) then not only will potential readers go back to BBC and Sky, there’s also a good possibility they simply won’t bother next time something similar happens, be it of national interest or, as is more likely, a big story for the local patch but of limited or no interest to the national media.

I recognise I’m making a lot of assumptions here, as I’ve not had the chance to surf around every local media site during a breaking story, but even at this period of time the current prognosis falls short of Curley’s recommendations [1]

Firstly, print. I’ve seen some newspapers that will ‘break’ stories online. There are a couple that include the whole story, although they’re few and far between and most sites I’ve seen still say something along the lines of “for more on this story see tomorrow’s paper”. Others just reproduce the day’s content, while some barely even get that far. As for any potential to include liveblogs and photos… well, I’m not entirely sure how they’d fit in or on. Given that most local papers are only slowly waking up to the idea of blogging, and many hide their blogs away in different-to-find areas of the website, I’m not confident.

Still, at least the majority of them are streets ahead of many local radio station websites, some of whom don’t even bother sticking local news up online. For an interesting comparison, have a browse around the respective sites of Oxford’s local paper and radio station [2].

I’ll hold up my hands here and say that, as somebody with a background largely in local radio, I can come up with various mitigations. Many radio newsrooms just don’t have the staffing to be able to deal with both online and on-air during a breaking news story [3]. Also, there’s the argument that as they’re breaking immediate developments at least every hour they’ve covered that angle.

To a certain extent there is a point there. They’ll certainly have covered plenty of different angles before the local paper has even gone to press. But if you get an on-the-ball local paper who follows Curley’s suggestions, that suddenly becomes a very different matter indeed. Also, in this age where the boundaries between media types are ever thinner, to stubbornly stick to what you do best (and many radio stations produce excellent coverage) is storing trouble up for the long term. Neglect these at your peril.

Technology should make it easier for journalists from both mediums to send back pictures and video from the scene asap. Having a journalist liveblogging and tying together news strands keeps the story running and is definitely a valid form of journalist. Radio stations could upload extended interviews from clips that make it on-air. To be fair to radio, there are some stations who are very proactive to uploading audio and keeping their news sections updated. From a brief surf around, they don’t appear to be in the majority, sadly.

We’ve not even touched on photo and video submissions from the readers and listeners here, and if the journalist is being really proactive, they should hit Flickr, Technorati, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace and get searching for what those closest to the scene are saying. Of course there’s the ethical considerations about contacting the users, but the point here is the sites mentioned should be par for the course for any journalist these days.

I’m well aware I’ve over-generalised here, and have tarred all local media with the same brush. But from what I’ve seen, both in the past and current day, I don’t think there’s many traditional local news sites ready to do as good a job online as they do with their traditional media outlets. If you know of any really good examples of the local media embracing online, please do leave them in the comments as I’d be interested to see them.

[1] Note: for the purposes of this blog post, I’m not including BBC local radio for a variety of reasons, although some of the criticisms could be applied to these stations, albeit in a slightly different way.

[2] Yes, I know the latter has a ‘blog’ on the front page, but by my book, that barely qualifies as one. Where’s the interaction, the comment, the trackback, the separate pages? It’s a blog Jim, but not as we know it.

[3] Hopefully I’ll get round to writing a long piece hitherto only semi-formed in my head on online radio presence and staffing, among other things.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: breaking news, embracing web 2.0, local media, local newspapers, local radio, Martin Stabe, online news coverage, Rob Curley

If there’s one area that often gets maligned, often unfairly, it’s the domain of the local radio DJ. An odd blend of personality, cheese and the rural/urban area they broadcast to, for all those who sneer, they’ll be just as many who’ll tune in religiously.

Perhaps GCap’s Chief Executive, Ralph Bernard, has heard too many doomsayers as, along with other radio heads, he’s asked for the amount of local programming to be cut to just three hours a day, so the stations can compete with the likes of Chris Moyles and Chris Evans.

Now on one hand, I can see several reasons for the GCap board, why this would make sense. However, as an ex-GCap employee, I also think it would be completely the wrong move to make.

Commercial radio cuts its cloth quite fine, and with increasing competition for advertisers, it’s a move borne as much out of necessity as anything else. Like any company, there are efficiency savings to be made and if roughly 2/3^rdof their local DJs around the country can be cut out in favour of networked shows, then that’s going to make a big difference to the balance sheet and possibly the shareholders. And if the network shows can be demonstrated to appeal to a more lucrative advertising demographic, then there’s an opportunity to increase revenue.

But that may make for a very healthy balance sheet and please City investors, may cause long-term problems for local stations. As somebody who’s recently worked on the front line for a GCap local station, if you will, and used to regularly interact with listeners, then I can firmly say one thing: locality matters to these people.

Yes, there are the popular networked shows. Late Night Love has a cult following. Myleene Klass may be proving popular as the girl of the moment. But these work well in the timeslots they’re scheduled for – early evening and late night.

To me, the argument that local stations can’t compete against the likes of Moyles and Evans doesn’t ring true, as I don’t believe local stations should necessarily be aiming for exactly the same audience as Moyles or Evans in the first place.

Local commercial radio occupies a niche that isn’t always fully exploited. Sure, you could network Johnny Vaughn’s Capital show, and it may prove popular in cities such as Brighton, Bristol and Birmingham. But one-size certainly doesn’t fit all, and whether Johnny’s shtick would prove quite so popular in Hereford, Cardiff, Somerset and Plymouth is a moot point.

Local commercial offers is very different from the more speech-heavy local BBC stations, which tend to attract a slightly older audience, but for those who’re not so keen on Radio 1’s playlist, or Moyles’s laddish humour, don’t want their programming too speech heavy, but still identify with local issues (and there are a significant number who fit into this category), then local commercial radio fits the bill nicely.

The letter from GCap, Emap and others to offer says: “We all agree that localness is important to our listeners. However, it is also clear that quality of output is of greater importance.” This implies localness and quality output are mutually exclusive. I’m sure a lot of local DJs, and listeners would find this both offensive and slightly patronising.

The principles of good programming are no different in Exeter, Edinburgh, or London. Get a good presenter, or presenters, who can make entertaining radio and connect with their audience. Often the best local DJs I’ve heard are the ones who love getting involved in local issues, be it local carnivals, breast cancer awareness campaigns, new shopping centres or follow the local football and rugby teams.

Get that blend right, and for the listener it gives them a show that entertains, informs, educates and even evokes empathy. Reithian core values need not be the exclusive domain of the BBC.

The argument that any money saved will be ploughed back into making one quality programme doesn’t wash with me. Radio is all about building hours, and if you’ve got listeners only tuning in for one three-hour show, and turning off for the networked content, you’ll achieve a loss. And, having had plenty of contact with listeners and potential listeners over the past 18 months, I strongly believe that for any new listeners commercial would pick up as a result of networking, it would lose as many, if not more, for those who tuned in precisely to hear the much-maligned local DJ give them the lowdown on move to redevelop the bus station. Unlike Morrissey’s disc jockey, these broadcasters do have something to say about my life.

It may not be entirely politic to criticise your recent ex-employers, but I’ve just got a problem with the upper-echelons of GCap’s management in this case, as the station I used to work for was a prime example of how local could work wells, as sounding more local was something they’d been pushing in a big way. I was proud of the balance struck between good programming and including the right amount of local balance.

To give an example, recently the station did an OB at the opening of one of the city’s large new shops. In the middle of this, they cut to an ongoing on-air promotion live elsewhere in the city, before a live promo teasing a major event that weekend. This was highlighted as an excellent example of what the station should be aiming for and, if the response was anything to go by, it achieved it. Now if you add the buzz those outside events would have created in the city anyway, you’ve got an excellent example of how local radio can, and should, work.

It can take years to build up that reputation and the listeners that come with it. It can take just a couple of months to lose them. As John Plunkett says, “How the heart lifts when Andy, H and the other one (Steve) mention some local south Bucks gossip, some irritating roadworks or there’s yet another trail for Hazlemere food hall (I still haven’t been).”

Quite.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: GCap, local radio, Ralph Bernard