BBC Radio 1 have been championing all their specialist music presenters this week by showcasing them all in the daytime hours. So Zane Lowe (who usually is on at 7pm) has been presenting the breakfast show, along with Annie Mac, Huw Stephens and a load of other DJs.

And to support this, the new marketing campaign for Radio 1 has just launched including a new TV trail featuring Fearne Cotton and Zane Lowe. Great to see the new music output being given some big promotion too..

Here’s the Fearne Cotton one:

Should you love the track ,the song is Antidote – Swedish House Mafia vs Knife Party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcdk3ghymzQ

And here’s the Zane Lowe version:

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Here’s a brilliant chance for a free day of training for professionals in independent production companies, freelancers, commercial and community radio – hosted by the BBC. And I’ll be running a session on the day too.

It’s on February 7th – tickets are available from January 10th on the BBC Academy website.

Tim Davie, director Audio & Music, said:

“This is a great opportunity for programme makers across the radio sector to learn and get inspired by the creativity of others.”

Hosted by the BBC Academy in partnership with Skillset, Radio Fast Train will be produced in association with the Radio Academy, Radio Independents Group, RadioCentre and the Community Media Association.

 I’ll be running a session entitled “Promotions and Branding – an Essential Guide”. It’ll be all about creating great promotional campaigns. So, if you have worked on a radio campaign that you think could do with showcasing, please let me know, as I’d love to feature some non-BBC work too. And if you want to come along, apply for tickets as detailed above.

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Earlier in the day, someone shared a link to the updated TV advert for the rest of the Capital FM network. And as before, there are regional variations for the different markets.

What I like about both of these is the consistency. They are updated versions of the advert they used last year to promote the launch of the Capital FM network. I wrote about that last January. They have taken a seemingly simple idea and they have stuck with it – adapting it and freshening it up – but not tempted to change it or go for something new.

It’s pretty rare in marketing for brands to have the bottle to keep things consistent – there are always tweaks, whether to a logo or a creative idea. Strong, simple ideas always work well. Just look at the ad campaigns for Go Compare or We Buy Any Car Dot Com. Whilst they may be annoying, they are annoyingly catchy.

Dave Berry and Lisa Snowdon - hosts of 95.8 Capital FM Breakfast

What the team at Global have done is take an idea that imprints the names of the artists at the centre of everything they do. They use them to endorse the station. They use them to promote their big events. And they now have used them to promote their biggest show. And judging by what I heard this morning, this show aims to be a big hitter. The mix of music, humour and energy was pretty much perfect this morning. News was punchy, travel was quick and on target. And they had the fastest “Pay Your Bills” execution I’ve ever heard anywhere.

Boom! – the breakfast wars are back on..!

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• Dave Berry to take over from Johnny Vaughan as host of Capital FM breakfast (independent.co.uk)
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Image (C) Merlin Fireworks

“James – we need you to make a fireworks soundtrack. It needs to be 15 minutes long. Oh, and it needs to be beatmixed..”.

I have only had to make one full on fireworks soundtrack mix.

It was around 2001 and was for the AXA Skyfest Cardiff. It was a huge 15 minute display to celebrate the first Football FA Cup Final to be hosted at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium (whilst London’s Wembley Stadium was being rebuilt). It took me a few weeks to make ( through various incarnations) using a very basic setup on ProTools5 (my first ProTools Rig) and with no fancy Elastic Time tools – just clever edits a little varispeed and a lot of edits.

It worked pretty well and it was fantastic to see the whole of Cardiff Bay lit up to a fireworks display set off and designed by the company that produced the fireworks for the Olympics ceremony at the Sydney Games. You can hear it here. I just listened back to it for the first time in a decade – and whilst it’s a little ragged in places, it was pretty epic!

I was at a party last night so missed the huge London 2012 New Years Eve fireworks display. These have become a Traditional part of each New Years celebration. My friend Will Jackson has tracked down the mix from last night’s display – so thought it worth a share here. It was mixed by BBC Radio 1 and Asian Network DJ Nihal. Take a listen here

In fact this mix was curated by Nihal and engineered by BBC Radio 1 Head of Station Sound, Dan Mumford. You can read more about how the display was put together here

My friends at the Benztownbranding Blog have also recently showcased a very clever Beatmix from David Konksy at Sydney’s 2DayFM here. 30 songs in 3 minutes!

And if you REALLY like this sort of thing – get bang up to date with DJ Earworm’s United State of Pop 2011

Now – if you have a good hangover cure after last night’s celebrations – let me have it…

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Photo (C) Global Radio

This morning, Global Radio’s XFM did their Naked Breakfast

They took the Danny Wallace show and broadcast live from the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire. But what made this different is that they did everything live. This wasn’t simply a normal outside broadcast with some live links and special guests. Everything was be live – the music, the jingles, even the adverts.

There was a pretty impressive lineup too:

The Stereophonics were the House Band. Plus comedians Tim Minchin and Ross Noble and Paul Weller also featured.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anything being done in quite this way in the UK. It would have been fairly common back in the early days of Commercial Radio in the US in the 1940s and 50s when it was common for the announcers to voice live ads within live shows. But doing something like this on a very formatted station like XFM is quite a challenge.

I’m guessing they’ve had to carefully plan what airtime was sold within the show. Because they had to perform the ads live – they had to sell some brave creative to the advertisers too - so that  the ads became part of the performance.

Whilst it’s not something you’d want to hear every day – this is a great example of creative programming that gives the listener something to really interact with. You can listen again to it here:

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BBC 2 CHRISTMAS. IMAGE (C) BBC

I’m now feeling more Christmassy having seen the new animations for BBC2′s Christmas idents. The Jack Frost character seems to have been thawed out and replaced by scenes from an animated town.

The idents, created by Red Bee Media with 15 Badgers feature a number of iterations including “Turkey” and “Scientist”. They are slightly off the wall, but have a real sense of fun to them. I particularly love the intricate sound design and little design details in the animation – the sort of idents that you’ll see loads more in every time you watch.

Take a look and see what you think.

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Picture from http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk

How do you celebrate talent? Talent behind the mic. Or in front of a camera.

How do you do that when that talent has been associated with your channel, your brand, your station for almost 50 years?

Sir David Attenborough has been associated with the BBC since 1952. First as a producer, then as controller of a TV channel, and since the 1970s, a presenter of some of the most amazing wildlife programmes ever broadcast.

To many, including me, he is the voice of wildlife, almost the voice of the planet.

This trail broadcast tonight before the final episode of Frozen Planet. It associates him with the BBC, with wildlife TV and with quality. It’s beautifully edited too by the team at Red Bee Media.

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E4 (E stands for Entertainment) is aimed at the 15-35 age group.These animations have a distinctly uncomfortable anti-Christmas feel. But then, who says every channel needs look the same?

It seems these idents build on a fairly distinctive visual style that the channel used to promote various other elements of the output too – as shown in this wrapper for film content.

I really like seeing animation in TV idents – it worked so well for MTV for so many years – and in fact, the longer a channel does it, the bigger the impact. The animation doesn’t have to be in a single, distinctive visual style, but it has to be true to the character of the brand; in MTV’s case, the MTV letters become part of the personality of the visual identity. It’s the equivalent of radio stations trying to maintain an element of sonic distinctiveness through “heritage” musical logos.

The success of both a visual and audio identity is to sustain them over time. In a world where brand managers are always wanting the “new” – this is sometimes easier said than done.

Big Ben by James Stodd

Last week, Capital FM‘s breakfast host, Johnny Vaughan left the station.

The reasons behind why he left have been discussed by people like Matt Deegan and Nik Goodman

For my money, Johnny was a great radio broadcaster, somewhat constrained by commercial radio from the start. When Johnny was in full free form mode, he was incredibly entertaining.

The Johnny who left Capital was a very different sounding one who started there. Sure, some of the gems came through, but he didn’t really fit with the punchy format that Capital now pumps out. I’m also guessing they’re looking for someone who can work equally well across the network. And Johnny is of course at heart, a Londoner – as his launch TV commercial showed.

Creating the production sound for a new breakfast show is hard. And it was for that show. Johnny was a big change from the previous Chris Tarrant breakfast show and the various interim replacements.

What we ended up with was a fairly esoteric sounding package of jingles and the like from the guys at Wise Buddah in London. They fitted his personality, his style and his quirkiness – and included the fairly memorable “Johnny on the Radio Now Now Now” theme which cropped up a number of times during the first half of his tenure.

Before we got there, we did explore other areas, and I found one bit of audio in my archives that may not have ever been heard before. Before settling on the guys at Wise Buddah, we worked on some demos with the team at Reelworld. These were based around Capital’s heritage sonic logo – and had a more US/Letterman/talkshow type of feel. Needless to say, they weren’t what was required at the time. However, I still think they are really good, and could work for someone somewhere. You can contact Reelworld here:

Johnny’s replacement is being announced tomorrow morning. I wonder if the replacement will get a song and dance number to herald in the new show? Doubting it..

UPDATE: Capital FM have announced that Dave Berry will join Lisa Snowdon as breakfast show host. Great choice – funny, punchy and full on Londoner.

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And that’s what BBC1 have done this year. You’ll be singing along..

BBC One’s Christmas 2011 trailer featuring Gregg Wallace, John Bishop, Gary Lineker, Len Goodman, Lee Mack, Guy Henry, Laila Rouass, Hugh Quarshie, Shane Richie, Shona McGarty, Ricky Norwood, Frank Skinner, Brendan O’Carroll, Tyger Drew-Honey, Ramona Marquez, Daniel Roche, Kevin Bridges, Sian Williams, Carol Kirkwood, Chris Hollins, Bill Turnbull, Matt Allwright, Lenny Henry, Tess Daly, Fiona Bruce, Alex Jones, Sunetra Sarker, Alexander Armstrong, Graham Norton, Julia Bradbury, Sir David Jason, Anne Robinson, John Torode, Nick Knowles, June Brown, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Michael McIntyre and Sir Bruce Forsyth

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