Along with the Creative Gold Award, they won Best National On-Air Promotion (with Faces for Radio), Best On-Air Sponsorship (for Baddiel and Skinner) and Best On-Air Imaging. This adds to the bronze award they picked up at this year’s Sony Radio Awards for Best Station Imaging.
A couple of weeks ago at the Broadcast Symposium 2010 in Nuremberg, I presented a session on Station Imaging in the UK, which featured a video with Absolute Radio’s Creative Director Vince Lynch.
Take a look now behind the thinking of what makes the sound of Absolute Radio.
You can hear more about this year’s awards on Steve Martin’s Earshot blog here.
I came across these today on the walls of BBC Television Centre.
All Images (C) BBC
All are catchphrases featured in highly successful BBC TV shows – displayed proudly in bright colours. Of course, they provide a nice talking point for tours and similar. But a nice way of showing the heritage of the Corporation.
It works for TV and could work for loads of BBC radio too.
But could you use something for your station in a similar way? Maybe not for a small station. But one with a heritage show or big name maybe? Or how about song lyrics from songs that reflect you station right now?
New York station 1010WINS has been giving the news to New Yorkers since April 1965.
Last weekend, I met current breakfast news anchor Lee Harris at the Broadcast Symposium in Nuremberg, and the took the opportunity to make this short film where he talks about his career, the station, and covering the events of September 11 2001.
Lee is on air weekday mornings in New York and online here.
The video isn’t embedding some browsers. If you can’t see it, watch it here http://vimeo.com/16944686
The great thing about the BBC is that you can be pretty sure that there;’s a team of people working behind the scenes on new and clever ways of doing things with content and online data.
You can find details of some of their projects here:
I’ve not yet delved into all of them yet, (writing this on the train on my non Flash-friendly iPhone). But there could be some interesting possibilities with one of these projects – Flared Music.
The site notes that “Flared music lets you visually research relationships between musicians and bands using the Musicbrainz database an online community resource that the BBC is working with to collate music information”. Enter the name of an artist or producer and let the app search out connections and collaborations.
I entered “Paul McCartney” and it listed collaborations from the obvious (Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and of course The Beatles) but also, bizarrely , a connection to Su Pollard. Ok – she was on Ferry Aid! But, it set me thinking – maybe it could be a starting point for a musical feature on the radio? Or the basis of a fun online game?
Take a look – try it for yourself – and see what strange connections it throws up.
And thanks to @backflipltd for flagging this project up.
I’ve just returned from a wonderful weekend in Nuremberg at the Broadcast Symposium 2010. And it was a great opportunity to meet with European radio colleagues who have as much if not more passion for radio than people I meet day to day in the UK.
Some of these people were from stations in Germany, Slovenia, Austria and Croatia. And all were really enthusiastic about what they did, and most, if not all, look to the UK for creative inspiration and ideas. Which is good. But I really hope that we start looking towards them too. Trouble is, we don’t necessarily know what they are doing – or the great ideas that they have.
The one thing that struck me again and again is that it’s no longer acceptable to be just a radio imaging person. You need to be a composer. And a writer. And a great communicator. But also, need to have a great understanding of other media – from being able to cut great video – and be flexible in the ways you work.
Here are a few of the producers whose work you should check out:
Nejc and his team, including Imaging Producer Nik šmon and Head of Imaging production Mitja Mithans provide the production support needed to make Radio Ena (Radio 1) a highly successful station. Mitja creates all the jingles for the station and others from his home studio.
Goran is the sort of person you don’t forget easily. Creative Director for Antena Zagreb. He’s equally involved in creating the audio sound and visual look – increasingly using audio and plus website video.
Competition in the Croatian market is pretty intense. 4 Million population and 150 radio stations. His company is running 3 radio stations – including Antena Zagreb – a Hot AC format but reaching a broad slice of the 18-49 population. They serve these stations with a team of 29 creative people including producers,writers, singers – and everyone knows everyone’s jobs – so that that they can collaborate across brands.
It was also good to catch up with Stefan Muller and the guys from BIG FM. You may even recognise their news sequence – it’s the old one I designed with Jem Godfrey at Wise Buddah back in 2007 for Capital FM.
I’ll try and add some audio from these guys too in the coming days. But for those of you who think the talent isn’t out there – maybe look to cast your nets a little further…
They’ve asked me to focus on radio imaging and production in the UK – in an hour. And that will encompass all manner of stations and formats. So, I’ve narrowed it down a little – to focus on a few key stations; Capital FM, Absolute Radio, Jack FM and Radio 1. And I’ve created a virtual panel for the event – which will feature some substantial contributions (in the form of videos) with Arden Hanley at Capital, Vince Lynch at Absolute and Joe Thomas from Jack FM. I’m also throwing in some examples of how I’ve worked with imaging over the past 10 years or so as well.
But it would be great to get a quick snapshot of imaging across the rest of the Uk. So, if you’re an imaging producer at a station large or small in the Uk, and fancy featuring in a quick audio snapshot, then please email me your best promo or piece of imaging from the last few months – and I’ll try and include it in a short montage as part of the presentation. I’ll need it by this weekend. Email me – jamesstodd01@gmail.com
And if you’re reading this in Germany and are coming to the event – I look forward to meeting you.
So the long talked about rebranding of Red Dragon FM has finally happened. Pretty soon, Red Dragon FM will become another footnote in history.
As ever, people such as Matt Deegan, James Cridland and Nik Goodman have analysed what it means for the business in ways far better than I can attempt.
My views on the “Globalisation” of commercial radio have been stated before. It makes sense for their business model. It makes sense for many large advertisers. And put simply, it makes it far easier for the company to only have to manage brands rather than stations. But that doesn’t make it any easier for another passionate team who now have an uncertain future in a rapidly shrinking radio jobs market.
Listening to Red Dragon FM a couple of weeks back, the station sounded great. It was however using the same jingles as Capital. And some of the same voices. And like Capital, it’s a great listen (if CHR format radio is your thing). But, it sounded truly local – with loads of local voices. So will this really change things?
There were rumours of Red Dragon becoming Capital FM back when I worked at Red Dragon back in 1998-2002 – (and to be honest, the name change works fine – it is a Capital city). But back then, we were allowed a big nod to sounding local. Our aspirations were as big as Capital in London. And the audience figures steadily rose.
However, the one key element we added (and which the guys at Leicester Square couldn’t give us) was a large dose of National Pride. It was (and from what I understand still is) pretty hard to persuade the guys in London what being Welsh actually meant. At the time, we played a far more localised playlist – with a bigger dose of the Manics, Stereophonics and Catatonia than was heard in London and Birmingham.
And one time it really worked well was during big Rugby matches.
If you’ve never stood on St Mary’s street in Cardiff during a Welsh Rugby International, then chances are, you have never felt a sense of pride like it. I guess it happens outside Murrayfield too. But there’s an intense passion. The sense of pride and emotion and excitement that lived on air during the 1999 Rugby World cup was immense. We owned the city – and the listeners loved it.
And we went big on it in all elements of production
From the news
And with listeners
When Capital launches in January, if they don’t keep some element of Welshness, I think they could be missing a trick.Does it matter? Will the listeners really care? Time will tell. But I guess Real Radio and Nation Radio will ramp up their Welshness a little bit more.
Still, there’s at least one part of Red Dragon FM’s name that will live on.
The centre they broadcast from was rebranded from Atlantic Wharf to The Red Dragon Centre a few years back.
Global might find it harder to change that to the Capital Centre – since one of those already exists.
It opened on October 20th 1984. On Monday July 26th 2010, Mercury Fm in Crawley ceased to be – another of Global Radio’s stations that have been rebranded Heart. This is progress – and makes absolute sense in their business strategy. But is another marker in radio history. UPDATE: and not everyone is happy about it.
This was station founded in the great early days of Independent Local Radio. The days when there was enough money to have the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra record your station theme.
My first paid radio work came at Radio Mercury in Crawley. This was after years of hospital and student radio. At Mercury, I gained experience in all aspects of the radio craft, from producing programmes, reading news bulletins, working the radio car and all aspects of studio craft.
It was a big station back in those days. Located in Broadfield House in Crawley, it was a large scale traditional ILR station. There was a newsroom (in the old stables) with a team of 5 or 6 people. A commercial production team of 4. And in programming, the PD, his secretary, a head of music, 3 producers, a couple of programming assistants and maybe even a music librarian. Plus 3 receptionists!
And it was the PD, Martin Campbell, who gave me my break into radio – letting me loose on producing the station’s Guildford breakfast show. And once in, I never left.
When I arrived at Mercury FM, all I wanted to do was be on air. I’d spent years at hospital radio and 3 years at uni mainly hanging out at the student station. In fact in 1982, I’d even won “Best Male DJ” at the original Student Radio awards. And it was Mercury that let me on air. Firstly on many shifts (mostly overnight) on the “Weekend if a Thousand Hits”. Then a time covering lates and sometimes even evenings. And then in 1985, I spent a year as drivetime presenter on Mercury Extra AM. (You don’t remember that station – well, frankly, neither did the listeners). After that experience, I decided I’d rather spend time in the production studio, which I’d been doing all the time I’d been there, and so switched over to be the Commercial Producer – and also gained my first “Station Sound” role too – though that particular term hadn’t been thought of at that point.
In fact this is how we sounded back then. (BTW – this audio breaks my rule from my Capital FM days; Simpsons Grabs = demo tape bin. But this was way back in 1996 – so is just about OK..) (Oh, and the whole Power of Radioactivity thing came from the fact that Crawley was designated the UK’s first Nuclear Free town. Or something. Go figure..)
Back in the 1990s, stations like Mercury gave you the opportunity to grow, to develop, to learn. And I learned from many people still making their mark in radio in many fields. People like Will Jackson (GTN / Traffic Radio), Will Kinder (Radio 1), Matt Smith (SKY News), Dan Wright (Koink).
Now with consolidated stations, networked hours and fewer ways into the industry, is it maybe time for the industry to create a unified qualification and training programme to ensure that future entrants are fully equipped with skills and relevant experience needed. There are precious few stations now where anyone new to the industry would be able to gain the skills that I learned there. Maybe such a scheme could use BBC Local radio stations as a feeder – with those making the best progress able to compete for placements and experience at larger networks or national brands. Whilst college courses fulfill some of those needs, the best place to learn these skills is on the job.
Ironically, it probably is Global Radio who are currently doing the most in this direction, with the establishment of the Global Radio Academy. Hopefully this will give as much insight to the industry’s new young hopefuls as Mercury FM did many years ago.
So RIP Radio mercury – I owe you much more than you ever could know.
JAMES STODD 
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