Author: jamesstodd

Seacrest Gets Viral

| jamesstodd

Twitter is taking brands – whether commercial, radio, or celebrity – to a whole new level. It allows consumers or “fans” to get something extra. Some of it is an interesting insight into people’s lives and some is dull. But it certainly furthers the levels of interaction. In radio – loads of people are doing it. I learn what’s going on from Absolute Radio. I get the latest travel news from Southeastern trains. And I find out what the new big tunes are on BRMB via Tweets from Darren Lee.

In America, Ryan Seacrest has taken it to a whole new level. Not content with being on air in Los Angeles on KIISfm,  his show is  also syndicated across the country. Plus he does American Idol. And wherever he goes – he tweets. He’s great at interacting with his followers. And you get updates on all his sites as well. In short – he (and his team) – are masters of self promotion.

And if you’re as well known as Seacrest – why not join up with one of your other Twitter chums like Ben Stiller  – to up the number of followers with a viral video?

Enjoy…

Absolute Get it Wight

| jamesstodd
Image from www.absoluteradio.co.uk
Image from http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk

Do you picture this lot as typical listeners of Absolute Radio?

Last week, I wrote about Capital FM’s coverage of their excellent Summertime Ball, and how the online offering was a little lacking for the tech savvy, online audience. I also hoped that Absolute Radio’s forthcoming coverage of the Summer’s festivals would prove that online content can be engaging, fun and also in some cases perception shifting. Having photos of listeners like those above helps them shift perceptions from being a blokey station to having a wider audience profile.

To me, Absolute’s coverage of this weekend’s Isle of Wight Festival punched well above its weight. Not only were there tons of photos posted during the weekend – both official and user generated. But there was a fair degree of interaction with their audience away from the event.

Via twitter, I got updates on when the acts were onstage and when new content was available online.

photo

I also got a few updates live onsite from reporter Andrew Bailey via Audioboo

This was rough and ready live reportage – giving a bonus behind the scenes feel to the coverage. For the station – it was simple to create – needing just an iphone and a free program -plus the simple know-how to link to it via various platforms.

In addition, the audio from a number of stage performances is online – not with video but with photo slideshows. This again was something that could be achieved fairly easily with fewer resources needed than creating full video packages. It was also supplemented by video interviews by the key artists.

The beauty of Absolute Radio’s coverage however is how every piece of content is neatly tagged – so that music fans can search for their favourite band and easily find all the relevant content from them. Searching on Stereophonics for example brings you the backstage interview from the festival, plus backstage interviews from a couple of other events. Alongside that, there’s an artist biog and links to buy songs. But more importantly, a link to the 1,189 other Absolute Radio VIPs who also like the band – allowing more interaction and enhancing the station’s online community.

Having seen this offering, I’ll be interested in seeing what they continue to offer across the Summer of Live.

And this is how they did it..

Capital FM’s Summertime Ball

| jamesstodd

 

Image (c) Global Radio
Image (c) Global Radio

Being one of the large collection of ex Capital Fm staff, I don’t necessarily love everything that they do. In fact, since leaving last September, I’ve not listened that much. But, with the Summertime Ball, they pretty much nailed it.

The problem for Capital has always been doing something new and sustaining the demand. The first few Party in the Park shows sold quickly, were major successes and innovative radio events. The last one – the year before Live 8 was a hard slog to sell and the lineup didn’t necessarily live up to all expectations. Live8 allowed the event to be “rested”-  since Capital graciously allowed Sir Bob to take their already booked date. The world got Live8 and Help a London Child got a big pot of cash from ticket sales.

So when Global Radio took over – there was always a thought that the station needed a big event to hinge the summer on. Plans were afoot to run Party in the Capital last Summer at the Emirates stadium, but the time to plan it was too short and it was pulled. I guess that by  testing the water last Christmas with the Jingle Bell Ball at the O 2 proved the demand. So the Summertime ball was launched on air.

For any Capital listener over the last few months, it’s been impossible to get away from. Non stop promos and talkup almost every link when tickets went on sale. And then the few weeks in the run up dominated by ticket contests – using the tried and tested pattern of creating hype and demand for “must have” tickets. And let’s face it; with a solid chart based lineup of acts like Dizzy Rascal, Calvin Harris, Katy Perry, Ciara and The Saturdays for Capitals younger end, plus Lionel Richie and the reformed Blue for the 30 something, they were on to a winner.

Whilst the production sound on air was fairly predictable, it was solid and really helped build the overall event to a crescendo. (though the big male voicover really is starting to grate now). Listening over the weekend, the coverage was spot on- as you’d expect from the team left there. Live backstage shows and interviews, news on site and the best of the live tracks ( whilst maintaining the main playlist alongside).

My main disappointment was the online offering. Bar a couple of video diaries and backstage videos, there was nothing for people who weren’t there to interact with. In fact – I’m not sure the online offering had moved on much from what you’d have seen at the last Party in the Park. Granted, the online team is pretty small these days – but some extras would have been useful. Stuff like a live blog, webcams, stage feed could all be set up – even if the stage feed had picture and no sound. What about an online running order for people at the event? Or a Twitter feed of backstage headlines, photos and “up next messages”. The interactivity of the event seemed to be missing something. I know it was a radio event – but the added extras add to the experience – particularly post event. Then again – with only 24 listener submitted photos currently on the site – is online as important as we keep being told..?

If  you compare it  with something like Radio 1’s Big Weekend -Radio 1 had webcams, interactive message boards, on demand backstage videos and afterwards, the majority of the live performances. Now obviously, Radio 1 had the full might of the BBC’s resources to hand – and a shed load more people working on their event. But a lot of these things would have been fairly easy to incorporate. It will be interesting to compare some of the upcoming festival coverage by Absolute Radio to see what they achieve with an even smaller team.

Apart from this minor negative – Capital should feel proud of this event. You’d hope that it will make an impact to the listening figures too. But it feels like Capital may have found it’s feet again. 

The fans obviously still love it:

mms-photo-gallery-1244395075-gallery-detail-0

Sounding great! My daughter is in the VIP room, thanks to a lucky ticket in the program, and is one extremely ecstatic Capital fan. Thanks so much Capital you rock!!

Audioboo – Instant reporting for radio?

| jamesstodd

I came. across AUDIOBOO by chance following a Twitter from James Cridland, one of the BBC’s online gurus.

Essentially it’s an online audio blogging tool – currently available as a free application from the Itunes store for iPhone, but I’m sure that will change rapidly.

photo

Essentially, the application lets you record audio on your iphone. You can’t edit it – but you can pause, then resume. Once you’re finished, you can upload it. However, you can also add information – maybe a picture of who you are recording or where you are. Since it’s recorded on the iphone, it also adds a GPS tag of where it is recorded. You can also tag the recording with keywords. Then, when you are finished, you hit publish, and it goes straight up to the audio boo website front page for anyone to hear. It’s simple and at present, you can’t make the recording private. You can publish anonymously – or linked to a user account (where you can manage /delete your audio). At first I couldn’t really see the point; there are loads and loads of posts, mostly strange or dull, or even just bizarre (like my test recording last night of the sounds you hear walking from Charing Cross to Embankment tube…)
embankment

[Audio http://blog.jamesstodd.com/page5/assets/Audioboo_walk.mp3%5D

So what does this mean for radio? Well, it depends on what you want from it to be honest. The quality is fairly good for a phone based recorder – but the ability to get audio online or even back to base quickly may outweigh any slight quality concerns. The example post above (from journalist Matthew Weaver) is one of his recordings from The Guardian’s blog coverage of the G20 summit.  He didn’t use everything he recorded – but then again, you wouldn’t use everything you recorded as a journalist.

[Audio http://blog.jamesstodd.com/page5/assets/Audioboo_obama.mp3%5D

Of course, The Guardian isn’t a radio station – but as mentioned before in my Twitter feed, they have 8 radio studios onsite – so the multimedia offering is increasingly important to them. In this case, they could have someone on the ground, recording audio and blogging, and then have it all tidied up on site.

For a radio station – particularly one on a tight budget, this is a method of allowing a journalist to be on site, to record an item in pretty good quality, and then to post the audio with nothing more than the click of a button. Now of course, at the moment, this audio is available for anyone to hear – so maybe each recording needs to start with “I’m XXXX for Badger FM onsite at xxxx before getting into the audio – thus tagging the audio with your station name. However, once it’s uploaded, it just needs someone back at base to find it, download it and if necessary delete it. Since you can also take a photo to upload with the audio, and later download it – you also have a way of not only getting audio content for a news bulletin up to the site, but also a picture of the event for the website. All the audio can be downloaded – either directly from the site into itunes, or by grabbing it via the RSS feed.

And of course, since your listeners have phones, the ability to make use of the resource of citizen journalists at a big event or news story is immensely useful.  Think about what you could get from listeners at a big music festival – or caught up in big travel chaos when the snow comes agin – or maybe on the day when school exam results come out. Get them to record audio and post it – you never know what great content you may get from it. Since the site lets you publish your updates directly to your Twitter account, I guess there’s a fairly easy way to tag these Tweets and aggregate them into one place. I’m sure there are people out there who could explain this aspect far more concisely than me…:-)

So, if you have an iphone, grab the application and give it a go. record something meaningful, or something bizarre. You never know who’ll be listening.

 

UPDATE:

Here’s how Richard Bacon is using it to interact with his listeners on 5 Live

BJ – Legendary Voiceover -RIP

| jamesstodd

 

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I read with sadness this morning via Radio Today  the news this morning that the legendary american voiceover Brian James – much used in radio station imaging in the UK in the late 80s and 90s – has died.

To me, he epitomised the sound of large market radio in the UK, when stations were striving to emulate the big American sound. He was the voice used on stations such as Capital FM in the early 90s and created a high energy powerful sound.

[Audio http://blog.jamesstodd.com/page5/assets/CapitalMusicPower.mp3%5D

Whilst I never had the pleasure of working with him, I had the pleasure of creating the odd bit of production featuring his voice – and it was one of those voices that was easy to use – mainly because he knew just how to deliver the lines.

RIP Brian.

U2 Buy The BBC?

| jamesstodd

So, U2=BBC. A brilliant marketing coup for a record label and band. Or a misuse of a publicly funded broadcasting organisation’s airwaves and webspace?

Image (C) BBC
Image (C) BBC

Let’s get one thing clear. I’m a massive U2 fan – and thought the whole concept was fantastic. And it worked on so many levels. From the Culture Show to Radio 1 to Radio 4’s “Front Row” to the rooftop gig. I’m not complaining – I got a text from a friend around 6pm and managed to get to near the front – an almost perfect start to a weekend.

U2 on the rooftop (they're where the bright lights are..:-) )
U2 on the rooftop (they're where the bright lights are..:-) )

But predictably, there were many people not so pleased with it including Tory MP Nigel Evans who complained (to the Daily Mail under a headline of “The Bono Broadcasting Corporation”) about why licence fee payers should pick up the cost of publicity of the new U2 album. For the BBC, this will have been about delivering something exceptional for the audience (not all, but a wide part of it) and it was able to tick many boxes. It was a subject that had a broad fanbase which enabled the project to be spread across 2 music networks and the speech network. It allowed some innovative online ideas from Red Button coverage to online microsites. And quite probably will have bought audiences into programmes that they might not necessarily have sampled before (such as The Culture Show and Front Row). Added to that – it created a couple of one off musical events that people can say “only the BBC can do that” – all things that should keep the BBC Trust happy.

As a licence fee payer, I’m more than happy for this to have happened – as part of what the BBC’s remit is to me. I don’t want to watch or listen or read about everything that they broadcast or publish. I have no real interest in Antiques or horesracing but I don’t have a problem with the BBC covering either of those subjects. And I can add it to the list of shared musical experiences where I can say “I was there”.

Of course, the BBC’s commercial competitiors (and I used to work for one) constantly bemoan the fact that this is the sort of thing they’d like to have done if they had the resources or the budget or similar. But quite often it’s the case that they quite simply don’t have the ingenuity to think of it. As I’m now coming to expect, Absolute Radio did a sound job of covering the U2 album too (with far fewer resources and no less quality). As a fan, I’ve downloaded the podcast and will devour their video special when it’s online too (made on a far smaller budget no doubt).

So did the BBC give over their airwaves to publicise a record. Not really. They were presented with a unique opportunity to create a wide range of content with one of the most popular bands in the world. To have turned it down would have failed me as  a licence fee payer.

I just hope the album is worth the wait…

Seacrest….online

| jamesstodd

Just happened across the updated for 2009 (or so I guess) Ryan Seacrest website for his show – he is the master of self promotion. But is there anything radio stations can learn from “Brand Seacrest”?

picture-1
Image from http://www.ryanseacrest.com

This site is all about Ryan, where you can see him, where you can listen to him, and especially, who he’s been talking to.

But then, this guy’s show is something else – in terms of content and especially how it’s used. If you think that UK stations are networked too much – this show (and it’s many derivatives) are networked and reversioned around the world.

A couple of years ago, whilst I was still working at Capital 95.8, Ryan and his team (Dennis Clark – his Exec Producer, plus his team from Premiere Radio networks who look after his syndicated shows) came to London. They spent a week doing their L.A breakfast show from Capital’s studio. What was interesting was how they did it ; how much was live, how much was pre recorded “as live”, and especially how the content was used an reused. Let’s face it – when you’re on air as a breakfast show in Los Angeles – but also on air 10-1 or 1-4 or maybe 3-7 on maybe 2-300 radio stations- the brand needs to be about Ryan and his celeb friends.

Then there’s American Top 40 – or it’s variations. This alone needs a 2-3 hour weekly recording session, just to record the links for all the formats, plus various localisations for the stations that take it.

Of course, when a guest comes in on Ryan’s show – they put their headphones on, don’t care how they look and just think of it as a radio show…don’t they?

Not with Ryan… The studio often has cameras set up to shoot the guests and Ryan – they don’t wear headphones but have in-ear monitors like on TV…so the content can show on Ryan’s YouTube channel, or be used on his E! Entertainment show, or maybe as footage on American Idol. And of course, the branding on the walls is for “On Air with Ryan Seacrest” 

 

Image courtesy of www.ryanseacrest.com
Image courtesy of http://www.ryanseacrest.com

Anyway – back to the main point. His site is Web.2.0 and more in terms of interaction. You can share everything, link to everything, interact with everything.  You can link to his social networks – yes he’s on Twitter – and Facebook. And all of these platforms allow him (or his team) to post content that brings you into even more contact with him – and ultimately his show and ultimately the stations he’s on. You can even (should you so wish) share all of his content on your site – from a fully interactive player that gives you audio and video, to sharing any of his blogs or gossip feeds.

So if you’re not a KIISfm – but maybe slightly smaller, can you even hope to interact on this scale? Well, maybe not – but the tools for interaction and sharing are all out there – and don’t take the biggest brain to work out. His site is built on the WordPress platform (please correct me if I’m wrong). If you’re reading this blog – or have a facebook profile, there’s no reason why you couldn’t build something simpler but similar. And if you’re in radio, working as a producer and you don’t think you need to know how to do this – think again.

Stodd – out.

PS – Not everyone like’s his show though…

School Closures on the Radio

| jamesstodd

This article was written during a snow event in 2009.

If you have arrived here looking for school closures in 2013, your first ports of call should be
Uk wide: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hi/default.stm
South / Southwest: http://thebreeze.com
And don’t forget, you can hear the radio on the move for free with the UK Radioplayer App

————-

As expected, the slightest hint of snow and London ground to a halt.

And so to the feverish task this morning of trying to find out if my daughter’s school was closed. A check on the school website…nothing. A check on the BBC London website…nothing. A check on Capital FM’s website…(shows how much great travel content was on there – but no school closures)….more than nothing (briefly at around 7.30am).

capital

I’m pretty sure Capital and BBC london would have wanted to carry this information – so why nothing…?

I searched for school closures – and up popped BBC Kent and the most comprehensive one – Invicta fm…

invicta

So where did my local council (the London Borough of Bromley) suggest I looked online? Nowhere. Their advice was to tune into Time FM.

Timefm – a small South London station were manfully trying to keep up to date answering the phones, and reading out as many school closures as possible – and taking calls from listeners and generally doing what a real local radio station should do. They seemed to have updates on their site – but that seemed to crash a lot. But they got the job done this morning.

Now, one suspects, there was a decision taken somewhere in London at some point to delegate out the provision of school closures to the ultra local radio stations – but in this hooked -up online age – surely there could be a system where the London councils could co-ordinate the information – to be available for all to see – either specifically tailored as a real time feed to all council sites – or equally – to be available on the otherwise excellent travel coverage on sites such as capitalfm.co.uk .

I guess it shows how much we’ve come to rely on websites for information – but it was reassuring to know that stations such as LBC and Capital, plus the small ones like Timefm – could still step up to the job and give me all the information I needed.

UPDATE:

These 2 blogs have interesting takes on the subject from the Surrey and Northumberland

UPDATE December 2010

So more snow hits the UK – and predictably London is at a standstill again. My daughter’s school still don’t add anything to the website, but texted us. The college my wife works at added a closure to the front page of it’s website.

On the radio, Capital FM has links to all the councils in London and had detailed travel news on their site. BBC London were on top of the travel news and they too had links to all the council websites.

And of course – there’s always TWITTER – nice use of a hashtag from BBC Surrey

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