Radio

The mighty Power Tower is no more

| jamesstodd

It was a Sunday morning – 4th December 1988. I was waiting for the gates to be unlocked to get into the school hall at Portsmouth Grammar school for a technical rehersal for a school play. And we were sat around a radio listening to this…103.2 Power FM

 

Instead of non stop Phil Collins and Heart and Tina Turner, the South Coast had a cool new radio kid – playing Ton Loc, Whitney, Pet Shop Boys, They Might Be Giants, pop hits through and through, but delivered with an energy that hadn’t been there before..(Ocean Sound/radio Victory anyone?). Plus DJs who were young, and a bit more edgy and fun – Pete Wardman, Bernie Simmonds and Chris Kelly . Let’s face it – the only real competition was Radio 1 – with Simon Bates, Gary Davies and Steve Wright. And as Power FM grew more confident, it sounded cooler too. It was 90s radio, and for a while, it rocked.

 

Fast forward to 2008 – almost 20 years later – and Power FM is now no more – replaced at the weekend by GALAXY  

As time moved on, Power FM has found it harder to sound different in a market that has become more crowded. As resurgent Radio 1, local  competition from Ocean, Wave105, The Coast plus countless more local stations. Where Power once was cool and new, the world of radio has moved on and it’s now all about brands.

Galaxy launched in 1990 in Bristol, and whilst it’s music policy has evolved between stations, it’s always been one cool customer – riding the waves of Dance and R n B.

And let’s face it – the South coast has been crying out for something like this for a long time. I’ve got mixed views on whether the “destruction” of truly local stations is a good thing or not. The bottom line is, if it were my money, would I do the same and try to generate a maximum amount of revenue for my investment – whilst keeping local advertisers happy? I guess the answer is Yes. Do listeners necessarily care where the programme is coming from as long as it’s entertaining and delivers what they want? Probably no? Sure, it’s another local station gone in name – but was Power really ever a truly local station- more a  music station in a local market. It always wanted to be bigger than that – so will a change of name and a tweak of format help? Given that the Galaxy brand is well established, and pseudo national – then probably yes.

So,the world moves on, Power FM has grown up and the mighty Power tower has been demolished.

The Best TV Theme Show Mashup ever?

| jamesstodd

I’ve been listening to BBC 6 Music a lot recently to purge my system of years of Commercial radio overload. Not that I’ve given up on commercial radio – particularly stations like Absolute Radio and XFM. But after years of working in it, it’s good to feel free to try out new things – and not get a guilty feeling that I should be checking out “my station”.

I heard this the other week whilst doing the ironing (just to put it into context – not that it’s particularly relevant…). Just a great example of a funny, well written and really nicely produced parody.

Maybe we’ll see it on updated titles on BBC 1 sometime soon?

Listen here…

They’ve done it again

| jamesstodd

So Radio 2 have created another brilliantly conceived, yet simple TV ad to showcase what the station is all about.

 

There have been many attempts to create compelling TV ads for radio stations and radio shows. Some worked and some didn’t. Coming myself from a commercial background, the only one recently for my old station Capital 95.8 that I feel worked  was the one we created to launch Johnny Vaughan’s breakfast show. It showed him dancing all over London to a version of “Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner”. This was fairly big budget and designed to create an affinity between Johnny, Capital and London.

This new Radio 2 ad is a mash up of songs they play on  the station; Blondie’s ‘Atomic’, David Bowie’s ‘Sound and Vision’ , James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’, plus  Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way’ and KT Tuntstall ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’.

To me, you get hooked in by the clever cutting of the music, plus visually how the video clips are cut and recut, as if to mimic sampling of the songs. 

The ad features many of the stations star names including Jonathan Ross, Russel Brand and Chris Evans (though no Wogan). 

The clever part will be to see how they extend this message this time. I’d expect the clip (now available on You Tube) to be a viral success. They are running a version on air which includes the musical soundtrack, cut together with audio clips from all the shows – taking the idea in a different direction, but making it work on the radio station. Not quite sure how it would translate into print…talking bus shelters anyone?