Look what just launched at the Morning Show Bootcamp in Miami.
I worked on the original demos for this last year with the guys at Production Vault. It’s moved on loads since then – and it will probably be huge.
If you run a station and want something ahead of the curve for your breakfast show – I guess you’d better give your Reelworld rep a call…
Here in the UK today (June 22 2011), BBC Radio 2 is trying out a clever marketing trick.
They are pairing up all of the presenters from different shows and genres to present in different parts of the day. It’s being described as “a-12 hour on air celebration of everything the station has to offer”.
For a station like Radio 2, 2DAY gives a great opportunity to showcase the range of what they offer to listeners who may only tune in for certain parts of the day. Of course, there’s a danger that having hooked people in, they’ll come back expecting the same every day. But at least they’ll have heard a sample of everything else that the station offers. And that will hopefully make them want to sample more. For the people who complain that the BBC wastes resources promoting the mainstream offerings from their radio stations, this is a nice example of using the mainstream presenters to help showcase the outer parts of the schedule.
I really like the style of the TV trail that they have created to promote it too. It’s a bit like one of those children’s puzzles where you slide the pieces around to finally get the full picture. It’s a nice visual metaphor and resolves with all the presenters on it as well.
Yesterday, Capital FM hosted its Summertime Ball at Wembley Stadium for 75,000 rain-soaked fans with acts ranging from JLS and Nicole Scherzinger to The Wanted and Jennifer Lopez.
I spent the weekend in Cardiff, once home to another similar event when Red Dragon FM was around. Cardiff is now one of the cities that has Capital FM as its own radio station. And this weekend in Cardiff it was all about the Ball. And even though the event was over 2 hours away in London – it still sort of felt local. All the local shows talked about was the fact that they had last-minute tickets to give away. All the news bulletins led with the Ball – with a reporter backstage and loads of quick relevant scene setting. And on Sunday morning when Cardiff was being soaked in a torrential downpour, the local host had upbeat, excited callers on, getting ready for “South Wales’ road trip to the Ball”.
In fact, the weekend served as a warm up for Take That’s arrival in Cardiff – an event that it seems is so anticipated that one local fashion advertiser has themed their local campaign around the band’s arrival.
My personal road trip home from Cardiff joined coverage of the Ball at about 4, and it was good to hear Capital throwing everything at it – from backstage reporters to “live” interviews along with (somewhat surprisingly) live tracks too. Live performances are hardly ever as good as recorded ones , so this felt a bit of a brave move for Capital. But as a passive listener, it made me feel part if the show. They were also making much of the HD photos available online along with video interviews. And I’m sure they will be hammering home the amount of online content (both photos and video) available for listeners to check out in the next few days.
Little is made of the backstage effort made to make this sort of thing happen. I know there will have been a fairly small team of hugely dedicated people working long hours to make this happen from engineers to online editors to producers. Maybe Global should shout publicly about this a little more – they should be proud of the team.
But, the moment I heard Capital FM’s Greg Burns link to someone high above London in the Flying Eye describing the sight of the stadium and the bands arriving, it felt like Capital had really nailed it. I’m uncertain whether the Flying Eye is still even in existence on air on Capital. But it is radio shorthand to Capital’s past that still exists in the collective memory (certainly for the older part of the audience). It’s a simple device to paint pictures and create context. And it was a nice subtle link to Capital’s past heritage too.
Back in 2009, I wondered whether one day I’d be able to listen to what I wanted, when I wanted it on my commute to work. I wondered whether I’d be able to switch on my portable device and get the latest news, the latest weather and maybe a selection of content alongside the music I wanted.
Yesterday’s announcement by Apple of the new iOS and also iCloud made me think that maybe this idea could be getting nearer. It looks like, along with allowing me to sync up anything I’ve bought from iTunes, by using iTunes Match, I’ll be able to (at a small cost) match up what I already have on iTunes and sync it with the cloud.
But, surely, there’s more to it than that. From what I understand, and I may be wrong), I’ll be able to sync my iphone up wirelessly with my library. So I’m hoping that since my library not only contains music but also podcasts, that they will sync as well.
If this is the case, this surely offers some interesting options for radio broadcasters.
In a post yesterday, Radio Intelligence asked “is podcasting radio’s enemy?“. The conclusion is that it’s not – but there are some broadcasters who still disagree.
It would be oh so nice if the radio trades spilled some digital ink on these types of broadcasters rather than creating the impression that radio can simply step into a tricked out DeLorean where it’s always 1999.
There has been much discussion of how radio still has a place within the music industry. One of these roles is that of Music Curation. This could be as diverse as new music from Radio 1, or Capital FM bringing you the latest hit record first. Does this always-synced future from Apple now mean that Capital FM should be publishing Smart iTunes playlists that contain the weeks new releases? If you are a Capital fan, you could have this on your iTunes account. Each week, as it syncs, it would show you the new songs that Capital has added – and that you could then buy (maybe with a nice partnership deal for Capital and Apple to get a share of revenues).
But there’s more. If my iPhone now syncs podcasts, couldn’t Capital FM produce a daily podcast that is in effect a topical call to action, a setup of an online-only contest entry or quick excerpt of that days big guest from the breakfast show. Maybe there could be a series of short “blipcasts” – no longer than 60 secs – that have a showbiz update or maybe a daily contest. If there were a way to combine this into a smart playlist with the biggest songs from the Capital playlist – then maybe there’s a way of reaching potential Capital listeners who don’t listen on the move.
And, (thanks to Radio Intelligence for the Twitter suggestion), I’d call it Capital Fm On Demand
Now whilst this may not be possible yet – and indeed the iCloud may not yet offer this – maybe my hoped for future is starting to get nearer.
What happens when your favourite station changes its furniture – be that it’s jingles, it format, it presenters or even its name?
Photo by @delrico http://yfrog.com/h8mvhegj
This morning, BBC Radio 1 refreshed the sound of its news bulletins. You can hear how it sounds on Newsbeat here. The previous package had been on air since around 2006, so a refresh was probably overdue. I’m sure there will be lots of discussion on some forums – but I think it works really well. It sounds fresh, contemporary and fits the current direction of the station.
The new sequence features the phrase “Listen, Watch, Share” – which itself received 30 minutes or so of discussion from Chris Moyles at the start of today’s show. The logic is simple – and fits with the strategy of Radio 1. It’s now as much about online as it is about radio. And there are opportunities to “share” all over the Radio 1 website. Though strangely, on the Radio 1 new pages you can only “Bookmark”.
Moving the “audio furniture” of any radio station is harder than you think. Listeners are used to familiarity and routine. Since a lot of radio listening is fairly passive/ in the background, when something changes, it doesn’t sound right. When stations change presenters, some listeners get annoyed. When stations rebrand or become part of a network, some feel like they have lost some local identity. And sometimes, when changes are proposed, the audience can get very vocal – such as when the Radio 4 controller decided to change the theme to a long running feature.
At some of my previous stations, loads of thought was put into how any changes on air happened. And in some, the mantra was “get it on air – they’ll get used to it”. At Radio 1, I’m guessing the change will have been carefully considered, piloted and refined.
And if you want to “share” this – the buttons are below..
Here in the UK, Manchester’s Key 103 has taken a break from playing non stop Gaga/Bieber/Perry to become TakeThat103 for one day only to celebrate the band’s return to the city 16 years since they last played there.
You can read all about it here in more detail on the UK’s Radio and Marketing blog.
“Flipping format” is nothing new to the UK. Before becoming Glide FM, Oxford’s FM 107.9 became Glee FM. And in the US, stunts like this happen all the time .
In Australia, they do it a different way – creating pop up radio stations to celebrate specific days or events – such as ABC Woodstock (to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock) or ABC Beatles (a weekend of documentaries to mark the 40th anniversary of the break up of the band).
The BBC did something similar last year with BBC Tennis – as Adam Bowie notes here.
When I worked in South Wales, we once even created an extra station for Red Dragon FM in Cardiff to support the first year of the staging of the Wales Rally GB. The station – Red Dragon Rally FM- ran as a separate station – taking Red Dragon programming overnight and flipping to rally news and background interviews with a more rock oriented music policy.
Let’s just hope no-one becomes Bieber FM
Ikea have a great advert running in Australia at the moment.
[Agency:Three Drunk Monkeys, Sydney]
But when is it OK to use the BEEP?
A few years back, the Scott Mills show on BBC Radio 1 got into trouble with OFCOM for a feature they ran which featured supposedly rude words beeped out. In fact, they beeped out perfectly clean words, but by beeping them out, made the audio sound filthy.
A listener complained about an item called “Badly Bleeped TV” – a regular feature in this radio programme, in which extracts from TV or radio are played with words ‘bleeped’ out. The words themselves are later revealed as being not offensive. However, the remaining beginning and ending sounds of the words give the impression that the ‘bleep’ is masking an offensive word, or create the beginning and end sound of an offensive word on either side of the ‘bleep’.
At Capital when BAM BAM had a (annoyingly short lived) show, we were tasked with creating some imaging that launched his show. It was created by my former colleague Arden Hanley and it featured the 6 year old son of our then marketing director saying lots of words that sounded like he was swearing. But the piece talked about the fact that BAM BAM had a beeping machine – precisely to stop people swearing. [If anyone has a recording -let me know – I’d love to share it here too].
Maybe the Aussies are just a little more laid back about this sort of thing??
Here’s something for all of you who work in radio production , particularly those of you who need to create station imaging, promos and other ear candy.
My friends Andreas and Oli at SoundQuadrat have just launched their own production library called Fame FX. I’ve been sharing audio with them for a while over at the BenztownBranding blog. For aspiring imaging producers and those with lots of experience too, it’s a great read.
Here’s the demo:
When I was running the production department at Capital FM, we were constantly bombarded with news of the latest sound libraries – all designed to help give our imaging added bite. Some were great. Some were absolute tat.
In the end, we ended up working with Jeff Thomas as a production consultant – with a custom created package, and then access to his legendary library. Now that is the Godfather of movie trailer-esque sound design elements.
But for many stations – completely out of their budget.
Fame FX is a fantastic collection of ready to grab sounds – neatly categorised into 2 folders – FX and Impact Loops. And is just $299+VAT.
They say:
“The only Sound FX buyout package you need this year – an energetic, bad ass and powerful tool to make your stuff stand out. Fame FX comes with tons of mix outs, solo workparts and includes: impacts, hits, sonic IDs, starters, electronics, flyIns, combos, slow downs, stops, impact loops, zaps and much more. Get your station on the next level. This package brings you Fame.
Fame FX delivered via download and ready to roll in 3… 2… 1…”
The FX are huge – and there are a real variety – all nicely named to explain what they do – rather than random words. As a producer, I find this sort of thing really useful – random naming doesn’t really help – unless you are great at remembering that the name of the effect you need to end promos is called “HyperStaticNoiseConfuser1” or similar. I would personally like to have seen these effects categorised into more folders – since I tend to work that way – but I doubt it would take long to go through and sort out your own system.
The Impact loops are also excellent – particularly for last-minute promo elements, or if you need to slam together a top of hour for the weekend with 30 minutes notice. Many of them have a number of versions, with different elements, so that you can mix and match and use different parts within a promo.
Whether you’re producing in a big market or for student radio, this is a fantastic package.
Head over to http://www.fame-fx.com/ And tell them I sent you…
Matt Deegan at Folder media is looking for a developer to work on their projects.
Matt says:
“We’re doing lots of interesting things online and we’re keen to recruit a Developer to work on projects around music and radio listener interaction.”
The guys at Folder Media are working on lots of interesting projects. Maybe you’ve run your student media website, have developed fantastic client websites, or maybe create great apps. You’ll need to love radio and be open to new ideas. And love working in a small team.
You’ll find all the details here. And if you apply, tell them I sent you..
http://www.foldermedia.co.uk/jobs/developer/
JAMES STODD 