Capital FM

The (Welsh) Capital (FM)

| jamesstodd

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.

Summertime Ball mixes it up

| jamesstodd
Image (C) Global Radio

Last year, I remember being fairly lukewarm to the coverage online and on air for Capital FM’s Summertime ball.

This year they turned up the heat.

Everything about this year’s show was bigger and better. But in particular, how they interacted with the audience in the build up to the day.

Twitter was alive with #stball tweets all day. In fact – at one stage the event was trending in Twitter’s Top 10.

Capital kept listeners up to date with everything backstage, featured loads of user generated pictures, and threw up loads of videos from the performances the next day.

And most impressively, used new technology such as Radio DNS to keep my iPhone app and Pure Sensia up to date with images from the show – and additional information too.

Having worked on shows like this in a past, I know the enormous effort this sort of thing requires. Looks like Capital pulled out all the stops – and it showed.

And this video  from DJ Earworm was a nice touch too. He’s the guy who did the clever United States of Pop Mashup in 2009.

Get Into The Groove

| jamesstodd

Steve Martin posted this video on his blog recently – from a recording session for a station at Groove Addicts in Los Angeles (from Jingle News)

I was really glad to see this – since I had the pleasure of working with these guys back in December 2002 and  February 2003 on a massive jingle package for the old Capital FM Network. They are a fantastic team of people who have been doing what they do for decades. From memory, I think they tend to do far more work for commercials now than radio stuff, but this is a really interesting example of how they work.

The Groove Addicts Plane

Making radio  jingles is done in so many different ways. You don’t necessarily need massive studios and huge bands in a studio to create a big sound. But they are in L.A.- and in L.A. – you do things BIG. And it’s all about the client as well – a huge sun terrace with catered lunch – food and drink on tap and a fantastic vibe to fire off too.

The studios at Groove Addicts are massive. In fact, when they were built, the building had a small plane hanging from the inside of the roof. So they built the studios, breakout area and all the facilities around it. It’s pretty cool to be playing a game of pool in between sessions with this plane overhead. And the staff are pretty freindly too (though not quite sure why I’m smiling so much..).

Seeing the video got me a little nostalgic for that package we worked on back in 2002 – it was a huge effort really. The demos came about pretty quickly in the November of 2002 and we had it all on air in the spring of 2003. At the time, I was working with our production consultant Jean-Michel Meschin of Soniic Design in France. He now mainly cuts radio ads for French movies – but still works on radio imaging too. In fact – there are still some elements of his influence on air in the production of Fun Radio in France where he was one time production director.

(L-R Phil-X, Gerhard Joost and Jean-Michel Meschin

And the highlight was probably working with these guys – the composer/musician etc Phil-X who composed the rockier stuff (including the Top of Hour)- and the engineer Gerhard Joost. In fact – Phil had a band who we saw live at the House of Blues when we were over there – and this was one of their songs. OTT or what?

The Jingle Bell Ball Rocks

| jamesstodd

I remember writing, back in June, about 95.8 Capital FM’s Summertime Ball. My conclusion was that the event was great, but the online coverage were pretty average.

This weekend, they ramped it up 1000 per cent – and gave a pretty much perfect example of how this sort of event can live and breathe online and on air.

If I’d been a listener getting ready to go to the ball, there was pretty much everything  I’d have wanted. From online travel guides, to background on all the artists. And as the weekend arrived, the content ramped up too.

From their YouTube channel, there was this clever  preview of the stage going up:

And as the event progressed, all the backstage interviews arrived here too. From Ne-Yo to JLS, to the most viewed at present – Miley Cyrus.

But my favourite part was the online blog, and more impressive – the Twitter update feed. This gave a really interesting insight into the whole event, from the buildup to what was going on backstage. Even the iPhone app had photos and content updated on it throughout the evening – great for listeners on their way home listening to the station.

And from the look of it – the listeners enjoyed it too.

As the promos said last night – “only Capital could do an event like this” It was big. It was in your face . And it was 2 sell-out nights at the O2.

Nice one Capital.

Capital – (Hot Rockin’) at Last?

| jamesstodd

It’s been over 12 months since I left Capital FM.

When I left, I had mixed feelings. Here was a station which I’d put loads of time and effort into as part of a dedicated production team who had been passionate about making it succeed, despite many changes in direction, format and leadership. We’d had to face being judged day in day out by media obeservers, the press and at many points, by the City.  Yet, throughout it all, there was a core team of people who really did want it to get better.

So you can maybe understand that I was a little cynical about the sound being created by the new owners in the months after I left.

Well, for the record, I think they were probably right. To make a wholesale change, you really do need to be brutal – strip stuff down and get back to basics. As an imaging producer, for me the sound was too simple, too basic. But it has probably done the job it was intended to do. Strip it back, let  the music talk, and then start building on a few core things; big events, the biggest hits and the big stars. And that’s what they’ve done.

And I think it’s an important point to be aware of. You can’t just produce the type of radio you want to hear as a producer. It has to be attuned to how the listener hears it, and relate to them in the right ways. What I find now in my current job, working for Pure Tonic Media, is that there’s a real need to be able to switch your ways of thinking depending on the particular project you’re working on. In one week, I can be making material for CHR format stations, a rock format and then, like last week, BBC Radio 3 and 4

But there has to be room in station imaging for touches of humour or topicality.  And there are odd moments of that in Capital’s current production used for the Jingle Bell Ball. In fact this morning I heard a brilliantly simple piece featuring Sir Michael Caine uttering the line “even I can’t get tickets; the only way I’ll be able to get in is to blow the bloomin’ doors off”. Simple, creative and fun. I hope they’ll start doing this more on occasion – otherwise it can all begin to sound a little one dimensional.

In fact, events like the Summertime Ball and currently the Jingle Bell Ball now show how much Capital is heading back on track.

Nik Goodman mentioned recently how he thought the current TV ad for the event had pretty poor production values for such a big brand. I do agree it doesn’t look a million dollars and doesn’t sound that creative. However, it is in your face and has a pretty simple message: we’ve got the biggest stars, you want to come ,and the only way you can is to listen to us. Yes it’s big, bragging and boastful – but good or bad, that’s what Capital does well. You don’t go to them for insightful analysis. You go there for Johnny Vaughan having a laugh with the punters, the latest Black Eyed Peas song and concert tickets. And if they can win with that in a crowded market, they should keep doing it.