[Note: Thiese are rough notes so apologies for any typos and general bad English. I’ll try to update as I go.]
Nicky Campbell kicked off proceedings as host with a few stories about his life in radio before introducing a very nice summary of radio in the last 12 months.
The first panel has Tim Davie (BBC), Andrew Harrison (RadioCentre), Stuart Taylor (GMG) and Simon Cole (UBC). Tim Davie believes that 2015 is a challenging timeframe, while Stuart Taylor highlighted the in-car issue.
Campbell wants to know what’s in it for the listener, Simon Cole says that the savings from dual transmission must be reinvested in content.
Tim Davie doesn’t seem himself “strapped to DAB” but he wants to see a credible portable medium aside from DAB. But he says that IP doesn’t do the job yet. The last year has seen some good progress in radio. We need to be able to buy a decent digital radio for £15 and not £50.
On the question of whether the BBC should be funding the transition to digital, Davie thinks that there’s some element that the BBC should pay for. He questions how much of local rollout should be paid for though!
Campbell asks about the potential of a new administration, and Davie pointed out that we’ll be hearing the Tory point of view at this Festival.
Stuart Taylor points out that it’s not certain that every station wants to go national. He argues for freedom in format change – radio is competing with unfettered competitors.
Davie is asked about how a post digital switchover landscape might look and Davie talks about share of listening – not share of radio. The future will have, by one means or another, almost infinite choice. Taylor thinks that a lot will change in five years with signal strengths increased and radios in cars. But the key thing is that radio is up against so many other things these days – people continue to find time to listen to radio.
Nicky Campbell draws attention to the very obvious issue that Global Radio, the UK’s largest commercial radio operator, appears to have sent nobody to the Radio Festival, the UK’s biggest radio conference (In fact there are one or two people here – but they’re keeping quiet).
A question from the audience asks about Libby Purvess’s recent Times column questioning the green credentials of digital radios. Harrison and Davie are in agreement that it’s certainly something to be addressed. Harrison says that we now have a brief to take to manufacturers about precisely what kind of radios need to be brought to the market.
Glynn Jones from Digital One wants to know why advertising on digital radio services is being sold as a discount rather than a premium. Taylor agrees and says that it’s been sold wrongly – as a cheap bolt on. Buyers obviously look to undermine a sales offering, but he believes it’s an issue that’s being addressed.
Campbell asks about the recently announced Radio Council which Harrison believes is a good thing and will allow everyone to work on the industry’s issues. The joint radio player is a good example, he says.
Simon Cole says that the industry is too small to have lots of internal fighting.
Tim Davie says that we all have to huddle together for scale. He says that lots of people want to join the Radio Council, but he won’t say who.
A questioner from Wales points out that it’ll take six DAB transmitters to cover his single current FM transmitter in mid-Wales. He says that he turns over £18,000 per month, and it’s unaffordable.
Davie says that this is why there’s public money involved. Harrison suspects that in some of the nations there’ll be additional help.
Torin Douglas of the BBC reports that the RNIB suggests that there needs to be a help scheme for blind people. Harrison believes that it’s a bit too early to consider this. New digital sets, however, should be much easier for blind and disabled to use than analogue dial sets.
Davie points out that we’re at much lower levels than television, so comparisons with the digital television switchover fund are too early.
Someone from Norway asks about getting radios, in car in particularly, in line across Euirope. Cole says that we now have the industry engaged and it’s a question of getting new functionality like traffic cameras built in. Cole believes that we’re at the tipping point across Europe now.
The first Spotify question comes up from somebody who makes commercials for them. Taylor says that they’re not radio but they’re a competitor for listening share. He suggests we question them about their pricing and sales.
Teenage Wasteland – Engaging with a Youth Audience is the title of the next session presented by Dr Anthony Cox of Sparkler.
Campbell introduced the session saying that youth audiences have declined, despite overall audiences reaching a record level. Cox points out that while reach has remained stable, listening hours have declined by 36m hours over the last five years.
Cox explored some of the other things that youths are doing (!) these days, and presented some video diaries. Radio’s in there, but so is MySpace, YouTube and many other things.
He says that big brands stand out for this audience and platforms are very important for this age group. But this demographic is the least likely to buy a DAB radio – they want it online.
Richard Sambrook (sambrook.typepad.com) is the director of BBC Global News – which as he points out, is significantly, the BBC World Service.
He notes that the World Service is the biggest digital only radio service in the UK, although I should point out that you can receive it on AM in London, and it’s still just about listenable on shortwave even if many European focused transmitters are turned off.
Sambrook talks about the various challenges the WS has faced over recent years changing from a didactic voice to an inclusive attitude. FM is important, especially in major cities around the world, often working with partners. The World Service is available in 154 capital cities – and have to deal with 154 regulators. There are also about 200 partners.
He says that sometimes partnerships don’t work. They had to pull a service in Sri Lanka for example. But a US partnership is very successful as is one in India (although they’re not allowed to broadcast news there).
In India, the audience is perceiving to be less stuffy than it once was, and is now more modern.
There’ve been changes with some language services increasing massively – sometimes on FM often via mobile, and sometimes online. Video streaming has also increased substantially he says.
Sambrook showed off the impressive BBC Bus for the US Election and the even more impressive BBC WS Train for the recent Indian elections. It was multi-platform and multi-lingual (and very cost efficient – everyone slept on the train).
Save Our Sounds is great new initiative that lets listeners upload audio to a map – a sonic archive.
The BBC Persian TV service launched recently and has quickly become very popular. The flagship programme runs across the web and TV – and has been well received in Iran. Recent weeks have obviously seen a huge surge in traffic with up to five video clips a minute coming into the service. It’s not especially popular with the Iranian government however.
Prison Radio did staggeringly well at the recent Sony Radio Academy Awards – in particular Electric Radio Brixton. Steve Orchard began with an anecdote about being mugged en route to a Prison Radio committee meeting.
Prison Radio first launched in the US in 1938, but in the UK it really started with Feltham in 1994 following a series of teenage suicides. The Prison Radio Association was soon launched as a charity to back the service. Mick Jones and Billy Bragg were two of the first guests on the first broadcast at Brixton.
Orchard explains how low literary skills can be in prison and how the radio improves confidence and more importantly is the main source of information in the prison. Tough subjects are tackled head on – drugs, self-harm, etc.
Overall Orchard played a lot of fantastic radio segments illustrating many aspects of the service offered by the Prison Radio Association, all of it fantastic and thoroughly compelling.
This was followed by a session chaied by Richard Bacon about the power of prison radio. On stage was the governor of Brixton prison, Paul McDowell and Tis, who won a Sony Radio Academy Award for his interview with Jonathan Aitkin and is still a prisoner. He was given special dispensation to attend the Festival today.
Bacon and Tis discussed what it brings to the prisoners, and responded when challenged about why money should be spent on this ahead of other courses.
Bacon wondered about who gets on air, especially as there are plans to roll this out to all prisons across the country. McDowell said that of course he chooses who is allowed on air and who isn’t. Notorious serial killers, for example, are not going to get on air.
The sessions where Governor is asked questions, he says is really no different to what the prisoners ask when he walks around the wings.
Overall a fantastic session.
Mark Oliver and Godfrey McFall from Oliver & Ohlbaum came on to deliver a presentation entitled Radio – The Fight Back Begins.
They opened with the various challenges facing the industry.
In the advertising market, the internet has obviously come along, although its still not made massive headway in display. McFall talked about London where he said that there was a four horse race in London – that puts pressure on yields. In TV there’s been a 50% decline in prices in real terms over recent years meaning that it’s become a threat to radio with the growth of multichannel.
Fragmentation affects the ways of reaching the most valued audiences.
In radio terms regional and digital services, according to McFall, are getting lower yields than
Disintermediation is a fantastic word if you’re playing scrabble. But it’s also looking at ways of connecting with an “audio consumer” in a multiplicity of ways cutting out the middle man.
O&O don’t have great news for those hoping for a quick recovery from the recession.
Having seen some quite daunting challenges, Oliver addresses what the industry can do about all this. He suggests that a two year digital warning might be a little ambition given that TV got six years. Legislative changes are all encouraging however.
There are also plenty of opportunities for the consumer in terms of technology. And the new landscape can become attractive to advertisers.
Beyond spot advertising then show and station sponsorship becomes more important as well as merchandise, events, coupon schemes and competitions. Coupons are particularly good ways to show the impact of advertising on sales.
But in summary – radio needs to help itself and look beyond the well developed world of spot advertising.
The next session was Radio at the Edge (get your tickets now for the full conference in November as it’ll be excellent) – with Mark Friend (BBC Audio & Music), Hugh Garry (BBC Radio 1) and Chris Lawson from Absolute Radio.
Friend started with a presentation which had some interesting facts:
75% of listening is to live radio and 25% is to on demand
94% of iPlayer time is with a listener’s favourite network.
5+ m claim to download regularly
35% now listening to different radio programmes
c 90% are listening to as much or more live radio
Younger listeners prefer highlight packages
Friend explained the constraints under which the BBC was allowed to use podcasts. He also said that the iPlayer has a very long tail of listening.
For a Monday episode of The Archers people catch up very quickly – mostly witin a couple of days. The same was true of last year’s Glastonbury coverage.
A chart comparing TV and radio shows very complimentary ussage of the two media via the iPlayer. Interestingly visualisation figures from Radio 1’s Big Weekend mimics TV viewing in patterns rather than radio with a mid-evening peak.
Chris Lawson then talked about the Absolute Radio story so far. He said that there were 53 ways to listen to Absolute Radio, with 49% of listening being via a digital platform already outside of London. This is something that Absolute is pushing aggressively and the station is going where the audience wants us – highlighting the 120,000 YouTube plays of a Bruno video recently uploaded as well as the success of the recent Dave Gorman podcast, currently at number one in the iTunes charts.
The launch of the iAmp had 8 days of promotion on-air to drive take up. 100,000 installs were achieved over that early period. Now around 24,000 people launch the application on a weekly basis. He compared the Absolute Radio hours with BBC hours and challenged others to do the same.
Lawson noted that the default rating for iTunes is one star so don’t be put off.
He also previewed the LiveAmp which will retail for 59p soon.
Gerry then came on to talk about what Radio 1 has been doing including their Shoot The Summer video. After a clip he explained that using phones was what their audience was doing already.
He also demonstrated Band In Your Hand – the clever augmented reality technology used by Radio 1. We got a live demo… And the live demo worked. Many impressed sounds came from around the audience near me.
Matt Deegan wanted to know if Absolute Radio was missing a section of the audience who weren’t so digitally enabled. Lawson said that people were upgrading if not everyone was at the cutting edge. Absolute Radio wants to pull people forward. Friend said that some things were less mainstream but that’s what Radio 1 audiences expected.
The first session of the afternoon was a choice of four, so I went to The Recession That Rocked Radio.
David Meliveo from Autoglass was first off. He explained how one day in 2005 Aviva bought his main competitor and they lost 25% of their business four weeks later. Their advertising was failing and they weren’t getting return on investment, so they turned to radio in desperation! Radio lets you listen and talking to people about windscreens is intrinsically boring.
Radio also lets you test regionally and it’s cheaper to produce. Their ads were conversational, were 60 seconds and were more friendly.
The results showed a 24% year on year on by nearly a third growth within the previous few weeks. By the end of that campaign they’d achieved 77% increases.
He has showed us a remarkable chart comparing radio investment with demand. The two were in sync and as a result they use radio all the time. Autoglass isnow the biggest brand in radio and the second biggest advertiser.
Autoglass brand awareness has increased 19% in four years.
“Radio advertising has completely changed the way we run our business.”
Demand for replaement windows is seasonal so they advertised in downtimes to flatten out shifts. They have to use fully trained technicians so they can’t use casual labour.
On top of all this, customer satisfaction is at an all time high.
The same formula is being used in another 18 countries. We heard some multi-lingual versions of the ads.
Meliveo in summary says “Keep the faith” – radio is in everybody’s life. He says radio needs to keep investing in programming. He wants to carry on reaching even more people.
Radio is fantastic for brands driving sales and building brands – it needs to sell itself better.
Mark Middlemas from UM spoke about the importance of radio in peoples’ lives yet the small amount of spend. It’s been there a long time. Radio just isn’t sexy but it can still drive sales.
Middlemas thinks that the brands are strong but it needs to be about more than CPTs; value is more than just price. Making more of the talent is also important – using it off-air too. And differentiation and investment in programming is vital he said.
He spoke about a deal UM did with Intel changed the way that everybody thinks about it – silos were broken down. And there are lots of accountability case studies. But there’s more to be done he says. Improvements to audience measurement and RAJAR are key to the future he says.
The PR volume of radfio needs “turning up” says Middlemas – and that can leave radio behind. He highlighted a Microsoft campaign on Global using the band, The Saturdays.
He thinks that it’s a challenging future which makes them very nervous – he mentioned recent pieces by both Libby Purves and Kelvin MacKenzie recently.
Julian Carter said that we had to “get real” about the current situation. More people in programming need to be clearer about the correlation between audience and cash. He talked about networking, and said that hours have increased so far as the Heart network. He questions whether networking in Scotland will work though. LDC, on the otherhand, is trying something different with Phil Riley.
Has consolidation helped? It’s not clear because cannibalisation has happened and too much focus has been on share rather than competing with other industries. Global needs to be strong and profitable as the number one player.
The advertising medium needs to grow – in other countries it takes 10% not 5%. Digital and mobile need to be used more – digital should be pushed on-air. Creativity is important and the RAB is doing something. But he says that you don’t hear as good ads as you used to.
Radio needs to have world class customer service, but many big clients say it’s awful – RAJAR figures get spun.
Finally he says that calls to action are still most important. Branding’s important, but calls to action can drive results like those of Auotglass.
Carter gave an example of B&Q advertised a one-day sale on radio but should have used different copy throughout the day.
Sue Timson, a consultant talked more about what local clients want. She said that local advertisers want many of the same things as national advertisers – they want to know about digital but not yet understand it. Your local station is showbiz however much networking it carries.
But it’s not just a sales problem – that team is almost the last place it impacts on. But everyone has to play a part in commercial success.
John Myers is next up, author of the Myers Review following his three month trip around the world. Myers noted that he was in Canada when Michael Jackson died recently. In Canada they have a 40% Canadian music rule so they couldn’t go to a non-stop Jackson format. In the US it was worse in many stations that are just fully voice tracked for most of the day.
Myers points out that he’s speaking in a personal capacity.
Sometimes Ofcom “has about as much vision as Stevie Wonder.”
Myers explained that he had six weeks to put together his review across all “stakeholders.” He says that a common viewpoint of the regulator among some industry people was that respect for it was as bad as it has ever been.
Myers went back and asked some of the big questions from the start – why was local radio created the way it has been?
Revenue kept up with the number of stations through the 90s until 2004. But growth in listening stopped and declined as station numbers continued to grow. And on top of this share against the BBC fell from the mid nineties. At a point new stations were canibalising existing stations; the cake was being sliced smaller. What’s more, lots of small stations were launching from the beginning of the nineties.
Myers thinks that the problem, which was clear early on, was demand led. Local MPs petitioning for a station would mean one came about. Economic surveys weren’t completed to see if one could be supported. Even though people bid for them, many never would make money, and in some cases they were traded as commodities.
“Licences were awarded to the wrong people… [They] lost out to gold-diggers.”
There are now too many stations in too many markets and he stated that 50 stations would go bust – he believes he’s on track.
“Four reviews in four years does not mean we’re good at this.” Ofcom needs to think bolder and bigger than it has ever done before. Myers thinks that the industry needs to take giant leaps forward.
He said that there isn’t enough local news on the radio and that it needs to be written into licences.
Ofcom: “The milk tooth regulator – where the milky bar kid’s bite isn’t too bad”
Myers says that local radio needs to broadcast local information. He also thinks that it’s really not too hard to measure local appreciation.
Myers was vitriolic on Ofcom’s regulation of local radio. Local radio is about what comes out of the speakers and not where it comes from – so co-location is a sensible way forward. Listener satisfaction can and should be measured.
Myers believes that the regulator doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t like it; so it wants to kill it.
He than ran through the options recently put forward by Ofcom and in summary – he didn’t like them.
“I’ve heard of a local station recording one local bulletin in the morning and putting it out ever hour through the day.”
Each of the three ideas that Ofcom proffered were rejected, often scathingly, and always with good humour.
Myers claims that he can’t find proof that Ofcom monitored more than 10 stations in 2008. And not one yellow card, he thinks, has been handed out without a listener or competitor complaining.
Myers suggests we all go home tonight and complain about five different radio stations. Then do the same the next month! Complaint led regulation simply isn’t good enough in his view.
If a local station is not valued by the community, then it’s not a local station, he says.
“Virgin is now Absolutely gone…”: Myers on the changing face of commercial radio.
Myers believes that the industry’s changed and the regulator also needs to change. He stresses that this isn’t a slight on the people there, but new people bring new ideas.
“Local radio is not dead – it’s just been re-engineerd.”
In summary then – a fantastically clear minded view of what local commercial radio is, what it could – and in his opinion – should be, and what we want from a regulator.
Nicky Campbell, doing sterling hosting duties, asked Martin Campbell from Ofcom to respond, which he did. He said that he didn’t recognise what Myers reported. Myers said that this was the case and that perhaps they wouldn’t necessarily feed that back to Ofcom.
On formats, Myers believes that the days of regulating on music are gone and that we should regulate on content.
Joan Warner, CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, spoke next about the launch of digital radio in Australia. In Australia, the rollout was simultaneously carried out by public and commercial operators.
She said that they learnt much from the UK like forcing stations onto low bit-rates. Receivers had to affordable from day one. She says that they sold out quickly. Instead of copying the UK model of multiplex ownership, stations get direct access to the airwaves via consortia.
In Australia in building coverage was planned for as many stations can’t be heard in tower blocks. That means higher powers – 50 kW.
She noted that when FM launched in Australia in 1980 spectrum was given away free because there was a belief that nobody would buy new devices to listen to the radio…
Warner says that radio is the only industry in Australia that’s promoting, on-air, the fact that advertising through a recession is a smart thing to do.
Australia, of course, has adopted DAB+ for their launch earlier this year. This means it’s 2-3 times more efficient. That means everyone can get on to digital radio. Community stations will get on digital, although narrowcasters won’t.
She says we can’t just sit where we are and assume we’ll keep the healthy audiences they currently have.
Each broadcaster is allocated space and they’re free to do with it what they want – they can split it into smaller lower quality services, or offer higher bit-rate single services. Broadcasters can do what they like with the bit-rate apart from video. She says that radio is considered a free to air platform; people will buy new devices, but they won’t pay for subscriptions.
The May launch saw five major markets but there’s another 100 areas to go covering 40% of the Australian population. And in Australia radio wants some of the vacant TV bandwidth when TV goes digital.
She spoke about how internet radio is not the answer, being very spectrum inefficient and unable to scale easily or cheaply. The usual, very valid, issues were brought up, but she admits that it’s a hobbyhorse.
New radio services have been introduced including “Pink Radio” which is a commercial offering based around a new Pink album. It’ll soon be renamed Britney Radio.
So some interesting ideas to learn from.
Shelagh Fogarty joined Nicky Campbell on stage to talk about how their Sony Award winning work together. It turns out that Fogarty thinks it’s useful to like your co-presenter on-air.
However, Fogarty thinks Campbell can be a “strange fish”, saying that he can sometimes her what the interview’s “about” at the last minute! She also talked about how they do sometimes carry out two-headed interviews where the other one will pitch in with a question.
Campbell says that Fogarty sometimes does personal emails while he’s carrying out an interview! She said that they’re messages to the producer.
Torin Douglas asked how they choose who does the “big interview.” Over time, Fogarty says they’ve worked out their strengths, weaknesses and favourite areas.
A question from John Mottram was about how a damaged partnership might work. Campbell says that it’s harder for them than say The Today Programme where everything’s more compartmentalised. He also said that TV is very different because it’s more scripted – although
Fogarty says that she doesn’t like the simpering looks co-presenters give one another on breakfast television in particular.
James Cridland asked about how text messages that are read out on air are chosen. In a compliant BBC there are producers read through texts in advance. There are good reasons at times for doing this he says, when it’s a particularly controversial subject. Occasionally people would smuggle things into texts that they didn’t realise – Fogarty remembers the use of the word ‘roasting’ on one occasion.
Campbell says moving to Manchester is a fantastic opportunity, and if you say you can’t go anywhere you sound dreadful. The words “down there” and “up here” when talking about somewhere like Edinburgh. Campbell reiterates that he is moving there. It’s not like he’s moving to Canada! Fogarty hasn’t decided however… She says it’s actually more about
Campbell suggests giving Fogarty an 18m pound three year contract…
That concludes day one (or two if you were here yesterday) of Radio Festival!