THE CASE FOR DECENT RADIO
The argument for tightly formatted output on radio came from the US; as this is how things had always been there and, as more and more radio stations popped up over here and bigger radio groups were formed, the more this model was adopted. A big mistake in my book.
The model is based on the fact that a radio station needs to guarantee a definitive audience so its commercial clients know who is listening and thus advertising can be sold to the highest bidder. The more stations the group’s owners can get to sound the same, the more potential customers they can deliver to specific advertisers, but a side effect if this is the sacrifice of anything surprising, new or different, which is the very reason why commercial radio was so popular in the first place.
The vast majority of commercial radio is so bland nowadays. I find that very sad, the irony being that many of the colourful characters who now run it came from the original crazy days of the ‘let’s give it as go and see what happens’ era. Not only this but when it comes to Britain, the American model is fundamentally flawed in the first place because of one thing; the existence here of the BBC.
In America there is nothing that comes anywhere close to being like the BBC and what nobody realised was that in an ever-increasing cut-throat world of commercialism, where costs and standards would inevitably have to be compromised in order to keep making money out of a thinner slice of the pile, the BBC would be able to continue producing a high-quality product that would keep sounding better and better compared to its dumbed-down rivals. This, in turn, would case the more discerning and ultimately desirable audiences, the likes of which the advertisers would kill for, to leave commercial radio once and for all – which is exactly what’s happened. As a result, commercial radio has never been in worse shape than it is today.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility to take an overall philosophy for a radio station and sell it to advertisers, as opposed to a minute-by-minute breakdown of exactly what will be said and played at every second of the day, albeit guaranteeing a product but at the same time removing any room for creativity or personality. And the mad thing is, this s the only way their next big hit is going to be discovered – the next new voice or idea that could catapult their station ahead of the rest needs the space and freedom to be found out.
The two caveats to this are Classic FM and TalkSport, who both know and respect their audiences inside out, some much so that their audiences in turn trust them enough for there to be some freedom within the schedules. TalkSport especially I find an interesting listen, and Classic FM is a previous winner of the prestigious Sony Award for Radio Station of the Year.
Listening figures for radio are up, yet commercial radio is in decline – this speaks volumes. It’s not because of the BBC’s dominance but simply because somewhere along the line commercial radio lost its balls and became boring.
The sales guys starting calling the shots over the production guys and the tail started to wag the dog. Today the sales floors remain intact, whereas the vast majority of production floors have disappeared altogether. What on earth do they think they are going to sell?
Entertainment must come before advertising. It can never be the other way round; content is king. In the long term, the audience will realise what’s going on and vote with their dials, anyone who presumes otherwise will be out of business, probably for good and quite rightly so. Surely, the bigger the entertainment, the more money you can make around that entertainment, but there has to be entertainment there to start with.
The beginning of this suicide by over-advertising was the ‘promotion-based feature’, a phrase just the mention of which was enough to make a producer’s blood run cold. ‘We’re gonna have another winning weekend,’ came the cry from the sales floor. This was where a whole weekend’s output would be hung around the promotion of a certain product. Basically, it was a straight money deal, usually excused by an hourly competition. ‘All this weekend we’re giving you the chance to win blah blah blah…’ I know, I’ve been there and, for my sins, I have uttered such phrases.
Features like these do not have entertainment at their heart, they are purely designed to make as much money as possible. Eventually the audience come to realise this and see them for what they really are, an endless stream of unimaginative ideas. They then begin to resent this hijacking of what was once colourful and entertaining airtime, ultimately losing interest altogether and switching off.
This programming ‘con’ is the difference between an amusement arcade and a bouncy castle: the amusement arcade may well be full of flashing lights and loud noises but they are merely there to hide the fact that nothing else remotely amusing is going on other than some poor soul gradually being squeezed of their hard-earned cash.
The bouncy castle, on the other hand, may cost 50p to have a go on in the first place, but after that s almost guaranteed joy, smiles and laughter all the way, with the exception of the odd twisted ankle and sprained wrist.
I can only presume Rupert Murdoch was brought up with a big bouncy castle in his garden at home when he was a kid as Sky television seemed to embrace this philosophy from the beginning. People would rather pay extra for programmes they want to see than have to put up with the lame excuses for entertainment that they don’t want to see even if it’s for free, even if they might win a flat-screen television in the bargain, especially when it’s obvious these programmes are just thinly veiled revenue streams driven by avarice and laziness.
It’s bizarre that this was the exact type of dross we were warned to expect from Sky by the same terrestrial broadcasters who are now mostly responsible for churning it out.
Chris Evans
Extract from “It’s Not What You Think” – A Short Rant