BRMB: 45 years ago today, a station came out to play

Sedate? Pah. I was expecting big fun, tidal waves of emotion and mawkish sentiment. Why? Well some of us old originals at BRMB Radio threw a bash last Friday for staff members, to mark the 45^th anniversary of the launch date, February 19^th 1974. That's today. And the day after Friday's bash...I felt distinctly fragile. 

I'm one of the BRMB originals. They'd hired me the previous November, along with the great John Howard; we were the first jocks on board. John left, quite early, to make his way to Radio 4. I stuck around for twenty years, ten on them on air as, mainly, a rock jock.

Beeb big boys in Brum! For a bit anyway...

It's been a fun week

The BBC came to town; about time too. Well, yes, I know there is a much shrunken BBC here already, but this was important national network activity. So a load of network types swept in to be all networky and relevant at the BBC Music Awards on Thursday afternoon at the NEC, oops, sorry, Genting Arena. 

They made a big of a fuss about this. I'm glad they did, and glad they're coming back in 2016, but, really, this is a wannabe version of the Brits: international acts there to shift product in an identikit concrete hangar. Who gets most out of this? More on this whole process later. 

The upside of the week was a lot of local action. And as well as the music events, some old radio hands got gongs. Nice.

The BBC's future (well, maybe) and the Beeb right now

Time spent this week with both the high and mighty and the grafters

A weekend back, I was bantering on air with Les Ross on BBC WM, doing the Sunday newspapers. Les had returned to his first station for their 45^th anniversary celebrations. 

It ran very smoothly. Les was on top of his game, chatting with the newsreader, trailing down the day. It sounded great. We didn't exactly cover a lot of news; that's how it is with a presenter like Les. The vibe in the studio was terrific. A team of pros delivering effortlessly good local radio to a committed audience. It worked, really worked. 

Two days later I went to a meeting run by powers rather higher up in the BBC. This was much more buttoned up, and, dare I say it, a little tortured and convoluted.

So what does YOUR station think you should be hearing?

Music tastes change. So should station libraries. 

More friendly advice for the Beeb from the Times    Flickr - Shawn Kincade

I'm getting tired of the endless government and rival media onslaught on the BBC. Pretty much every day, the Times or the Mail run smugly venomous pieces on the Corporation's failings. I hate this. The Beeb is not perfect. I'm one of many who want to see serious BBC production at all levels back in the Midlands. But as I've said before, the Beeb is unique; it delivers brilliant programmes; we need it.   

BBC Local Radio is in the frame now. An announcement that BBCLR might be a bit more personality driven met yet more carping: the BBC is reneging on its journalistic brief; more jobs to go; the beginning of the end. All that. Hard on the carping came strenuous denials that the Beeb was doing anything of the kind. And so on.

But much of this was about music on the radio. That's a wholly different debate.

The great BBC Midlands underspend: the Birmingham Post and Mail wade in

Wow. FINALLY.

On Birmingham streets this week

I've written about this before. You may have already seen the posts; if so, I thank you. There are links to my main blog outpourings on this at the bottom of this post. 

Some background: the Campaign for Regional Broadcasting Midlands have been lobbying hard about this for some time now; they are absolutely right. But there has been little or no serious response, let alone attempts to address the issues raised. 

I'll sum it up: The BBC Midlands region sends more money down to headquarters in London that any other region, and gets an insultingly small amount spent back locally, way less than any other region. 

This has led to a collapse in the regional broadcast sector. It has done damage. It has stunted careers and jobs growth. 

Frustrating. How do you reverse arrogant and remote corporate mindsets and actions which have, very deliberately, crippled job prospects and hobbled creativity in the region?

The Birmingham Pub bombs. A terrible night on air at BRMB

I was on air the night of the Birmingham bombs. Inside my radio station, here's what happened

Forty years ago this week, I was working through an uneventful evening shift at the old BRMB. It was coming to the end of the year; all the big records were already out. That meant I was playing Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with Peter Gabriel's Genesis; Sheer Heart Attack with Queen, Diamond Dogs from Bowie; Pretzel Logic from Steely Dan; Country Life by Roxy Music. And Bad Company, Sparks, Lynryd Skynyrd, Jackson Browne, ELO and more. You get the picture.  

Classic Rock was over; Punk was coming, but it wasn't here yet.  And the party season was starting to get into full swing. 

Birmingham was crowded, but the station was quiet: just me, the late show guy prepping his show for an 11pm start, and one man on the late shift in the newsroom. I had a guest: a minor Beach Boy. I don't mean that in any kind of dismissive way – it's just he wasn't Brian Wilson, or Dennis, or Carl, Al Jardine or Mike Love. Bruce Johnston had joined the band to cover for Brian when they were on the road, and 40 years ago he was working on solo projects in between Beach Boys work. He was good interview material; very widely experienced and connected; this was the man who went on to pen Barry Manilow's mega hit 'I Write The Songs'. 

The phones were reasonably quiet: it wasn't a football night. Thursday games hadn't yet found their way onto the football calendar. When we did have night games, people - no smartphones then - would call the station to get the footy scores. Especially Villa fans. That drove me crazy, as I had to keep the lines clear at all costs to take a live report on those same phone lines. 

I'm telling you all this, because that was what was on my mind on a routine night at the old BRMB. Those were my concerns.  

So Bruce is chatting away about the Beach Boys, and his solo work. It's interesting stuff.

The first inklings

And then the phones started up. 

Flashing, flashing.

All four lines, flashing, flashing.  

That wasn't right. Really not right. 

It was people in the city centre. 

There's been a bomb. 

They were calling to tell us, or to try to find out what was happening. 

They were calling to leave personal messages. They were scared. What could we tell them? 

I looked across at the newsroom. The on-duty reporter was suddenly very busy. And the first inklings of an awful feeling of dread, something we've all felt several times since, started to well up. 

We wrapped the interview. Bruce Johnston was understandably keen to get back to London as soon as possible. I called New Street station to find out if the trains were running. An equally scared man on the end of the line at the station told me, after I explained at length why I was calling, that, yes, they were. A hasty taxi for Mr Johnston arrived. 

And the phones were flashing, flashing flashing...

Emergency radio

I probably only played one or two records after that. The duty journalist came in to brief me; but I already knew. Moments after, Peter Windows, BRMB's ops manager, appeared in the studio, and we shifted to rolling news mode. I wound up driving the desk for a very different kind of programme. 

I've described maybe a ten minute sequence of events from those first ominous feelings of dread to the station going into full action. 

Suddenly, the newsroom was full. Then it emptied at speed, as reporters headed out to find out what was going on. We had to answer a lot of questions. Could you drive through the city? What exactly had happened? Where? Who had done this? 

To file an audio report in those days, you had to hot-wire a telephone and squirt your audio down the line using banana clips. It was primitive technology, but it worked. 

The calls didn't stop. The switchboard was full. Flashing, flashing. I had to keep clearing the lines down to keep things open for our reporters. People were calling in from all over the region, from abroad, deeply upset, desperate for news. I had to try to answer, and to be as diplomatic as I could... and I absolutely had to get them off the lines. More than ever, I had to keep those flashing, flashing lines open for the reporters. 

I really don't recall much more than that from the evening. I was too busy to file things away in my memory. I called home, briefly, halfway through the night, to say I was OK. And it was back to the flashing lines, the live reports, the telephone interviews. Eventually, I came off shift, stiff, tense, tired and upset. Went home feeling awful.

The aftermath

The next morning was so much worse. 

I'm told the station's coverage was exceptional, and I'm quite sure it was. I simply didn't have time to take it in. Everyone turned out to play a necessary part. From conversations with friends and colleagues, I know that BRMB's counterparts across the city at the BBC did exactly the same. As so often happens in Birmingham, there was an instant, warm, powerful response: no fuss, no shouting. Just people on hand to do what was needed, unprompted; generous, selfless. I didn't see that. All I saw was the inside of a studio; all I did was field streams of information and questions, questions, questions from desperately upset people...

Picking up the threads for the next few days was difficult. I had a show to do the following night, and shows to plan for the coming weeks. Interviews were scrapped or rearranged. The station was subdued. I looked at my music lists with horror, realising for the first time how much you have to change when disaster strikes.  I've had to do that too many times; each time, it's horrible. 

DJs have never, ever, been essential parts of our lives; they are ephemera, like newspapers or vinyl. And when something terrible happens, they are less than relevant.  

We look to our media for information when overwhelmingly awful things happen; we always have. Now, we use social media, and twitter can often be a news channel in its own right. Then, there were very few voices to carry the information people needed. And, truth be told, we were simply seconds away from those developments. But those seconds were essential. Check and check again... or you might risk ruining someone's life. That's old-school journalistic rigour, and I am very glad of it. 

One terrible night in Birmingham, forty years ago. 

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5 lessons learned this year: Musos are more interesting than Jocks...

Do it for the love of it. You won't let anyone down, even if you get let down.

As last year, here's five lessons I learned in 2013. But before I get to those, a word about this blog. 

I am really, really happy, to report that Radio To Go’s readership has grown quite nicely: from ten thousand total page views at 2011 year-end, it chalked up forty thousand total views a year later. And now, it's over one hundred and twenty seven thousand. 

That's more than trebling total views two years in a row. Thank you! Bashing out 1500 words each week is a great discipline. Recently I’ve tried out tiny one-topic midweek posts too. They are easier to spark debate with, because they are one-topic issues. 

So that's the good news. After the jump, here's five things I learned - or maybe finally admitted  to myself - in writing this blog this year.

Six acts that latecomers missed at Moseley Folk

It wasn't just about the headliners over a sunny weekend of music and more. 

I love the days at Moseley Folk Festival. There’s not the same focus as night-times. Instead, there’s a delicious open fluid vibe. People meet and collaborate; alliances and friendships are formed. Careers are launched. New talent is generously received by warm audiences; hardened established acts stop to check out the host of new local faces the festival showcases. 

I spent my time buzzing from stage to tent to stage, snapping, gassing, interviewing and recording; some of this is after the jump. The shots are mine except where credited. All but one of the recordings were taken live in the audience: warts, kids and crowd noise and all, and my deepest thanks go to the artists, and Moseley Folk Festival, for letting me post them. 

Regional bias? Perish forbid! How could anyone even think it?

There are many reasons to bemoan the huge loss of broadcasting jobs in the Midlands. The best is simple economics, but a bit of fair play wouldn't hurt. The Midlands region pays more license fees, but sees less BBC spending, than any other region.  

2011/12 BBC regional spend by license fee payer

As far as the Midlands media industry is concerned, it’s not even a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. You can’t shut a door that’s been smashed to pieces and left hanging off its hinges. 

It's taken years, decades. Thousands of jobs have gone. So it was interesting to attend the freshly-formed Campaign For Regional Broadcasting Midlands' first meeting. New to me and probably you, but with a formidable array of mainly BBC Drama and TV contacts, this took place on Thursday 21st February. During the meeting, some breathtaking statistics were reeled out, which you really should know about. 

The fact is, things are bad - really bad. If we ever want to see a proper grown-up media sector in the Midlands region again, there’s a lot of ground to cover, a lot of assumptions to challenge, and a lot of attitudes to confront. Locally, a toxic combination of laziness, arrogance, bad thinking and poor decisions has sped the process along. More after the jump.  

The Musoplex West Midlands music industry interviews

That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight, punting my convictions

Musoplex studios - now defunct - were based in Oldbury, almost underneath the elevated section of the M5, in a solidly workaday industrial estate. 

Glamorous was is not; functional and flexible it certainly is. Besides rehearsal spaces, a record label, and a fully featured and very capable recording studio, with a squadron of associated enterprises, they also boast a large performance stage, suited to live performance photo and video shoots, along with a smaller space, used for meetings and interviews 

I was an interview subject in 2012. It was a lot of fun. The video covers local music issues, and especially the continued deterioration of exposure for local music on local radio. The video, and links to some of Musoplex's previous productions follow... 

While we're on the subject of the deterioration of exposure of local music on local radio, I am explicitly NOT talking down those few stations who make a point of supporting local music, of course. Credit where credit is due. 

It's simply that - certainly to me, and to many of my colleagues at radio and in the local music scene - the continued growth of nationally programmed brand radio means yet more distance is placed between the national programmers and their regional audiences. This has developed into an increasingly significant issue at local and regional radio, and now it looks like we've got to the point where savvy local programmers could reap serious rewards by counter-programming against this trend. Certainly, commercial radio's policy of the past five years - merging stations out of existence to create national brands to better compete against BBC Radios 2 and 1 - has failed miserably. Total commercial audience figures have not improved one jot against BBC numbers in that time, and the BBC still leads the commercial sector by a country mile.

But it's not, and never has been, in my book, a case of overthrowing the existing status quo with cries of revolutionary glee, much as a lot of musicians I know might wish to see this. It's more a case of simply wanting to see radio programmers take a good hard long look at the world they're part of outside their studios, to try and see where there is common, mutually beneficial ground.

It's interesting to note just how many studios across the West Midlands see it as part of their duty to engage with their markets in different ways. Musoplex is one such, and there are at least half a dozen more, helmed by decent, responsible, principled professionals who want to see their sector and their clients prosper. It's a question of enlightened engagement and collaboration to everyone's benefit, celebrating the creative forces in the region. 

I just wish there was more of this at radio. 

Musoplex website

Musoplex industry videos

Clare Edwards (Flyover show, Simmer Down, Gigbeth, Notorious Choir, and lots more)

Mark Badger (Iron Man Records, Birmingham Music Network)

The Free rebrand: first results; a new oldies station on the way. Lots of questions...

First survey figures look good for the renamed BRMB / Mercia / Wyvern / Beacon cluster. There’s a long way to go; they're not out of the woods yet. But there's an intriguing new development coming soon on their AM frequencies.

Three months ago, I posted about the impending morphing of four local stations into one, to be called Free Radio. It kicked up a pretty storm on radio discussion boards, not all of whom grasped the precise points of the post. I was amused to get both stick from take-no-prisoners thrusting young biz-oriented anoraks, and kind but misguided statements of solidarity from nostalgia freaks. The post pulled in, by the standards of this tiny blog, spectacular page-view figures. 

The gist of that post was: 
• Given the state of the market, Free's management didn’t really have an option not to change things. 
• Cynics might say that previous owners had trashed the stations, so they wouldn’t be viable competition once sold on. I couldn’t possibly comment.
• The new radio wars have to be fought differently. Nationwide brands have deeper pockets and more resources.
• Brand radio has not increased the commercial sector's market share, but the 'consolidation' of dozens of stations has cost a lot of good people their jobs.
• The old radio glory days are well and truly gone. Hey, I miss them too.
• That said, there is still value in looking at how local commercial radio did it in the old days.
That was three months ago. Now, with fresh survey results in, it’s a good time to look at the latest figures, and then to ask a few questions of Free MD Phil Riley.

So let's start with the bottom line figure of total Market Share. This all comes from the excellent Media UK site, which has more stats for more stations than you can shake a stick at. We’re looking at the BRMB/Free Birmingham numbers.

It still looks crap over the period of the graph, doesn’t it? But it’s worth zooming in to look at the last three years, focusing on the period of the current ownership:

That’s bit better. A bit. Of course, you can puff this up into headline stats which make you look great, and stations do that all the time when these figures come out. The bottom line is that, taken over a three year period, the current management have first stabilised listening, and then started to improve things. 

These figures actually represent the last listening figures for the old BRMB. The period of this survey was the six months ending March 2012, when Free Birmingham was still BRMB.  It’s going to be nine months before there are totally Free-specific stats. A further bit of geekery to add to the mix is that I’m only looking at Birmingham numbers. Each of the Free stations is surveyed by coverage area. Across the four stations, in general, figures are up, but Coventry has shown a hiccup. But, on balance, progress.

Time for that chat. Phil Riley runs Free. I’ve got a lot of time for anyone who can run a station efficiently and stop it being run over by Global Radio’s London juggernauts. It's difficult to give him a hard time. Phil doesn’t derail easily. He’s boomingly bullish pretty much all the time. But, hey, nothing ventured…

Given the nice uptick on your stations ahead of the switch – quite possibly caused by the fuss people made about the name change – you must be feeling a bit more comfortable. Hand on heart, have you done the right thing?

"Yes. Basic figures are up, and all the other things we use to measure response – research. Facebook numbers, tweets, and range of other indicators - they’re all good."

How did it feel the day before the switch? 

"I was quite relaxed by that point. The day we announced the switch was the day I felt the most nervous. That was the point of maximum impact – and we did get a lot of grief for a couple of weeks. In the run-up to the announcement, I did feel really nervous. I didn’t know how the staff were going to react to it, didn’t know what clients were going to think about it…. In the end it worked out OK."

Did you take any personal stick?

"Yes. There were a few people who said I was barking mad – or that I’d lost the plot – or I was out of touch – but you get that in any industry. People on the edges snipe at you."

So, so far, so good. Probably best to revisit this particular area in a year’s time, especially if the new brand puts on some significant numbers.

But there’s another wrinkle. About a week back, news leaked out about plans for Free's own, new, AM service. Up to now, the old AM channels for four stations have carried Gold, a London-run oldies channel, ironically from Global, who are now in direct competition with Free. Now, Free have decided to reclaim the frequencies to run a second service, to launch later this year, called Free 80s. In other words, their own oldies station.

I have to declare an interest here. I worked on what many people felt was the country’s finest and most successful Gold service, XTRA-AM. It covered Coventry and Birmingham, and it was set up, by Phil Riley, 23 years ago. XTRA was a blast. I hated to see it go, to be replaced by Gold, in my view a lamentable service that, these days, feels like an underperforming corporate afterthought.

When we talked about your underused AM resource a year or so ago, and I urged you to take it in hand, you told me that it simply wasn’t cost-effective, given the decline in AM listening generally. What’s made you change your mind?

"A number of things. Nearly all our AM and DAB contracts were up for renewal. So we had to decide: do we bother to renew these quite expensive transmission contracts to run a service we didn’t have any involvement in, and didn’t earn much revenue from… or do we hand the licenses back… or is there a different way of doing this? Can we do something new? And because we’d done the work to create Free, it made us think that we could make something of that as an add-on." 

Brand extension then...?

"Yes. Which would have been very difficult to do if we were still running the four individual services."

You’re not the first to do brand extension. Absolute Radio have spun out Absolute 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and noughties as part of their offer, along with a slew of other digital services across dozens of platforms. And other stations are announcing 80s services across the country. What’s going to make you different?

"Two things. It will be local – local news, traffic, weather, local football commentary – and presenters will be local too. And it will be unashamedly a pop music 80s service, as compared to the rock feel of Absolute 80s, which aims for a more male audience."

Talking local, I’ve got to ask you… the 80s was a brilliant period for local music. We had Fine Young Cannibals, it was the peak period for all the Two-Tone bands in Coventry and Birmingham, Duran Duran were in their prime, Ruby Turner was getting started, there were Dexy’s, UB40, Tin Tin, Fuzzbox, Toyah, Fashion, ELO’s later hits… are you going to take advantage of all that stuff?

"Yes. We will be playing a lot of local material, I’m sure, if it’s warranted". 

Aha. I’m going to quote you on that.

"I did say if it’s warranted!" 

I’ll quote you on that too…  

So, just possibly, there are grounds for a tiny little bit of local muso optimism. I certainly hope so, and in my view there are very good reasons both culturally and financially to take such a step.  I wouldn’t hold out for Judas Priest on Free 80s any time soon... but it would be just great to see this new outlet reflect the pride that the area takes in some of its talent.

Researching what's best to play on the radio is a complex job. When you start looking at 80s oldies, you simply can't take chart impact into account as an overriding guide, because the charts were riddled with dodgy fixes and fiddles pretty much throughout that whole decade. So it's a question of digging into what the area likes best using all the tools you can get - not just focus groups. The best material rises to the top over time... in general.... and the image-driven and hyped stuff fades away... in general. Nick Kamen, anyone?

And just to add some very contemporary perspective, it was interesting to note the ripple of local pride and pleasure that flowed across Facebook and Twitter when Ruby Turner took to the stage last Monday at the Royal Concert at Buckingham Palace. Here's a single page of reaction from that point in time - search for Ruby on Twitter; there's more. 

This opens a up a whole area of discussion that I haven't really got space to go into here - but it's worth thinking about how artists find their place in our hearts, with or without chart exposure, and why radio should pay more attention to that process. 

Back to Free... Just as with three months back, I wish success for the Free team. They serve their area from their region, and for that reason alone, I’m rooting for them; positive results will be pleasing to see. 

One final thing. This really isn’t Free’s problem, but it affects them nonetheless. Local government should take note. The West Midlands has suffered a haemorrhage of media talent as Radio, TV, and press have all contracted. All those media jobs lost to the local economy, possibly 1000, maybe more, over a decade, also represent lost tax income and money spent in the region. Any reversal in that trend is to be applauded. So - more power to Free, and let's hope for further success elsewhere: it makes creative and economic sense. 

And if Free can bring themselves to skew their 80s output just a tiny but noticeable bit towards those local bands and acts who went over big time, worldwide, from our area during the decade, and still matter to their potential West Midlands audience now, I’ll be even happier. That’s a win-win I'd really pleased to see.

BRMB Radio. Free to go... into the history books

BRMB’s owners are re-branding the station. Does it matter? Probably not. Does the fact that it probably doesn’t matter… matter? Yes, I think it does. 

Logos courtesy of Orion Media

Things change

KSAN-FM was a legendary late 60s West Coast Rock station. They rewrote the rules.  They defined the template for rock radio worldwide, and I wouldn’t be in a position to write this now if they hadn’t. 

KSAN flipped to Country in 1980. 

In the UK, the Home Service lasted 28 years before becoming Radio 4. The Light Programme ran for 22 before morphing into Radio 2.   

So is it really worth getting all worked up because Orion Media, BRMB’s owners, are dumping the BRMB name after 38 years? Well, yes... and no. 


No, because things come and go. Think 70s stuff: Walkmen. Video Discs. Think 70s and 80s music: can you really get excited about the Rubettes, cheesy Disco or Olivia Newton-John? Or, for that matter, the Bee Gees, the Eagles, or even the Rolling Stones? If you’re under 35, almost certainly not. 

Orion are repositioning BRMB (and sister stations Mercia, Beacon and Wyvern) into one new brand, Free, with central output and limited local programming from each town – no change from what they are doing now. It’s a business decision. They’re being heavily outgunned by national brands Capital and Heart, who have huge budgets and megastar TV campaigns to pump up their stations. The Orion boys can’t fight on that front.  If I was in their shoes, under the exact same conditions, I might do the same thing.    

There is of course, a debate to be had about how things got to this position, and I’ll come back to that. First, though, take a look at this gruesome audience graph, which you can find on the fascinating and useful Media UK site: 

This charts the station’s share of the local market from Late 1999 to end 2011. Like I say, gruesome. From 17% of the market to 4.7% in 12 years. Ouch. 

But let’s dig a bit deeper. I’m going to draw a line at around July 2009, when the current owners took over. And I'll also plot the previous owners over the period. Now look at where the damage took place. 

Frankly, the new owners haven’t done all that badly, relatively speaking. All the serious damage was done by the previous owners, firstly the then Capital Radio Group... who were swallowed up by a merger into GCap... who in turn were swallowed by Global Media. 

As concrete evidence of savvy management skills, it lacks a certain something. As evidence of sensitivity to regional markets when viewed from a metropolitan base, it's pretty typical.

The last change of ownership came about because Global had to divest themselves of some surplus properties; at one point they owned nearly all the stations in the market. So they flogged off BRMB, Mercia, Beacon and Wyvern to the new owners, re-tooled Heart as a national brand, and morphed the old Galaxy into the newly national Capital FM brand. 

This will have been some time in the planning… plenty of time, quite conceivably, to decide that if you were going to have to lose stations to local competition, you might as well let them flounder first. 

So, that, partly, is why I think it no longer really matters that Orion Media are now reworking their old properties. It doesn’t matter now, because the old BRMB, about which a lot of sentimental guff has been spouted, has long since gone. 

Now, here’s why it does matter. 

Sentimental guff notwithstanding, BRMB was an eccentric and very local operation which had its moments. Those moments may have been accidental, infuriating to some, and pure radio gold to others, but moments there were. It was a rough-edged station with oddball mixes of programming, built out of old-school ex-BBC and British Forces thinking, with passionate specialist DJs pinballing around in off-peak hours. A lot of stations operated the same way. Weird specialist programmes at night. Lots of local content. Local music.

That oddball mixture struck a lot of chords. There's a timely reminder of just how many from a podcast published last week by The Word Magazine, and I'm very grateful to them for letting me reproduce the clip here. 

Mark Billingham is a very popular and successful crime writer. He grew up in Birmingham. In this interview with the Word's Mark Ellen, he reminisces about growing up in Birmingham, its local scene, and the role that BRMB played. The whole thing is worth a listen, but his comments about BRMB - and me - start at about 10.30" 


On a personal note, it's a hell of a thing for a DJ to be remembered after over thirty years. DJs are the very essence of ephemeral... From BRMB's perspective, that deep and warm acceptance, evidence of just one listener's trust and affection, is something stations would kill for. And stations only get it by reaching out and engaging, on all sorts of fronts.

But, to today’s sharp-eared radio executive, that sort of operation was ripe for polishing and slicking up. And there’s no question, BRMB sounds really polished and smooth compared to some of the more eccentric personality-led programming of its heyday. The music is researched to the nth degree, there’s not a nanosecond of dead air, not a single commercial opportunity is missed. There's no rough edges. 

Here’s the thing. If you get too smooth and polished, things tend to slip past you. Rough edges are there for a reason. It’s like grit in an oyster.

Once stations started the inevitable move towards becoming corporate and branded, those rough edges were systematically filed away and smoothed down. Sadly, along with that smoothing went a whole lot of relevant content. But the big problem today’s commercial operations face is that there is always something bigger, flashier, and better promoted that’s going to park its tanks on your lawns. For BRMB/Free, that’s Capital and Heart. 

Ironically, the self-indulgent, wobbly, ego-driven and inconsistent station that BRMB used to be – of which I was a part – pulled in listening figures that the current operation would kill for.

Equally ironically, the biggest station in the country, the unmoveable beast that today’s commercial networks wish to kill off (and will not be able to unless the government helps them) keeps on growing. Slowly, steadily, inexorably. That’s BBC Radio 2. They have a LOT in common with the old commercial model. They just do it all a lot better, and with bigger budgets, deploying multi-formatted specialised evening shows, big personalities, and music-driven programming. 

The past four years have seen much of commercial radio move to a new corporate, branded approach, with national brands, regional conglomerates, and an awful lot of job losses. And in that time the BBC has marginally increased its overall share of the market.

Here's another graph. This is telling. It is, again, derived from data published on the Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) website. The top line shows figures for All BBC Radio listening; the bottom, all Commercial Radio. The time span covers the last four years of  mergers, branding and and re-positioning, during which time all the consolidation and and consequent job losses has taken place. 

The absolute best you can say about the work of the past four years, and then only if you give Commercial Radio the benefit of the doubt by applying the usual margins of statistical error, is that all this re-branding activity has achieved... precisely nothing.  

I wish the team at Free all the success in the world. I really do. They’re going to need it, in a brutally competitive environment. At least they're broadcasting from the area they're meant to serve. I know this has been said before… but in the search for a USP to make their station stand out, I wonder, just wonder, if ticking a few old-style radio boxes might be worth a try?  

See more radio and broadcasting posts on Radio To Go

The Destroyers: monstrous, magnificent and loads of fun.

A Christmas show that brought a New Year's resolution for this blog: more music, less radio. 

I haven't written much about the Destroyers on this blog. My bad. It's not because I don't think they're pretty damn fab (they are, oh yes, they really are) but simply because it's been a year since I last caught them in full fig, live. And yesterday was the first time I've seen them in front of a truly DEMENTED audience... their natural element, of course.


This was the Destroyers' Christmas party, held at the Prince of Wales in Moseley, Birmingham. And, oh, what fun there was to be had. My previous Destroyers gigs were more formal and/or subdued: for example, halfway up the bill at Moseley Folk (that's Richard  Shakespeare's shot of that particular gig, by the way). This was a ridiculously low placing - a headline or near-headline slot in 2012 is more than merited. They there's the regular Town Hall December slot. Now, much as I love the Town Hall,  it does not entirely lend itself to uninhibited audience behaviour. It's just not that kind of venue. The upside is that you can better analyse what's going on stage. I quite like that. But I also like to be swept along and blown away.

Carina Round, Dan Whitehouse and Vijay Kishore deliver bigtime

It just keeps getting better, and better, and better. A great night at the Hare and Hounds, and a studio session to remember

Carina Round

This has been another of those weeks for amazing, amazing music. Last night, I caught one of the best live shows I've seen in a long, long, time, in King's Heath, Birmingham; and Saturday last, I was privileged to be at Music Up studios in Coventry to work with Alternative Dubstep Orchestra, as they recorded their first full live in-studio session. 

I say ‘work’, because I was there to record an interview to add to the recorded material. But it was a pure pleasure to watch the band in a studio environment and pick out more facets of their extraordinary music. Eleven stunning musicians, with buckets of imagination and creativity in an atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation. 

I don’t know where this collective is going – they don’t know either – but I know it’s going be exciting, and different. As soon as I finish this post, I’m back to editing the interview.  Then when the tracks are mixed, I’ll put the package together. It’s part of a series I’m working on, with UB40’s Brian Travers, all featuring the best of local musicianship.

Radio's oldies but goodies: who decides what we hear?

What perspective do 35 year olds use when programming 50 year old songs on the radio?

First things first: this post has been triggered by an invite from old pals Mean Street Dealers. They were also known as Hooker and School Sports, but, as Mean Street Dealers, they truly were one of Brum’s finest bands in the mid-70s. And, like a lot of excellent bands, they kind of got swept away by punk towards the end of that decade. Punk, for all its early DIY spontaneity, soon became  yet another marketing device for the music industry. This made life hard for bands who had been knocking on the door for more than a couple of years. Remember all those outfits that suddenly had to pretend that they couldn’t actually play?

But that’s another story. Mean Street Dealers could play then (and how), and now they are planning a comeback gig, on Friday 8th July at the Asylum in Hockley. Here’s the reunion gig info in more detail. I will dj at the event; I'm really looking forward to it. And that’s started me thinking for this blog post.

Interviewing UB40's Brian Travers again, 30 years on

A radio interview in a studio paid for out of UB40 Signing Off royalties 

I had a GREAT day yesterday. Much of it was spent gassing with UB40 horn maestro Brian Travers  in a studio that simply oozes Birmingham rock history. 

That’s him on the left, looking disgustingly healthy; I’m the, er, distinguished elderly gent on the right. The shot's from the camera of the excellent Richard Shakespeare.

And the studio? Well, it’s the studio that ‘Signing Off’ built. 
 

BBC Local Radio: death by a thousand cuts

I’ve been mulling this post over for a couple of days. This is partly because I am so damn angry. I’ve been trying hard not to unleash a stream of bile. I certainly don’t have all the facts, and I really don’t want to heap invective onto the wrong heads, or add more bitterness to the mix. And yet, and yet, and yet…. I still can't think about this without getting angry.

Here’s the focus for my ire: it was reported last week that the beeb are seriously considering ripping all but maybe six hours a day of local output out from BBC local radio, replacing this output by opting in to 5 Live. Here’s the Guardian’s report from Thursday 10th.

That we’ve got to this point is, sadly, inevitable. The BBC is on the back foot, and has taken a vicious funding hit. Savings have to come from somewhere. They tried with 6 music, and that didn’t fly. So now they appear to be picking off local radio. Me? I’m angry because this kind of savage cut is both ill-thought-out, and targets some of the least well-paid staff at the corporation. And it is - still - completely avoidable.

Local radio, both BBC and commercial, is simply not taken seriously by its metropolitan bosses. It never has been. It was only a matter of time before commercial radio happily abandoned any pretence of localness in favour of nationally marketed ‘brands’. In so doing, they insulted the broadcasters they had just fired by loudly claiming that there was just not enough talent out there anyway. That sort of attitude is patronising, arrogant and very stupid, but not unexpected. But that BBC management should seriously consider throwing hundreds of talented and dedicated coal-face workers onto the scrap heap makes my blood boil. It means national networks are valued and local radio is not. Of course, this may be a scare tactic to usher in less savage cuts, but it speaks volumes about how the corporation views its regional talent.

Do I know of what I speak? Well… yes, I do. I landed at Pebble Mill in the 90s to produce for Radio 2 Overnights. R2 was about to take its great leap forward, ousting R1 as top UK station. I inherited my main presenters, but was allowed to use local radio presenters for holiday cover. For them it was a big deal: a shot at the big time. They gave it their all, of course, and the two that I eventually came to rely on were excellent, delivering terrific listener feedback and often outshining the regular presenters. But did this mean my fine local radio professionals were taken seriously for possible promotion to the network? Even cursorily looked at? I’ll let you take a wild guess.

That was fifteen years ago, but I doubt that attitudes have changed. I know there have been countless consultations and strategy initiatives. I know that part of the agenda has been to put news first at BBC local radio. Music programming took a back seat, with a centralised and super-safe library fed to all stations, and local music shunted to off peak hours on the admirable weekly BBC Introducing slots.

That’s a crying shame. The news agenda is fine – give me good reporting any day - but news radio is expensive. Good reporters don’t come for free. Effective speech radio takes time and money. It also means that all too often the news agenda of the day follows events dictated from outside the region. If you then fail to deliver effective local coverage, you wind up sounding parochial, and unfavourable comparisons with national networks naturally follow. Radio 5 Live is great, but I don’t need it on yet another frequency. I would, however, really like to hear the next Victoria Derbyshire honing her craft locally.

Much worse, and by now I think it’s far, far too late to rectify this, BBC local stations have been allowed to distance themselves from local culture. The staff with the skills and contacts to deal with this have gone. There’s a bloody big freighter full of cultural goodies that’s sailed right on past local radio, and the stations have fatally and completely ignored it, because it wasn't in the strategic plan. In the first ten years of this century, there has been an explosion of creativity across the country. Creativity in the visual arts, theatre, dance, video and, especially, music is bursting with energy and collaborative enthusiasm. It is a source of huge pride to many in my  city, and the same principle applies elsewhere. A lot of this is down to the web, which lets ideas fly around to create inspiring events like flash-mob choral performances, musical collaborations, mashups and more. And where is radio in all this? Pretty much nowhere, criminally being allowed to miss out. Unparalleled riches are just going to waste. 


Has this even been noticed in the higher echelons of the beeb? Has its potential value to local radio been evaluated? I’ll let you take another wild guess.


I don’t know where we go from here. I do know that thrilling and brilliant music is happening both here in the West Midlands and all over the country, and it’s clear to me that this wonderful new resource – squarely at the very heart of our local and national culture - is being almost completely ignored. It may not be too late to change tack. But if the BBC throw hundreds of staffers out, with all their skills and local knowledge, then thousands upon thousands of years of work and experience will be lost to the BBC, forever. Talent will flow elsewhere, and will bypass the corporation, forever. There will be less and less challenges to existing thinking, more ossification of managerial attitudes, and we will lose, pretty much permanently, a cheap, value for money resource that probably will be impossible to reconstitute.

Ask yourself: where does talent come from? How does it learn its craft? And – is it really to be found exclusively in London, with the odd side trip to Manchester?

I think not.
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