Speech radio: what, no talk?

<a href="https://twitter.com/jamescridland">jamescridland</a> christopher_eng Bauer could launch ‘Closer’ on 1215 as a speech format. Seems little point still pushing music out on it.

— Ian Deeley (@iandeeley) January 23, 2013

But hasn’t all this been tried, in better economic times, with City Talk in Liverpool and Talk 107 in Edinburgh?

What would be different now?

If Liverpool had the equivalent I’d listen to that.

There is, of course, City Talk although that is something of a misnomer these days – and its previous incarnation on City’s AM frequency also flopped. It’s something that’s always puzzled me as I would have thought Liverpool is one place in the UK where the Talk format should have worked. Yet City Talk seemed unable to gain much traction – perhaps it was trying to be too ambitious at the start – which is why its original proposition has become considerably diluted.

People have claimed that because City Talk and Edinburgh’s Talk 107 (about which more shortly) flopped then “the Talk format doesn’t work”. My belief is that there is nothing wrong with the format itself but in its execution.

Which leads me on to Talk 107.

What I never understood about that station was why only Edinburgh-related topics were allowed to be discussed. If the station was still on-air and doing the same thing today then instead of callers engaging with reaction to this morning’s speech by David Cameron, the ‘hot topic’ would probably be more likely to be road gritting or some local topic.

LBC may be a London station but it doesn’t restrict itself to things happening within the M25.

LBC also does well because it has built-up a roster of good broadcasters who can stimulate discussion – whether you agree with them or not – and keep people listening.

It’s also worth taking a look at their audience figures – especially between 10.00pm and 7.00 am – when the station dominates the London audience.

Some might argue that Liverpool’s City Talk is now a commercial equivalent to the DAB 5 Live Sports Extra pop up service. Indeed, it will ‘pop up’ with commentary and (I’m told) some very good sports (well, football) programming when there’s a match or two on and there’s a need for an additional outlet for commentary. The rest of the time it is unannounced safe very old ‘rock/pop’ records and a repeated 7-8 minute pre-recorded news, weather and sports sequence, which plays out two or three times an hour. Some might argue all of this is simply a very cheap ‘holding’ service awaiting the next bit of use for football.

The original execution of ‘the talk format’ was, I would imagine, very expensive to produce, and it certainly wasn’t of general appeal to people in the area, comprising far too many diverse and specialist programmes. I seem to recall one of the incarnations of LBC during the years of not being LBC, made this identical mistake.

City Talk then dumped the more ‘highbrow’ format and we entered a period of ‘nearly’ being like LBC, but again the programming tended to be far too ‘complex’ and was rarely suited to the more loyal Scouse audience. In this context, it should have been more like the current and more ‘traditional’ Liverpool-oriented style 10pm offering on Radio City and City Talk from Pete Price, which has a loyal and vocal following.

Building backwards from Pete Price and modelling it on LBC, City Talk would have worked. However, considering that a large number of Radio City’s hours are networked in from Manchester, I can’t see any interest in trying to make City Talk have any function beyond its ‘pop-up’ football commentary service.

Programming is relatively cheap to produce, especially when you factor in not having to pay PRS/PPL and all the other rip-off music agencies.

It’s not, though, even if you take the LBC model of wall-to-wall phone-ins.

Firstly, unless you use royalty-free music for absolutely everything (including all your jingles, idents, beds etc), and you never ever have any programmes that ever play a piece of commercial music ever in any context, you’ll still need PRS and PPL licences.

Next, let’s look at your presenters. To get a bunch of experienced, consistently good, entertaining speech personalities is going to cost you. If you get the cheap, inexperienced ones, they might end up costing you in other ways. Then, unlike most commercial music radio stations, you’ll probably have to pay them for a good few hours of prep time in addition to their on-air time – they’ll need time to read in for interviews and they’ll probably have to do some pre-recs as well, especially for the later shows, because the best expert for the story isn’t always available at the time you want them.

Then you’re going to need at least some production effort behind each show, whether that’s the presenter when they’re off air or a set-up producer who can look at the news agenda, book some guests beforehand and then chase breaking news stories when the presenter is on air. You’ll certainly need someone in the studio to answer the phones and do other production-like things even if all your presenters self-op because unlike music radio, once you’re on air you can’t just stick on a record and edit some audio/fiddle with the playout system/dial an ISDN/telephone and check that it’s working.

Finally, most stations are just to small to sustain phone-ins all day, every day. I know from experience that even on national stations you still get the same group of people who phone up for everything, and it’s a problem that is exacerbated on more local stations with a smaller TSA because the number of people who get in touch at all is that much smaller. I could always guarantee if I asked for some interaction on a local commercial station I could count on getting the same names on the phone and on the text every time and anyone else was a bonus.

Is there room for more speech programming on commercial radio? Certainly, but I don’t think more LBC-style all-talk phone-in stations are feasible on a wide scale.

TalkRadioUK, as it was called before it turned into TalkSport, was filling a huge gap in it’s time (1995-2000). Was it given sufficient time to become financially viable before Kelvin McKenzie waded in and killed off over half of its output in favour of sport ?! It’s departure opened up the gap again, (or should that be chasm !), in this country where we have only two national speech stations, but no news etc / talk station. I believe, but will never know, thanks to Kelvin’s intervention in reducing listener choice in 2000, whether or not TalkRadio would have in time become a greater success – personally I consider it certainly had great potential and I certainly did not thank Kelvin for what he did nor recent TalkSport management for finally killing off all non sports output. (Was it a case of putting fast financial viability before service or having to ? – I don’t know – perhaps the jury’s out on that one ?! ). Personally I am more than pleased that LBC is available via some DAB transmitters and internet. It does phone in radio so well, as did dearly departed TalkRadio ! I think such stations probably require good investment and time to become financially viable and build a good audience. Perhaps management of commercial speech stations need to possess more patience. LBC remains, and that started during a power crisis on 4 October 1973 at 6am but has survived and now appears to be thriving. (......ok…....yes I was an anorak and up on that date recording the opening when I lived in South London when I was just 12 ! )

Successful Talk Radio – in terms of listener figures and financial stability and profitability is very hard to achieve in the UK. LBC 97.3FM’s ‘rivals’ are probably Radio 4 the most resourced radio station in the world, Radio 5 a station that has taken many of LBC’s phone-in based elements and added again the terrific resources that the BBC has.

I went up to Edinburgh and met the guys at Talk 107. Paul is right they were given a parochial remit to be very very local. Some of that was due to the city rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Talk 107 also had a poor signal and not enough of an audience to draw the incredible calls you sometimes hear on LBC.

I certainly think that a Nationwide LBC would be very popular – the cost of providing such a service would have to be controlled, as Paul Easton and I know to our personal cost LBC’s record of profitability is at best patchy.

But good Personality Presenters, sensible programming costs and the right kind of carriage – FM in preference to DAB (at this point in time) and LBC Nationwide would really work.

Just playing songs one after the other is something an iPod can easily do. So, radio stations shouldn’t be trying to compete with an iPod by just playing back-to-back songs.

It amazes me that much of the radio industry seems to be completely missing this quite obvious point, and in the process setting itself up for a rather massive fall in the future. As generations age, the number of people that would rather listen to their iPod or Spotify above the radio is only going to increase, and the number of places where the radio is most convenient (such as in the car) is going to fall.

The question that I have always asked is: If radio stations are just a selection of current or big previous hits with little else to draw people in, then what for the figures in 10 to 15 years? Some stations should be fine, sure, but others… Well, the iPod and similar devices aren’t going to become less popular.

If stations do not have a Unique Selling Point above other means by which to consume music, then their long-term future could be quite bleak indeed. Talk, and entertaining talk at that, is going to have to be part of this.

http://www.radiolab.org/

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

http://www.freakonomics.com/radio/

Young people in the UK are listening to speech radio but it isn’t BBC or UK even.

Once more, that’s a lovely thought, but the evidence simply isn’t there.