Lincs FM

Lincs FM does have the advantage of being the monopoly commercial radio provider across the majority of it’s TSA, which gives listeners the choice of a presenter in Lincoln or the BBC national stations.

I did a module at university on commercial radio and chose Lincs FM as they are, as Martin puts it, the only commercial station in Lincolnshire.

I agree with Tim that that hour does stand out from time to time, but whilst studying in Staffordshire, I would regularly tune in to Lincs FM purely for the music selection.

I’m doing an RSL with Scouts & Guides at the Lincolnshire Showground later this month and my boss says that our music selection may well be similar to Lincs FM’s as they have some cracking songs, with ones that I haven’t heard in ages and certainly wouldn’t hear on Signal 1!

I think the Lincs FM team do a great job of the music, but there are issues sometimes with covering such a large area. I know officially their TSA doesn’t go past Donnington, but there certainly could be more for Spalding and Holbeach, where it is available in patches.

I’ve worked for the Lincs group and still struggle to “get” their music policy.

Fortunately, Lincs sold my hometown station to the Quidem group last year so I’ve been spared the somewhat eclectic music policy of the Lincs FM Group. I did however have a drive up to Mansfield, where 102.2 comes in very clearly, two weeks ago. I was greeted by Rudimental segued into the Human League.

The argument was anyone could listen to it – 39 year old mum and her 14 year old son in the same car. But the 14 year old is going to want to listen to Capital where he can hear Rudimental next to Daft Punk, Rihanna, LMFAO and Calvin Harris – not the Human League. The current tracks sound like they should be on Capital, whereas the rest of the database sounds like it should be on Smooth.

The result is one hell of a car-crash music policy.

Lincs FM, in my opinion, does well in RAJAR down to sheer lack of competition, and its figures on other stations – notably the way in which Oak FM’s audience fell off a cliff under their control – seem to vindicate that, where the dial is more crowded and there are better-targeted stations to choose from. Their Yorkshire stations in particular will suffer very badly if Heart does end up launching there (if Hell hasn’t frozen over first of course!) because the music policy is just so unfocussed.

There’s no reason why a properly-targeted station with well-chosen music, more slick presentation, better production and minimal clutter (which is something all Lincs stations have a massive amount of!) wouldn’t be even more successful in audience terms than the present format on 102.2.

I can pick up Lincs FM clearly where I live – but there’s also a mainly voicetracked local station owned by the same company, Dearne FM.

I’m by no means a typical listener, but I really like the music they play on there. The programming outside breakfast could use a few improvements, I’d like it to be a bit more lively and interactive during the day, especially at drivetime. I’d rather have a live network show (across Trax/Rother/Dearne?) than a local voicetracked show. But musically it’s great, I like hearing Rudimental, the Human League and then the Killers.

I know it’s unfocused and shouldn’t work, but when I’m driving around I find myself flicking to Dearne more than to Capital, Real or Hallam – because I genuinely prefer the broader mix rather than just one narrow genre. I’m 27 – Capital is a bit relentlessly young for me, Radio 1 doesn’t want me any more, and I want to hear music from today and yesterday.

It can’t just be me, surely? (I have no connection with them, I’ve never done work experience with them, I’ve never even been to Doncaster – just a listener!)

Agree with you on live drive. I’m not a fan of automated drive shows at all, and don’t see what, if any, localness you would lose from a live networked programmes over a voice tracked local one – the local inserts will still be there, INRIX can record your travel for you and then the presenter just needs to work a bit harder to record lots of split links.

I don’t think you can really mix old and new music willy-nilly anymore like you used to, though. Looking at this hour’s music, they’ve kicked off with Robert Palmer’s “Mercy Mercy Me” (not really an opener) into Nicki Minaj’s “Starships”.

Am I the only one who’s head is spinning?

I think nowadays the new songs need to sonically complement the old ones, or vice versa. So by all means play Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” but not Avicci’s “Wake Me Up”. If you’re gonna play harder new songs, you need harder old songs, like Robin S “Show Me Love”, Technotronic “Pump Up The Jam”, Black Box “Ride On Time” or S-Express, etc. Is it Hot AC or Easy Listening? They need to decide.

Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I’m sure I’ve heard S-Express and Ride On Time on there relatively recently. And Avicii.

I think it might be because I’m not a radio programmer, but I just don’t think that deeply about the music they play on the radio when I’m at work or driving. It doesn’t make me feel disoriented when they play Nicki Minaj followed by The Carpenters. In my simple mind, it just keeps it sounding fresh. Stations like Capital are good in small doses but quickly get monotonous – it’s one genre of music and a really small rotation all day. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this!

James, why can it not be both Hot AC and Easy Listening? Why can’t radio stations just play tracks cos they’re damn good? Transitioning between tracks is important, no doubt about it, it’s gotta be done right otherwise it sounds horrible. But basically, do that right, and put in context where it helps, there’s no reason why you can’t play almost anything back to back, especially if say both are playing at a local festival or something like Glastonbury.

This is one of the main problems I have with centralised music scheduling like GWR and GCap used to do and Global still do. You cannot target your music to an area where you know that an artist is going to be, because the centralised music schedule doesn’t allow for things like that. A local station with control over their music schedule can change their music schedule to reflect artists that are performing in their area. A station without that ability, hamstrung by a centralised music schedule, cannot do that.

I think I can side in on this one, having programmed music on an online community station. I didn’t discriminate the styles of music (or at least I’d tried not to) provided the songs themselves were feelgood, whether they be rock, RnB, soul, cheesy pop or even Lady GaGa, so I wasn’t doing the Heart-thing of almost entirely excluding songs with guitars in them somewhere. I was, however, careful so as not to jar the senses of the grown-ups that wouldn’t have particularly liked listening to EDM or rap whilst having their morning coffee or sandwiches, so the youth-orientated tracks were deliberately not included in the daytime playlist but were definitely included after 6PM for the youth program strands. The new songs that were included in the daytime playlist (which I programmed to be every third song) were far more adult friendly and would easily have flowed with the rest of the feelgood music, for which OTS-DJ has the advantage of recognising song tempos and playlisting accordingly.

It’s a common thing though, on some small ILR’s and omore especially community radio, where the music being played really is a ….er, mix.

Ian, you might be interested to know that Lincs FM Group use centralised music scheduling, although they have four different logs – as, indeed, did GWR. Lincs FM has one log. Rother FM, Dearne FM and Trax FM have another (Oak FM took this log until their sale to Quidem). Rutland Radio. Compass FM and Ridings FM have a third, then KCFM has its’ own log. I’d argue, however, that the KCFM log is the best-sounding one in the group, and one they should look to roll back out across their other sites.

James, didn’t know that. Not overly familiar with Lincs FM, because I’m in Cornwall and they’re in Lincolnshire.

I only ever knew of one log from GWR, primarily because they used the same one on Plymouth Sound, Gemini FM, Lantern FM and Orchard FM after GWR bought Orchard Media, and added their stations to the Plymouth Sound playlist. Heck, if Cornwall Sound had won the Cornwall licence back in 1992, that playlist would have been right across the South West.