Is commercial radio doomed?

Prior to working in television I worked in radio for some years - both at BBC local and national commercial radio which was tremendously enjoyable to say the least. The buzz I got out of working on a live event - especially a big derby like Everton v Liverpool - was unparalleled. Back in the days (circa 1992) I started of working on a live Sunday sports programme across the North West airwaves. The audience was huge, the content was awesome, and the presenters and reporters now working at the likes of Sky Sports, ESPN, and the BBC.

To give you an example of the team who I was either working with, or who had worked at the radio station previously, the list reads like a who's who of sports broadcasting:

Ray Stubbs (ESPN), Marcus Buckland (Sky Sports), Rob Palmer (Sky Sports), Rob McCaffrey (Showtime Arabia), Eddie Hemmings (Sky Sports), Graham Beecroft (Talk Sport), Alan Parry (ESPN), Jonathan Legard (BBC Radio 5 Live), John Gwynne (Sky Sports), Ray French (BBC), Tim Caple (Eurosport), Kevin Keetings (IMG Media - world feed of the FA Premier League).

And THAT was just the station I worked for! On the commercial rival they also had Richard Keys (Sky Sports) and Clive Tyldesley (ITV Sport) - so as you can see it was a real hot-bed of talent and an unrivaled place to start a career in the broadcast industry.

Back when I started (aged 16!) I used to produce highlights packages for the Premier League games as well as for Rugby League - which was actually much more popular when you started to move out towards Lancashire. I did this by having three massive tape machines next to each other. Now anyone who has been working in radio for the past 10 years will never have seen or used these machines so to give you and idea this is what they look like: http://tinyurl.com/ydw3qyu

As you can see these are huge machines and I had the live feed, or feed from the stadium, on one machine. Then as soon as a goal was scored I switched over to using the second machine to record whilst using the third machine to compile my edit. It sounds complex but it wasn't once you got the hang of it. However in a computer-led world now the editing was painfully done through marking the edit point with a chinagraph pencil, and using razor-blades and tape to do the work. The amount of cuts on my fingers was huge and would have been a Health and Safety Executive's field day! But that was simply how it was done. Grafting long hours to produce a piece of audio which was listened to by hundreds of thousands. Literally.

OK, now what is the point to all this history and reminiscing, Ed? Well firstly it shows how much I love, and miss, the immediacy of live radio. The buzz to breaking stories whilst they happened, having CNN calling you up for the news so they can update the world, the big talking points of the day taking place on the show you were working on, and generally mucking in doing whatever needed to be done to get the show bigger audiences and deliver better content. So that's the background set - I love making and hearing great radio.

Nowadays, with the exception of the BBC locals, radio needs reshaping pretty badly. With the commercial stations providing less original content than ever before there are some real worries about the future of the medium. Take the London marketplace where I live and work where the main commercial radio stations (in no particular order) are Capital FM, Magic 105.4, Heart 106.2, and Smooth Radio. Now each of these radio stations offer a very tightly formatted format each with a relatively small playlist, lots of 'speed-links' and substantially less content than was catered for in previous years. The audiences are pretty stable and the top three tend to swap places every year so it's fairly safe to say that the audience pretty much like what they are given right now and have no complaints. So what's the problem Ed? They have a lot of radio with a small amount of songs, plenty of adverts, and the lack of local content means they could be anywhere in the UK - or even the world. So what? They keep listening so why shall we change? The old phrase "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" should apply, should it not Ed? I think we should look carefully at radio as a matter of real importance or I believe we will create huge damage to the heritage brand's as well as hemorrhaging huge number of their audience.

What I have personally witnessed from working in large offices is how the way people get their entertainment to get through their working day has changed. Years ago it was commonplace to have a radio in the office which in turn migrated to CD's being played in their desktop computers. Then came the killer ingredient to keep them going - iTunes. I have seen how personal iTunes collections have been put onto shared networks creating huge music libraries at their disposal. So where local radio has turned Heart not becoming a quasi-national brand in the past year alone with a playlist of a four to five hundred songs we now have the situation where the listener can choose their favourite music all day long by importing their own iTunes libraries onto their work PC's. Why put up with hearing Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol for the 10th time in a day when you can instead hear your new Manu Chao CD which never gets radio airplay anywhere in the UK. And this exact scenario is what I have witnessed take place. And the latest way to keep your workers happy comes courtesy of Spotify - a website which streams entire albums in superb quality with a 30" commercial inserted after every three tracks. It's like your ultimate radio station playing the music you want - albeit devoid of news, jingles, and pointless waffle.

Now I understand why a radio station will have a playlist of a tiny percentage of songs from the era - it's all down to the targetting and research but it's the lack of killer content that will be the downfall of the brands. The quality content coming out of both BBC Radio 1 and 2 is perhaps the only justification to publically fund the networks. But I wouldn't change a thing in the slightest - until there is are radio stations producing quality content on the same level of quality as the BBC let's keep funding them in this way. And I personally disagree with the very notion of a licence fee for our TV and radio stations.

I know there are a few commercial radio stations with quality content - LBC in London is a great example - but in the main it is the music-based stations which are the real offenders. So unless the commercial stations shape up their acts and work on the value of their brands their audience will slowly migrate over to iTunes and Spotify. And we all know how hard it is to regain trust in a tarnished brand too. In this online world we are fully immersed in I wonder whether commercial radio will last the next decade? Don't be silly...I doth jest here. I actually meant five years...which is a real shame.

Predictions for 2010 - specifically for Rupert Murdoch

OK, this is my first ever blog. So pardon any particular etiquette that I am supposed to adhere to. Give me time and I'll be using all the buzz-words and be officially part of the blogging gang.

I'm a real media enthusiast - I've been working for over half my life in this astonishing sector of business - and yes I am only 33... But one person I admire more than anyone, perhaps controversially, is Rupert Murdoch. In fact, whenever I refer to him to anyone - either in the office or with friends - I still refer to him as Mr Murdoch. I know it's quite odd but I've read so many biographies on the chap that quite simply my awe for him is pretty high. Don't misunderstand me, I don't think he is the kindest, or most polite man round - far from it - however his dedication and ability to get around watertight red tape has been more than impressive. Plus, it's fair to say that many of his ventures are far from clean when it comes to controversy - Fox News, The Sun, and Star TV in Asia to name but three. However what amazes me is the power this man has amassed and how the power he wields and ability to shape opinion is greater than our own Prime Minister. Whilst many believe this to be a bad thing I personally would always prefer Mr Murdoch (see, I've done it again...) to have his agenda. Why? Well, whatever he does is done for the gain of his media empire and you can always see the agenda. Whereas anything the governments do in any of the territories he is based in may not find that their agendas are always in the best interests of their people. For example, Silvio Berlosconi - the Italian Prime Minister and owner of Mediaset - gave himself immunity by changing the rules when he was on trial for false accounting. The current state of the expenses controversy surrounding the British Members of Parliament shows how corrupt the political system is at present. So whilst I am not, and never will, claim that Mr Murdoch is cleaner than clean, we are always aware that any change in policy in his organization is done to benefit News Corporation. Well, usually. I say this as I simply have to mention the frequently forgotten issue of the amount of money that The Times newspaper loses year after year (it is only The Sunday Times that is profitable). Mr Murdoch keeps the paper running due to the pride of owning such a prestigious quality paper. He has lost over £50m on this title in the past year alone and can't see how this debt can be reduced with online news everywhere for free. My point here is that he continues to support an unprofitable title to curry favour with the establishment - something that he also did for over a decade at Sky News before it started to make a small profit.

I heard Mr Murdoch on BBC Radio 5 Live a year or so ago talking to Jeff Randall on the Money Programme. What I found interesting was how the focus moved to politics - in particular his support to the Labour party over the Conservatives. Since that programme was broadcast things have moved on dramatically. After being knee deep in recession News International's lead title, The Sun, came out to support David Cameron and the Conservatives - switching from over 12 years of support for the Labour Party. This came as little surprise to me as The Sun always backs 'a winner' and wants to be part of the team which shapes the victory. Remember the public support The Sun had for Tony Blair on it's front pages? To clarify things, The Sun will never win the election for the party. However they can be a significant influence and swing things in the favour of the incoming party. The fact that the Ashes was put back onto the 'listed events' and therefore unable to be seen exclusively on Sky Sports was seen as the Labour Party retaliating to the loss of support from Mr Murdoch and to hurt him where it hurts deepest - sports rights.

The influence that The Sun and the News of the World have is quite frightening to be blunt. The circulation, although significantly greater than the last election, is still enough to influence even the safest of seats. A recent example of the case of the Gordon Brown's handwriting case where it was claimed he misspelled the surname of the mother of a dead serviceman. This attack was the first public attack on the Prime Minister since The Sun announced it was to support the Conservatives. Many media commentators and myself all saw this as the first sword drawn in the lead-up to the likely March elections. But why? What is gained? Going back to the beginning of this article it comes back to the agenda of News International.

News International's biggest success of the past 17 years has been the successful launch of Sky Sports. It's fair to say that Murdoch bet the business on the success of Sky Sports - especially the FA Premier League which it enjoyed 15 years of exclusive live coverage on the channel. After the intervention from Brussels no one broadcaster could hold a monopoly to this prize sporting right - hence Setanta getting an all-to-brief foothold. Things have moved on a bit and ESPN have got a good set of rights under their belt for their new UK channel (which I must state my conflict of interests here as I Produced and Directed the channel launch campaign). However there are a significant number of rivals who are complaining on competition issues that BSkyB is abusing it's dominance. The biggest cries are coming from Virgin Media, Top Up TV, and BT Vision - again I must state my significant work at both Top Up TV and BT Vision - just in case you think I'm taking sides here. I'm not, don't worry.

One of the big talking points is that the rival platforms want to buy Sky Sports at a wholesale price so they can offer premium sports content on their own platforms. An Ofcom investigation is currently taking place and the belief in the industry is that Sky Sports will be made available to rival operators at a discount. Personally I think this won't happen - and if it does it won't be for a long time. Why? The support Mr Murdoch has given the David Cameron will surely come at a price and already he has claimed that Ofcom will have it's powers cut as it is too big and powerful. So who will benefit mostly of this new 'lighter touch' super-regulator? My money is stacked high on the Murdoch side. I will expect BSkyB's appeal against it being forced to sell their ITV plc shares to be successful. At present they are sitting on an extimated £650m loss on this investment - a deal done by James Murdoch to prevent Richard Branson's Virgin Media from buying it. Oh, and expect the Ashes to quietly come back off the listed events too before long as well...

So when you look at the broader picture you can see how the sprawling media landscape of Mr Murdoch is so intertwined that unless you know the full background it's so hard to actually see exactly what is the real motive. One thing is for sure though, there always is a motive behind it. Always.