Updated and revised, the fourth edition of The Radio Handbook is a comprehensive guide to the medium of radio and the radio industry in the UK.
Featuring new chapters on social media and podcasting, this book offers a thorough breakdown of the knowledge and skills needed to work within the contemporary radio industry. Using examples, case studies and transcripts, it examines the various building blocks that make radio, from music scheduling to news values and from phone-ins to sports commentaries. The latest trends in contemporary audio practice are referenced throughout, including the increased adoption of smartphone technology, further consolidation within commercial radio, and the ongoing debate about the future funding of the BBC against the backdrop of an accelerated move towards remote working, the rise in popularity of podcasting and an ever more crowded media landscape.
Combining theory and practice, this textbook is ideally suited for students of radio, media, communications and journalism. It equips readers with the skills they need to not only produce good radio themselves, but to have the knowledge they need to become a critical friend of the medium.
Nearly every decision that the management of a radio station makes is with a view to carving out its own particular place in what is an ever more crowded marketplace. Radio in the UK is now characterised by powerful brands and nationwide networks, but the individual stations within those arrangements will still hope to create a unique offering that makes them stand out from all of their competitors.
Musically, there will be a great deal of uniformity, particularly amongst stations that operate under one of the big, national commercial brands such as Heart, Capital, Smooth or Hits Radio. This will never be more obvious than within the tight confines of the centrally issued music playlist. BBC Local Radio stations have more flexibility, but they too begin with a playlist of songs that is issued to them from the top of the organisation. Around these prescribed schedules of music, each station will attempt to forge its own identity through the use of particular presenters, its provision of local news and information, its use of jingles, the competitions it runs, the promotions with which it is involved, the campaigns it organises and the events at which it is present. Each of these aspects of how a radio station operates will be looked at in more detail later in this chapter, but our analysis of radio style begins from this observation that a radio station is much more than the sum of its output with any measurement of its worth also resting upon the set of attitude and values that make up its brand.
The growing importance of brands within the radio industry is testament to the way in which radio has become a commodity. Beginning as a source of information and entertainment, the introduction of commercial radio in the early 1970s ensured that radio became a product which audiences would consume. Any station that wishes to succeed has to find an audience, and that means meeting the basic requirements of a critical mass of consumers.
When we choose with which airline we want to travel, our basic requirement is that it must fly to our chosen destination. That same basic requirement for radio is that it provides information and entertainment in which weâre already interested. Beyond this basic requirement, our choice of brand says much about what is important to us; someone who flies on Ryanair is more likely to be interested in how much they paid for their ticket than someone who flies British Airways where the price point is perhaps less important than the perceived quality of the service. Similarly, listeners to talkSPORT are much more likely to be interested in the latest goings-on in the world of sport than Scala Radio listeners who have a penchant for accessible classical music. Just as airline customers can be won or lost by a series of features which bear little relevance to a safe journey to your destination â reward points, leg-room, lounge access â so too can listeners be gained or lost by details such as the personality of a certain presenter or the frequency with which a station cuts to an ad break.
Branding, then, is a way of achieving a consistent offering, a reassuring identity, that runs through every aspect of a stationâs programming. On an ever more crowded dial, the importance of having a distinct and attractive brand becomes ever more crucial to success. As recently as the late 1990s, the number of radio stations easily available to most people in the UK was limited to a handful of national stations and two or three local stations. Taking Birmingham as an example, in 1999, listeners in the city were able to pick up eight national stations and four locals. The spread of DAB and the emergence of newer, internet-based platforms had seen that figure rise to 52 national stations. That means that 54% of the total radio listening options in the UK are available to listeners in a single city. (Cridland, 2020) This means that now, more than ever, itâs important to create an aspirational brand in order to maintain a station everyone wants to be part of and ensure listener loyalty.
Perhaps the importance of a brand image can be seen most clearly by looking at how a station changes following a take-over. The Guardian Media Group (GMG) has now been swallowed up by Global Radio, but when it purchased the Saga radio stations in the spring of 2007, it quickly relaunched them under the name Smooth radio. Saga was a well-established brand providing holidays, insurance and other services to those over the age of 50. Initially, the Saga name was of benefit to the radio stations with plenty of over-50s who already identified with the brand delivering an instant audience. When GMG decided to pursue a target audience of those aged 40 plus, one of the first things they knew they had to do was to change the name. This allowed them to put some distance between the image of âa Saga listenerâ and allow them to attract âa Smooth listenerâ.
Later in this chapter we will see how all radio stations are aware of the importance of their brand and look at the time and money they invest into market research to ensure that they get it right. Prior to this, it is crucial to consider the canvas upon which all radio stations design their output â the radio day.
THE RADIO DAY: THE BREAKFAST SHOW
The most important programme on most radio stations is its breakfast show. This is almost always the time when most people are listening. Research suggests âthe radio audience peaks in the morning between 7am and 9.30am, and steadily tails off throughout the day before climbing again around drive-time (4pm to 6.00pm)â (Ofcom, 2016). As the stationâs flagship programme, the breakfast show is used for a number of different purposes, the most obvious being to hook listeners into the station, hopefully for the rest of the day. Former BBC Radio 1 controller, Andy Parfitt,1 says the breakfast show formula is partly functional and partly about the bond between listener and presenter:
Firstly, thereâs this utility of helping people through the metronome of the clock and delivering them to their destination; school, college, work. Secondly, thereâs this question of character or personality, which is, in one way, to empathise and to reflect and mirror that you understand what people are going through first-thing on a wet Wednesday morning in January â and secondly to entertain or help people pause to reflect.
On the âfunctionalâ side, breakfast shows have regular time checks as listeners get ready to leave the house, travel updates to help them plan their journey plus regular news and weather bulletins. All of these could be repeated in some form as breakfast shows tend to be made on the basis that people listen for an average of 20 minutes at a time.
The functional elements of the breakfast show feed into what programmers call âsense of dayâ. An important part of a breakfast show, Virgin Radioâs Chris Evans characterises it as a desire to âreflect the day ⊠and the worldâ, adding âwe wake up, we turn on the radio, we immediately have a sense of the world that awaits usâ (Evans, 2019). âSense of dayâ involves the show, especially its presenters, reflecting the shared thoughts, feelings and conversations of its audience, on the very morning that the show is on air. News, sport and showbiz stories all feed into âsense of dayâ but it could also include the big show on TV the night before, an upcoming film or plans for the weekend.
Looking at the âpersonalityâ element, mentioned by Andy Parfitt, breakfast shows tend to feature a team of people, or âcast of charactersâ, on air. Whether music or speech-based, each person has a distinctive personality and role within the show. This is still true on a news programme. When Martha Kearney started on the Today programme in 2018, her editor told her to âlet your personality shine throughâ (Hodges, 2018). Kearney adds âIâm very much aware that people are having their breakfast, so there should be a friendly tone to the programme as wellâ. BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show presenter Zoe Ball has been called âchatty, chummy, self-deprecating [and] inclusiveâ (Nicol, 2019).
Whether BBC or commercial and regardless of format, the breakfast show is the stationâs âshop windowâ. It establishes the stationâs identity. This is done, not only through the content of the show itself, but also by trailing programmes scheduled for later in the day, which â it is hoped â listeners will sample. See âJinglesâ for more on the function of trails.
Gem at breakfast with Jo and Sparky
Jo Russell and Mark âSparkyâ Colerangle present the breakfast show on Gem 106 in the East Midlands, alongside their producer, Paul Iliffe, and newsreader, Katy White (Figure 1.1). The pair previously worked together at Free Radio West Midlands. Other past stations include Absolute Radio and Trent FM for Jo and Galaxy South Coast and Ocean FM for Sparky. Jo has won four Sony Radio Awards and, in 2014, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Radio Academy.
Jo2 says the showâs audience is primarily âfun-loving, easy-going, light-hearted, âentertain-meâ womenâ. Sparky3 adds that their listeners are âmaking changes in their lives where theyâre evolving from late 20s into 30s, settling down, getting a house â going down that routeâ. Jo says having a clear idea of the audience gives the team a âfilterâ to put ideas through:
Any content that we do, weâve got to put it through that filter. Weâve got to make sure that if they have got small kids, which we assume they have, that we make sure that our content can be heard by those kids as well. Also, weâve got to really think about an age range. Reference points are a key thing. Weâre light-hearted, too. We never get too serious. Once youâve put everything through that filter, weâre good to go.
Jo and Sparky use what they judge to be big talking points for their audience as the starting point for their links and wider story arcs. This could be as light and relatable as the end of the Argos catalogue to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Jo says, in that case, âitâs turning that into a bit of entertainment whilst not going over the lineâ. Executive Producer Paul Iliffe4 says they took an angle on the Governmentâs handwashing advice:
The handwashing one is a good one because you have to talk about whatâs going on in peopleâs lives. As soon as Boris Johnson says youâve got to wash your hands and sing âHappy Birthdayâ twice, weâre like âwoah â if youâve got to sing it twice, itâs the wrong song!â So we had a debate about what is the correct song to last 20 seconds. I think we came up with the chorus to â500 Milesâ by The Proclaimers.
With decades of breakfast radio experience between the four of them, what do they think makes a great breakfast show? Paul Iliffe says creativity is vital:
Itâs got to be pacy. Youâve got to have âtoo manyâ ideas, almost. My favourite kind of show is when it feels like weâve got too much to get in the show. Itâs like weâre packing things in because weâve got the next thing that weâre excited about to move on to. I love to hear that. On TFI Friday, you used to hear them talk about things that they didnât have time to do â and I used to love that.
Ideas are the lifeblood of breakfast radio, especially for shows on five days a week. Sparky says he has an online document that he constantly updates with ideas, while the team have a WhatsApp group, too. He adds:
It is a pressure because whatâs funny or entertaining is subjective. Trying to appeal to everyone is hard. Keeping that filter that Jo described is our rule so that we can keep inside the boundaries of where our show goes. The pressure of coming up with stuff every day, which one of us might find funnier or more entertaining than the other, thatâs where the pressure comes from.
Jo Russell says it is crucial to get the team dynamic right:
Acknowledging that weâre all quite different [is important for a great breakfast show]. Thereâs a real weirdness because you spend so much time together as a team of people, there are times when youâre really tired and think âdo we ever agree?â But thatâs the point. If we always did agree then one of us is redundant, essentially. I think appreciating that weâre all different is a good thing, not a bad thing. I think not being precious about who gets the air time [is also important], not being precious about who gets the laugh â at the end of the day, the show gets the credit.
Sparky agrees, saying a breakfast show is like a university project where âyou have someone who writes, someone who comes up with the witty wordsâ and that each member of the team brings something that the others do not. He adds that âbeing ready to changeâ is a big factor in the success of a show:
I woke up on the morning when Michael Jackson died and suddenly, itâs like âyouâre doing a whole show where youâre just talking about Michael Jackson and youâre just playing Michael Jackson songsâ. Youâve got no time to think about it, no time to stress, you just do it. Similarly, if a big news story breaks, like when we went into âlockdownâ, you need to be ready to change, knowing that everyoneâs on-side when you get in in the morning.
For Katy White,5 it is about âhaving strong personalities and not necessarily ones that are typicalâ. She adds this:
Iâve always made it my mission not to be [a giggling female character, just there to laugh at jokes]. If itâs patronising to women, itâs not something that I would enjoy listening to. I used to love Joâs breakfast show [with Andy Twigge on Trent FM] when I was at university because she was the strong, female character.
DAYTIME SHOWS
The direction taken by daytime programming varies hugely d...