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Radio Reunited: BBC Radio at 90

2012-09-10T13:39:24+00:00

When the first BBC transmitter, known as 2LO, crackled into life on November 14th 1922 few could have guessed the impact that radio would have on our world. A few thousand enthusiasts, listening by headphones to primitive crystal radio sets, heard a news bulletin read by Arthur Burrows, the director of programmes of the newly formed British Broadcasting Company (as it then was).

Britain was a very different place, still convulsed by the aftermath of the First World War and just entering a new era of technology. However, while motor vehicles and domestic telephones led to more long distance contact with friends and family, it was radio, as the first mass broadcasting medium, that bought people together across the nation to share experiences together. As we know, television and the internet have burst upon us in the decades since, but the wonders of radio have endured. Indeed, today radio is flourishing.

To mark the 90th anniversary the BBC is attempting an ambitious first, bringing together around 60 our stations (network, local, national and international) for a single remarkable moment – a three-minute piece of history broadcast simultaneously around the UK and the world. At its heart will be an idea that explains radio’s success: listening to each other.

So if you could talk to the audience of the future, people listening 90 years from today, what would you say? What would be your hopes, fears or observations to a generation yet unborn? It may be a piece of advice, a wish or a question. You might address it to the world at large or more personally, maybe to a great grandchild. You’ll need to keep it short, probably no more than 20 words because we reckon the pithier the thought, the better the broadcast. Personally, I think I may remind people on the limits of technology and enduring beauty of the British landscape. Or maybe just celebrate the fact that the relevance of the wireless has never faded.

We’re thinking of this Radio Reunited moment as a message in a bottle across the years. I’m delighted that Damon Albarn has agreed to set the best of the thoughts to music which we can play out to our listeners on November 14th 2012 at 5.33pm, to mark the first broadcast from 2LO. Radio has come a long way since those crystal sets – short wave, medium wave, FM, digital and now the internet – and there’s no telling how it will be broadcast in 2102. But one thing I am willing to bet is that 90 years from today someone in the BBC will dig out our 2012 90 year broadcast and millions of people will still be tuning to radio to hear it once more.

Send your entries by text or email to your favourite station’s drivetime show or tag your tweets using the hashtag #BBC90. You can also leave your entry in the comments below.

The best will be given to Damon to include in his unique composition. All entries must be submitted by Friday 14th September 2012. Listeners whose messages are chosen will be invited by their chosen station to record their thought.

Tim Davie is director of BBC Audio & Music

The information you provide will be collected and compiled by the BBC for purposes of broadcast on air, possible inclusion in Damon Albarn's piece for the 90th Anniversary of BBC Radio and possible inclusion in The Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex for research purposes. Full names will not be broadcast or published online or given to the University of Sussex. The BBC may wish to use your contribution in other BBC services, strictly in accordance with the BBC’s Terms of Use (http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/).
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Radio 1 and digital participation

2012-05-04T15:15:07+00:00

Tulisa on the Moyles show

At 9.45 this morning Chris Moyles played an old Underworld single and does what he normally does on a Friday. Laurel Waldron, a R1 listener in London, immediately tweeted "Born Slippy has just set me up for the weekend" attaching the hashtag #r1goldenhour to her tweet and perhaps, unwittingly, Laura had just joined thousands of other R1 listeners in participating publicly with Radio 1 visibly illustrated by the next phrase from the mouth of Chris "Let's try and keep this trending worldwide until 10 O' Clock".

The R1 Golden Hour; an hour of tracks picked by Chris and his team has been running as a popular feature for many years where listeners are urged to guess the year and get nostalgic. What's changed recently of course is that the sheer volume of responses now often means that Moyles' listeners are responsible for filling up the popularity charts of new terms on Twitter.

Meanwhile over on R1's Facebook hundreds of other listeners are similarly typing 2000, 1999, 2002 furiously into boxes on their phones as they head into work or college.

Moyles then reads out a few more tweets, Facebook messages on air, asks another question and the conversation online goes on. As I write #r1bromance is trending in the UK thanks to a Scott Mills feature (don't ask).

As my colleague Holly illustrated this afternoon, in her presentation none of this is new (Ed's note: Holly's blogged the presentation she gave at today's Online briefing). R1 has had Facebook / Twitter accounts for over 4 years but there's been a real shift in scale in recent years as the research validates.

This of course poses a number of challenges for a youth focused network.

As Radio 1 presenter and long time Moyles producer Aled Haydn Jones puts it, arguing that it's necessary for the Moyles show to be a catalyst for these interactions, "It's no longer about our audience contacting us, it’s about The Chris Moyles Show, Radio 1 and the BBC being a part of their daily conversation. Using a variety of services, our listeners are able to interact with us throughout the day."

And the listeners of Radio 1 really do dominate these spaces:

10 out of the top 20 most followed radio presenters/producers on Twitter in the UK work for Radio 1 including Fearne (3.2m followers) and Chris Moyles (2.2m) two of the most followed Brits on Twitter in the UK.
Regularly over 1.5m users now regularly see photos, links and clips via the Radio 1/1xtra Facebook pages every week.
Radio 1 Twitter accounts regularly receive over 150K retweets and replies a week.

A small footnote is that SMS is still a dominant way for listeners interact with radio stations . Last month over 3.2 million SMS were received by the BBC's national networks. Radio 1 alone received 2.1m of them. An all time record.

And often for R1 it goes beyond the simple requests and shoutouts. Last week for those knuckling down to GCSEs they hosted a daily revision Q&As on Twitter with teachers providing English and Science facts and tips via, yes, another hashtag again - #r1revision.

I'll blog again in future weeks with more data about how the other networks are using social media and will return to Radio 1/1xtra.

I'm also happy to answer queries in the comments below.

I guessed 1999 by the way after I'd heard the excellent F.E.A.R by Ian Brown. As Aled tweeted "Lots getting it wrong on #R1GoldenHour - come on! It's easy. Even I know it this week!" Yep. It was 2001.

Jem Stone is executive producer, BBC A&Mi

Round up: Identity is the crisis can't you see?

2011-07-22T14:43:00+00:00

Bollywood Stars: BBC Asian Network's Tommy Sandhu with Bipasha Basu at IIFA

The BBC Trust is currently reviewing BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra. The period for public submissions closed recently and the Trust promises to publish its finding in "due course".

In the meantime, several trade papers are reporting on what the trade body for commercial radio, the Radiocentre, called 5 Live's "identity crisis" in their submission.

Broadcast wrote:

'Commercial radio trade body Radiocentre has accused BBC Radio 5 Live of "suffering from an identity crisis and confusion over its purpose" and called for it to stop branding itself as an entertainment station.'

Radio consultant and ex-5 Live executive Bill Rogers wrote on his blog:

'The Centre's current target is the Richard Bacon show, for doing too much "celebrity and entertainment news". I suspect the authors of this report are only recent listeners to the station, and may be quite young. It's always been there. Hark back to The Magazine, with Diana Madill. Remember Eddie Mair's jousts with Cliff Richard...'

You can download the Radiocentre's submission via Bill Roger's blog post.

You have until Sunday to catch the BBC Asian Network's coverage of the International Indian Film Academy Awards in Toronto on the BBC's Red Button digital TV services. You can also catch photos and videos on the Asian Network website now and extended video footage from this Monday. Maestro Cam and Soloist Cam also return to the Red Button for this season's Proms. More details of both items and other Red Button services here.

On the About the BBC blog the head of Audiences has written a post Measuring quality and reach at the BBC announcing the quarterly publication of audience figures related to, wait for it, quality and reach across all platforms including radio. The first report, covering January to March 2011, makes for happy reading for UK radio executives:

'Overall radio listening remains strong, not just for the BBC but for the wider radio industry. The most recent data release from RAJAR (...) relating to Q1 2011 shows radio to be in better health than ever before with 91.6 per cent of the adult population listening to a UK radio station every week (47m). 68 per cent of UK adults 15+ (35 million) consume at least 15 minutes of BBC Radio in an average week (the highest figure on record) and listeners spend over 16 and a half hours on average per week listening to BBC Radio.'

Read the rest of Measuring quality and reach at the BBC and download the report on the About the BBC blog.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Radio blog

Melvin, BBC Three Counties Radio and social media

2011-05-23T14:43:00+00:00

Editor's note: Brett was previously the interactive editor of 5 live before becoming the managing editor at Three Counties Radio. I asked him for his thoughts on the role of social networks in local radio. (PM)

Last July I left BBC Radio 5 live after six years and drove north to Luton. I hadn't worked in local radio since the early nineties, but the chance to run my nearest radio station was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The 5 Live newsroom I left was fully engaged with social media, with a variety of Facebook and Twitter accounts, presenters engaging with the audience and audio and video shared and distributed daily.

At BBC Three Counties Radio I quickly found that social media was not really on the agenda. So as we set about putting together a new schedule and defining how we were going to re-shape the programming, I thought it was important to get the station working in digital spaces at the same time.

Working with the brilliant Claire Wardle and Sue Llewellyn we designed two days to talk to everyone in the station about what could be achieved. Every producer and presenter spent 2 hours learning the essentials. There was a clear message: if we do this, it will increase the reach of our radio content.

But it's not just about teaching people what to do. Integrating social media into the radio station needs support from the very top. The management needs to be engaged and actively involved. It's not enough to have a lone person in the newsroom responsible for social media, it's everybody's job.

At 3CR the two news editors that cover the broadcast day now have it as part of their job description to update social media, share content and engage with the listeners. We created time in their day to do this. Just as crucially the journalists are using it as a newsgathering tool.

In just a few weeks we found on Twitter a gamer addicted to playing 18 hours a day that tied into a Panorama programme, friends of a murder victim and a local man who was designing a space mission to name just three. We uncovered local stories, new guests and shared masses of content. When we tweeted and engaged on Facebook about a local park being closed in Bushey, the callers that rang in were keen to point out that they had never listened to 3CR - and didn't know it covered their area. We found an 18 year old dancer from Hertfordshire waiting in a queue outside the Hammersmith Apollo to audition for Britain's Got Talent.

Additionally, and just as importantly, the presenters are connecting with the listeners in digital spaces for the first time. Social media is being used to extend the reach of the radio station and bring new ears to 3CR content. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was Melvin, a caller ranting about how much he hated the Royal Wedding. He was on air at 0920. Laura Miller, who produces the mid-morning show, had this on Audioboo and in the Twittersphere by 0935, as she continued to output the show. To date, as a result of social media, it's been played 115,000 times, that's greater than the weekly reach of some stations. Melvin may have called his local station in Luton, but the next day he could hear his call being played and talked about on WNYC in New York.

So has this strategy it worked? Well admittedly it's difficult to equate social media activity directly to gains in listeners. But last week BBC Three Counties Radio had its best Rajar for six years. I would like to think the two are connected.

Brett Spencer is currently working on social media innovation projects for BBC English Regions. Follow his personal account on Twitter @brettsr

Follow BBC Three Counties Radio on Twitter at @bbc3cr
Read radio and new media consultant Matt Deegan's blog post on radio and Twitter ("...Overall, Twitter is a great resource and platform to help grow audience and engagement. Remember though that the vast majority of your listeners probably don't care..."): Radio's Twitter Obsession

A record month for Audio and Music's websites

2011-05-09T16:40:00+00:00

Following the headlines in March's iPlayer stats pack that we published last month, I wanted to share some more details and insights about BBC Network Radio's interactive performance, as it was a record month for us. They say events drive reach, and plenty happened on the Radio websites in March that helps prove the adage. Reach to all BBC Radio sites hit 3.7 million average weekly unique browsers*. And if you factor in A&M's music and events websites, such as Music and Radio 1's Big Weekend, we recorded an overall reach for all BBC Audio and Music sites of 4.3 million UK average weekly unique browsers. That's an all-time high for us.

Online interest in Chris Moyles' marathon 52-hour broadcast for Comic Relief was a big part of this, pushing traffic to the Radio 1 site to a record 2.4m average weekly UK unique browsers. Live footage from the studio, carried on the Red Button, attracted 2.84 million viewers. And then there was Fearne Cotton. Her offer to appear in a swimsuit if the total raised by Moyles topped Â£2 million caused a surge of traffic that helped crash the Radio 1 site for a brief time. So, events do drive reach, and we've learnt some useful lessons there about capacity planning. On top of this, there have been about half a million clicks to view the section of the programme again via the website, and at Radio 1's official channel on YouTube.

We've had a superb month for live online listening. And although live listening via the internet still accounts for a relatively small amount of all digital consumption, we know people find it convenient to stream radio at their desks: compared to consumption via analogue platforms, online radio listening doesn't fall away so dramatically after radio's 'usual' breakfast time peak. In March, we recorded 29 million requests for live streams, 18% up on this time last year. Record performances across BBC network radio contributed to this, including 5 live sports extra, which nabbed 1.3m live stream requests for its World Cup Cricket coverage. Did I say... events drive reach?

We broke more records with our podcasts, delivering 12.3m successful downloads to UK subscribers in March. The Archers topped the list of our daily podcasts, with Scott Mills in second place. Interestingly, although Radio 4's landmark series A History of the World in 100 Objects ended last autumn, its podcasts remain popular enough to make it the 5th most popular daily podcast title in March. This is evidence of the demand there is for making podcasts available for longerÂ and of the public value we can create by opening up the archive. First indications from the Desert Island Discs archive are also very encouraging. I've just had a first sight of April's podcast results - they're looking equally promising, including several hundred thousand successful downloads of our Royal Wedding 2011 podcast. This included a lot of interest from users in English-speaking countries around the world such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. It's another good example of how events drive reach.

A final, encouraging thing to note is the steady growth in reach to A&M's websites optimised for mobile devices. We've done a lot of work over the past 2 years to improve the usability of those sites, including automatically tweaking the pages to suit the device in question, and adding the ability to stream live radio for many devices. Devices are becoming easier to use too, and the performance since the start of this year suggests that the effort is now paying off: significant numbers of users now accessing A&M's content via mobile. March was a great month for this. There was growth across the board, with new sites for Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and Radio 1's Big Weekend contributing to the increase. And there was especially strong growth for Radio 1 and 1Xtra, where all mobile devices are now covered with key services and where fans used their phones to join in the fun with Moyles & Co for Red Nose Day.Â Which all goes to show... well, you know what goes here.

* Unique Browsers: this is the term we use to describe a single computer accessing our websites. It's not the same as measuring 'people', and it's not a perfect proxy - but is the closest we have for now. One 'unique browser' is counted for every distinct 'cookie' which has visited a website within a given timeframe. In the BBC, this timeframe is one week. A cookie is a small piece of information that a server sends to your computer to identify that computer on its return. Whenever you clear your cookies, as some people regularly do, your computer is issued with a new cookie when you return to a website.

Alan Phillips is senior business manager, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

The Latest RAJAR Listening Figures: can it all be good news?

2010-10-29T07:00:00+00:00

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

As I was reading an article listing all the official quotes from radio industry leaders - myself included - reacting to the latest quarterly radio listening numbers, it was hard not to feel somewhat exhausted by endlessly positive sentiments. Nearly every quote is upbeat with each company proclaiming success. So what's going on?

Firstly, the good news is that when a sector is growing then there is a genuine opportunity for all companies to increase listening. I have spent the last few months emphasizing that although the radio market faces some challenges, it is time to accept that it has proved much more robust than anyone expected. Indeed, it has shown that it will remain a major force in a fully digital world. The latest Rajars actually showed a record high number of listeners (46.8 million) and showed an increase in hours for the first time in a while (up to 22.6 hrs a week). This is excellent news and it should give radio real confidence to lead the media sector. Revenues may be smaller than some other sectors such as TV or online but the depth of its relationship with the audience is second-to-none.

Meanwhile, after a record-breaking quarter some BBC services did take a small step back versus the last quarter although nearly all are up versus a year ago. However, as listening grew, we did see a small decline in our share of the market. Some may think this would be cause for concern in Broadcasting House but it is not a key metric for us. We maintained the numbers of listeners (66% of the population over 15) and actually grew hours (up to 16.7 hrs a week). So the BBC increased its importance while the market grew and commercial radio benefited. This growth, helped by the strong performance of national stations, is welcome because it helps drive revenues and growth for the whole sector.

So although the natural instinct of all corporate leaders may be to focus statements on the more positive elements of the facts, this quarter's results have enough genuinely good figures to keep most of the industry smiling.

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music at the BBC

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) is jointly owned by the BBC and commercial radio trade body the Radio Centre. Participating listeners are asked to record their radio listening in quarter-hour time blocks for one week.
The RAJAR figures for 'linear listening', not including on-demand listening or podcasts, in a table and the official quarterly press release (PDF).
BBC Audio & Music's RAJAR press release.
Picture, RAJAR Q2 2010, by Adam Bowie, used under licence.