April 2012
4 posts
English - its not my strong point
I was talking to my sister Jane or Doctor Jane as Im sure she now prefers to be known - kidding Jane! - about the miss use of English. I was reminded about our conversation when I read on many facebook and twitter updates that grammer is knowing the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.
I must stress that I’m not an English snob, probably dyslexic (although I...
When we communicate, lets get close to our reader.
Its one of the first rules of radio that is, unfortunately, ignored to often. “Never distance yourself from your listener”. It is largly about the intimacy of radio, the fact that the broadcaster is talking to one person. There maybe 1 million people listeneing but they are listening on their own. Maybe in a car, maybe at work or at home, listening is a solitary activity. Even if you...
Time for some fresh ideas?
We live in some competitive times in the radio industry. Recession, increased competition from higher numbers of radio stations and the relentless growth of the web with the new opportunities that affords to advertisers. Testing times indeed.
How should we meet those issues? Heads in the sand and just cut the spot rate? - if everyone does that then we just drive down inventory value and nobody...
local radio and twitter #fail No2
I blogged recently about local radio’s tendancy to talk about the twittersphere and share with the listener whats trending in the world and neglect what is trending locally.
Ive come to the conclusion that this isnt the only misuse of twitter by local radio. Twitter is a conversation, the best radio presenters have a conversation with their listener. So, why are we so arrogant that we dont...
March 2012
1 post
Twitter & Local #radiofail
I listen to a lot of local radio, its my job, so its a sort of necessity. I don’t just listen to the stations that I may be working for but to their competitors and others in the broadcast market place.
There is a recent trend that is getting on my nerves - Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I use twitter, have an account with a couple of thousand followers, see some - perhaps not all -of...
February 2012
1 post
Management - its not a process
Gosh its a while since I blogged. Fresh back from holiday, I thought hey ho, why not write a bit.
Its always amazed me that people proclaim themselves as good managers when all they really do is follow a process. This is particularly true of large organisations but can also infect smaller companies. If management was as easy as following a predefined process could replace managers with...
November 2011
3 posts
Ofcom and Annual Reports
Managers of community radio stations know that once every year they have to file a report on their activities with Ofcom. Not many people outside the radio industry are aware of this or ever read it, or indeed anything about it. This report is considered, with others, and forms a Ofcom report on the community radio sector of the broadcast industry.
Ofcom’s annual report for 2010/11 is...
I haven't blogged in a while, if you dont count...
Its been a while since I visited my tumblr account. Too long, or not long enough dependent on you view of my blogging skills.
Since the last time Ive been blogging several times a day on a new site called www.InTameside.com. Friends and I came to the conclusion that there was a gap in the market for a site that mixed news, events and other features (yet to come) in a localised web site.
With...
Andy Hoyle Online: We Will Remember Them →
andyhoyle:
There’s a campaign at the moment to make today, the Monday after Remembrance Sunday, a Bank Holiday. Many events seem to grow year by year, and not all of them for the better. I think most would agree though, that the increased awareness lately of Armistice Day, the Royal British Legion Poppy…
October 2011
2 posts
A revolution, of sorts
10 years ago today a revolution started. It was a revolution that would change our consumption of music, video and the media in general. The chief revolutionary was Steve Jobs. Today, the 23rd October 2001, 10 years ago, the first ipod was sold.
I thought at the time, it will never take off! 10 years ago, most radio stations used CD players and cart players to create their entertainment, now...
Stand Up and other random challenges
Ive always wanted to have the courage to try stand up comedy.
I think of myself as an affable bloke who can make people laugh, I use humour to break the ice, to get past the silence and to create a relaxing environment. But do I have the guts and material to try stand up.
I have a friend who is learning and has a goal of a slot at Manchester’s Comedy Club to test his ability as well as...
September 2011
5 posts
QR codes, business tool or toy
Have you seen those little boxes that appear on the corner of some tv programmes and magazine adverts? Square monochrome box generally. They are called QR codes (quick response code) and they are the new big thing.
What they do is contain encoded data that a QR reader can decipher. In plain english, it allows people to create these codes that when your smart phones camera points at it you are...
Its nice when a plan comes together
When you work with an advertising client on their creative for the radio it is always a challenge. How to write something that catches the target listener, succinctly describes the benefits of the advertisers business, the contact points etc and all in 30 or so seconds.
When the client adopts what you have created and changes their print, web and newspapers to reflect your creative then you...
Of course its "arranged" reality TV is not real
I look incredulous - which is a big word for a Greeny Boy! - when people complain about reality tv not being real. Of course it isn’t, they want you to watch it. Would, for example, you sit there every Saturday night to watch every average pub singer go through their paces - No.
Average isn’t interesting. That’s why the average pub singer isn’t on there, they have been...
Onwards and Upwards -
“Onwards and Upwards, so to speak” is a saying that a few of the Tameside Radio team use. In reality it means lets strive to move onwards and upwards but with a realistic view that its not always possible. Time has come for Tameside Radio to move onwards and upwards with a great opportunity.
We live in a difficult market for advertising, aside of the economic downturn there are the...
August 2011
1 post
local radio at its best, riots, traffic - its the...
You forget, as you immerse yourself in the day to day issues, that what good broadcasters do is build relationships with the listener. Its at times when peoples thirst for local knowledge comes to the fore that you are brought back to the raisin detra of local radio, localness. Its our USP, its the only thing that Big FM don’t do well, because they cant.
When the snow came in the winter we...
July 2011
3 posts
A very British coup?
It strikes me that we are witnessing with the onslaught against News International something not that dissimilar to a revolution, albeit a peaceful one. Here we have the dictator one Rupert Murdoch - who looks surprisingly like The Simpsons’s Montgomery Burns - who has passed some of his powers, like any dictator does, to his son James.
Murdoch sits at the centre of an empire that...
Invest the ad spend in the trust medium
Ive always presumed that some national advertisers have placed their ad spend in national tabloids on the basis that gullible readers will believe anything. Slim, even non existent, regulation. Get away with it culture. You can see why some brands and propositions would go for it.
The broadcast industry is regulated, has broadcast standards, has advertising standards and Im quite proud that we...
Its not Murdoch, its the culture of news at any...
The last time I blogged was some time ago and about Super Injunctions. Time has moved on and im now wondering if some of those hacks that were complaining bitterly about super injunctions are wishing that they had one.
Im not sure anyone should be surprised at the antics of the, amongst others, News Of The World. Horrified perhaps but not surprised.
There is quite a clamour for...
April 2011
2 posts
Super Injunctions
Are we really entitled to know who is slipping one to whom? - I feel the need to use “whom” as its a royal wedding week so i may as well try and use her majesty’s language. Are people really not entitled to some privacy? Why did we have a right to know that John Terry was seeing Wayne Bridges ex without telling his wife? Isn’t that a matter for him, Mrs Terry, the wanna be...
Simon "Fire" Walker.
If you ever get the opportunity to fire walk then do it. Obviously I mean in an organised way at a fire walking event and not in the back yard over the barbecue.
I found it one of the most energising and empowering things I have ever done. I guess that you may have to be a bit stupid to watch a fire burn at 1200 degrees and then walk over it but the process that you go through before the walk...
March 2011
1 post
Its only burning at 900 degrees, what can possibly...
Haven’t blogged for a month, its old age setting in! The issues I had about reaching 50 must have quickly subsided. However, considering that I am a sloth (im so good at spelling that when i first wrote that it said Slough instead of sloth. Its not quite the same “I am a small town outside West London”) who rarely gets up to anything motivational or team building, then why am i...
February 2011
6 posts
Im chuffing 50! here comes the mid life crisis...
Fifty!! what the f**k! Fifty! I have to keep saying it as I can quite believe it. I know I was born in 1961 and I just remember 1968’s Manchester United beating Benfica, the 1970 World Cup Finals (in colour - my dads friend had a colour TV), first man on the moon etc but where has the rest gone?
I recall - like it was yesterday - my red united shirt, round neck, white collar that I would hold...
Chris Patten to Chair BBC Trust, a lurch to the...
Last week the Conservative grandee Lord Patten was appointed as Chairman of the BBC trust. The last Governor of Hong Kong will become, in all probability, the last Chairman of the BBC Trust.
Its not the first time that Lord Patten has been associated with the job. He was tipped to take on the role in 2004 when the then Chairman and Director General resigned from Aunty following the BBC’s...
Big Society or as its known in twitter world...
So what is it?
Some would say its a view of the world where people like Miss Marple run our communities with a brisk Womens Institute type manner for the good of all. Some would say that in some areas of Britain that view would work. Im very aware of village communities that are supportive of the individuals within the community where there is an ethos of mutual support and self help and even...
I have a new TV show - anyone wanna buy it?
To be honest I am very, very tired of reality and celeb TV. Frankly its so awful that I nearly turn the TV off if its the only thing on. - you are meant to laugh!
Biggest Loser, Big Bro, Dancing on Ice etc etc - all shite with a couple of exceptions, Im a celeb and …… well thats the only exception although I do enjoy the car crash editions of shite factor before the pretence of it...
Rising 50 is having an effect
I don’t mean the obvious slowing down a tad, marginally overweight - a big margin, perhaps, but a margin none the less - becoming grumpy and less tolerant of knob heads, its none of these, I’m becoming nostalgic!
In a few years I’ll be saying “not as good as in my day” and all that tripe that other old people will say, I can see it coming - which to be honest is the only...
Said it before - Rajar is a crock
regular readers of this blog may recall a previous entry that highlights some of the oddities of Rajar. If you havent seen it, Ive copied it to the bottom of this. Rajar is the BBC’s and commercial radio’s mechanism for counting listeners. We rent in it.
The new numbers are out today and some are so clearly wrong that if it wasnt so important to those businesses it would make you...
January 2011
4 posts
I think I should Chair Question Time
I haven’t watched QT for ages but last night it was on, I couldn’t find the remote and if they are sending, I’m receiving. So I watched this once great programme last night and was, frankly, amazed at the low calibre of guest and contribution.
With all the “no accounts” that now appear on The BBC’s, once flagship, Question Time programme why not have a no...
the "C" word, its just a word.
I discovered today that the Canadian radio regulator has banned the rock anthem Money For nothing because of the word “faggot” - its just a word.
In defence of Mark Knofler his pianist says “Money For Nothing does not ‘celebrate’ a slur. In it, Mark uses real everyday US street language to describe how a numbskull worker in a hardware department … feels about a...
well then. its just me, thee + the cat!
How will we cope? Will i survive the week without being stabbed? Will we still be speaking in a month? Will her weird sexual cravings come to the fore (made that one up!)
These are testing times in the Walker household. Charlotte has moved into Manchester to live in a swish gaff off Deansgate. David has gone back to Leicester to live in his swish house (bloody student) leaving me and Mrs W...
Banks, why do they have to try and sell me...
Aside of my general fed up with banks status for their greed in the US sub prime market and lending up to 125% of a house value in the UK which created the recession that is depressing our economy and in turn pissed up the wall my chance of retiring at 65, I am getting fairly fed up with the “do you have a pep” and “have you thought about changing your mortgage” questions...
December 2010
2 posts
Us old folk are watching the politicisation of the...
Its easy to condemn violence. ”I condemn the violence” there, that’s out of the way. I also wonder how many of the perpetrators of violence actually care about the issue or just there for the violence and mayhem. They do appear at most demonstrations with their scarves round their faces and dressed in black. (just as an aside, you would think it was that hard to identify them...
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
Good local radio really comes to the fore at times like these. Who else can respond as quickly as radio? Who else can tell pupils and parents that their local school is closed within seconds of the decision? Who else can put it into context of other schools, road conditions, forecasts with all the necessary immediacy? - nobody.
Localness is why people listen to local radio, a “close to...
November 2010
4 posts
Freedom of Speech means hearing things you don't...
Do you believe in free speech, I hope I do. Often I find myself shouting at the TV or radio as a presenter or guest says something that irritates or even offends but thats Freedom of Speech.
Should a frustrated traveller who jokes on twitter that he will blow up Robin Hood Airport unless it sorts itself out not only be arrested but tried and found guilty? Should the conservative councillor in...
Kelsey Grammer follows David Walker!
Twitter, facebook for adults, apparently. This social media caper can be a bit strange. You follow people and see what they want to say to the world and they can, in turn follow you and benefit from your thoughts about anything.
It has its downside as my son David found out when he said something unkind and one of the Jedward’s, he ended up changing his twitter name and making his account...
I'm special, or at least I was when I was born!
28th Feb 1961, the child Simon born to his teenage parents David 18 and Susan 17. David had just left school, in fact he couldn’t go on the school trip because he was getting married. That trip was to Rome and last Summer, for the first time since then he visited Rome.
Anyway 50 years on, my father gave me a premium bond that was bought for me when I was born. The bond was bought by one...
I know I'm getting grumpy in my old age but come...
Right, I used to be easy going, chilled, almost horizontal, some people would say I still am but the news media in this country really wind me up. I am continually angry at the blame culture that they foster, how its always some bodies fault. Makes my blood boil to be honest.
For example - I will use two - The appalling case of Baby Peter who was tortured and murdered by those who had parental...
October 2010
3 posts
Radio is a trust medium, then why bullshit about...
Radio works because it is trusted, it is a conversation between the broadcaster and the listener. The presenter builds trust, becomes a friend and thus builds their audience. Then we lie to the listener about the other listeners - community radio excepted.
Once a 1/4 Ipsos RSL produce data on behalf of Rajar (a company owned by the BBC and commercial radio) into the listening habits of the...
Don't you just love footy
We are a couple of months into the season now and to be honest, I’ve had a load on and haven’t been paying too much attention except to watch my beloved Manchester United. Man and boy and all that, and for the detractors -yes I’m from Manchester and support Manchester United … yawn. As does the majority of this city which is evidenced by the record crowds we have...
Is it Fair or Fayre
Im told that Fayre is just a bastardisation of fair created by the wedding and Olde England groups to emphasise tradition over modern. Not that I care a lot but having just organised Tameside Radio’s first wedding fair (fayre on the posters) it was a question that we needed to answer.
When I say I have just organised the wedding fair I mean the Tameside Radio team ably supported by Mistry...
September 2010
3 posts
TV Ads - brilliant and the poor
I facebooked yesterday about the Tenalady tv ad, the whole thing is preposterous. I said “some adverts really are poor, i would say piss poor but that would be cheap. The tenalady ad “what’s the first thing you notice about me, its not my bladder weakness” no obviously not, I would need to know you better to find that out!”
You would have to be a proper perv if the...
Volunteering
Not everyone knows this but Tameside Radio relies heavily on volunteers. All in all the volunteers at the radio station put in around 10,000 hours a year. Everything from brewing up and phone answering to presenting programmes and news. We are a social enterprise, created not to make profits for shareholders but to do other things other than just good radio.
Since we started we have relied on...
Is Darts a sport?
If it is, why isn’t crib and 5’s & 3’s a sport? Im quite good at 5’s & 3’s, could be world champion if it was a sport. I could practise for hours laying down my double 6 knowing I had 6-3, 6-0 and 3-3 in my hand, 5-5 and 5-2. I could have a coach for the 2-1 lead.
I can see it now, I am the correct weight for a 5’s and 3’s champion. We could...
August 2010
1 post
RAJAR - What a crock
By Friday this week you will be reading in the papers and hearing on your radio that X,Y, and Z radio station has “dramatically” increased listening, or massive increase in market share … utter tosh.
The whole system is flawed, what happens is that someone knocks on the door - in Tameside its about 100 doors - and asks you to keep a diary. The diary is pre-prepared for you so...
July 2010
7 posts
10,000 analogue radios WOW, with a sense of irony
So, despite all the hype, all the free ads that have run on the BBC, all the free airtime given over to it by big commercial, as well as the press hype only 10,000 analogue radio’s have been swapped for digital ones this summer.
Hardly a great advert for the power of radio is it! It just goes to show that you cant produce any old rubbish and expect people to buy it just because you...
A Weekend Off!
A first in a while, well off if you discount my 7am to 10am breaky cover slot on Tameside Radio on Sunday - 103.6 fm or tamesideradio.com for those daft enough to listen to me! or rather my alter ego Phil Mottram.
No doubt a beer or two to start off the weekend this evening and I was then thinking of bed for the weekend or lounging around doing nothing, perhaps a bit of internet poker, feet up,...
Highlight of the weekend Jerusalem or Cha Cha...
I know, that’s a bit eclectic but I have had two highlights from last weekend and they were those two songs.
Sunday was amazing, the weather held off for Party In The Park at Hyde Park - the real one, not the one in London! Top of the bill were 80’s girl band Bananarama who, to be honest, have worn well, well better than me anyway! The support acts were tremendous but, for me, the...
In the footstep of a Giant
When I was young, very young as I look back, my father introduced me to politics and to the phenomenon that was Roy and Margaret Oldham. I first met the two of them when I was 14 or so as I helped my dad leaflet for the Labour Party.
At that time it was something I did for my dad and for the craic at the end of the evening in the White Hart, or similar location, in the village I was born in....