local radio at its best, riots, traffic - its the word local

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 had more website visitors in a 48 hour period than we do in any single month, more calls to the station, more emails etc. You get the drift…

Last week we had a major incident on the motorway that passes East/West. It closed the motorway at peak travel times. The programme and news team were excellent, usual traffic sources, on the scene reporting, impacts across the area everything the driving listener needed + some great music and terrific ads!

This last few days will have seen the best local radio stations focus on what their listener needs to know. Some have been brilliant -Key 103 for one - others awful. For our own part, that has been as much about reassurance as it has been about news.  Sure, we have been carrying news from London and Manchester but we also add in to our mix sunny Tameside. After Manchester the messages we got from people fearing violence was remarkable. The fact that we could reassure them, visit the locations, broadcast, tweet and facebook that the rumours were without foundation eased peoples minds.  Its not news, in reality we were reporting non news but that reassurance was needed, needed from a trusted news source, needed from a friend.

I wax lyrical on a regular basis about the trust that a presenter builds with a listener, how local radio - in particular - is a trust medium. Its nice to be right!