How can community radio stations beat commercial ones?
Adam_Jones2
Posts: 345 Forum Member
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I've been thinking recently....You have a town of say 200,000, you've just been granted a community licence to target listeners aged 15-25 years old, your licence is for a 24/7 station FM station.
But...
You also have a commercial station 'Kiss' or 'Capital' aiming for the same target audience..
How can your community station gain more listeners than the commercial one, is it really that hard or in fact impossible to beat the 'big boys'?
P.S I'm not talking about advertising or sponsorship, just listeners for the target market.
But...
You also have a commercial station 'Kiss' or 'Capital' aiming for the same target audience..
How can your community station gain more listeners than the commercial one, is it really that hard or in fact impossible to beat the 'big boys'?
P.S I'm not talking about advertising or sponsorship, just listeners for the target market.
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Thanks for this Hanssolo, you say about forgetting to gain a large audience, how would you be able to bring a decent amount of money in, to keep the station broadcasting, not profit but enough to keep it on air and pay the bills?
If you try to compete with Global you will lose. To start with they are the legacy station, they have more money in the bank to pay top presenters and sales people and TV advertising. They also have economies of scale as a national network, which means their running costs will be disproportionately low.
So as Hanssolo says, with your limited resources, find something that Global don't or can't do for a particular audience and super-serve them. If you can monetize that then you will be able to grow.
The underlying principle of community radio is that a group of people with similar interests come together to create something which doesn't already exist - not duplicate something that does.
If you are truly going to target that demographic, you will have to come to terms with the fact that your ratings will be very low. If you truly play music that targets the typical 20 year-old, you will not get many people aged 30+ tuning in at all. It's an age group that doesn't listen to the radio much in the first place.
Look at Radio 1, it's failing to target that age range, but if it does ever become successful, and gets its average age down to 20-something, then I promise you its ratings will be very low, you alienate the rest of the population if you play music that appeals to that age group. Capital, etc. get high ratings since they play music that appeals to 30+ year-olds.
Something like SBTV would probably be more likely to work.
Thanks Tee Hee I very much agree with everything you have said, some community stations like the link Hanssolo has kindly mentioned is a great example of a community station which simply is catering for a very diverse part of the community and is working, the social media really seems to be working for them as well (if they are genuine likes on Facebook), they have more likes than most of the regional Heart stations.
If you and your presenters appear to be unconcerned about a wider audience, preferring to indulge in ludicrous and conceited backslapping ("oh - your (shambles of a) show is just awesome ". "Thank you SOOO much, your (complete mess of a) show is simply awesome too - it's such fun being on a proper (i.e FM) station that has such a HUUUGE audience of 50 people listening on the internet") then forget about troubling the scorers as far as being even a flea-bite on your local commercial station's consciousness is concerned.
If you want to have no coherent programming, no consistent or logical schedule, far too many presenters to manage properly (I know of one that proudly claims to have a roster of three figures (:eek:)) with completely different presenters and shows every hour of every day (many of said presenters barely having been shown anything as simple as proper monitoring or basic mike technique) with no thought to whether they have even a basic aptitude for broadcasting before letting them loose to self-"produce" (i.e turn up and do whatever the hell they want regardless of whether or not it sounds any good or not) then you have about as much chance of challenging your local commercial outfit as I do of having a platinum-selling album.
On the plus side the community radio fanatics will have multiple orgasms about the way your cutting-edge "rebel radio" "eclecticism" is sticking it to the big boys. (HAHAHAHAHAHA!), Unfortunately they probably won't actually listen to it a whole lot more than your local population does.
One final thing. I'm sure I'm telling you something you already know, but just in case you haven't paid this much thought, it might be an idea to make sure your studio is laid out as logically as you can. I never realised how much ergonomics mattered until I was introduced to a studio that involved you in an unnecessary game of twister if you wanted to try anything beyond the most basic style. Obviously I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect it has at least some responsibility for the beige, undynamic presentation and regular howling self-op errors that can be found at certain stations.
What you need to do.is complement the existing serviced and offer something non of them really can i.e accessability to the local community. Run trainingc courses for things like radio, djing etc and broadcast the results as long as they are good enough. Do.lots of specialist programming off peak and in peak hours adopt the basic principles of radio listening whivh are famiarity and consistency. Don't make your daytime output too obscure and do the same thibg at the same time every day. It may be a different predenter but in order yo builf any kind of audience they need to know what to expect when they tune in. If i tune in at 10am on Tuesday and like what I hear I'd expect to hear the same if I tune in at 11 on thursday. In order to keep an audience the familiarity is important. Too many ungamiliar thingsvat once will cause listeners to switch over. As it's community radio the presenting will be a bit dodgy at times so your music during peak hours needs to be quite mainstreem. Save the obscure stuff for your specialist shows.
If you want a young age group you need to be up on social media and phone apps. Content here iscas important as on air content so make it part of the station output. Find local people like bands and djs who already have a following and get them involved jn the station anyway you can. That way they will share content with their followers and promote your station.
Blimey, you're brave. I hope you're prepared for the community radio purists turning their flamethrowers on you. Don't be fooled into thinking that logical arguments will protect you. The fact that none of them can produce any credible evidence whatsoever that the free-for-all, "no playlist" approach they advocate produces anything other than total indifference among their local populations won't be enough to deter them.
Getting enough local ads aimed at young people for the other 50% might also be a pain, but if the station gets a good reputation might help rather than high listening, which without paying a lot of money to Rajar will be hard to verify.
Not to be included in the survey I don't think. I'm not sure whether there's any discount on membership/paying for the full survey results.
Forget RAJAR. It's not an option that is offered for community radio stations . If it was, it would cost you money you already haven't got. So be thankful.
Also, RAJAR is pretty awful as a measuring tool and becomes less accurate the smaller your MCA. That's why many stations with MCA<100,000 don't use it.
And finally,even if you could get it, RAJAR s mostly used to attract national sales income via FRS. But, If you don't have total hours of 200,000+ then you are likely to get bugger-all national revenue. Not even enough to cover the cost of the survey!
I was going to start a new thread about community radio, but this post sums it up nicely. There's too much ignorance by failed presenters/managers from radio running a CR station into obscurity.
I've had some experience at a community station in Essex. I did try to apply to one station but the amount of red tape that blocked me to get involved with the station was insane. The other station I managed to get on to allowed me to broadcast a specialist dance music show on a Saturday evening. Perfect to target the younger audience going out. I really tried hard to get to know the local area (it was just outside my home town) but was still in the same county. The station had a ridiculous rule (not told to me until I was well into my show) that all presenters had to post a blog on the website. Even if it had no relevance or I didn't have enough content to put on the website. This is what eventually kicked me off the show because I delayed a couple of entries.
Although my experience might sound like sour grapes, you only have to listen to the station output to see how monotonic it is. Okay, the local events guide section is a good edition to encourage presenters to offer local information on 15/45 minutes past the hour; again, very generic and no excitement. Another example is one show was presented by a very knowledgable local about gardening and local issues. He wasn't very slick but he made up in personality. Then the next show... it sounded like Radio 1. Music policy is non-existent and can imagine people switching off when it turned from Radio 2 to Radio 1. The presenter was clearly a local DJ who needed to fill his spare time on the local community station spurting out rubbish about new music. The show would of been fine on a Friday/Saturday after 7pm.
I just think not many stations think with too much common sense. The best example I've come across is Unity Radio in Manchester. Punchy, too the point with the target audience and all presenters seem onboard with the station's target audience. At least they're not throwing advertisers money down the drain.
I think the problem is that to do decent local radio even live for 12 hours a day is exceptionally difficult and expensive.
The value in taking time to organise your content isn't difficult. It's just time. If you have right funding framework, surely you could get a professional news broadcaster to lend some time training reporters? It's being clever with the resources you've got. Technically, a community station can sound as good as Heart/Capital/Local Tinpot. Automation software can be had for little (open source) or a larger initial investment if you spend the money correctly.
If people are passionate enough; you can get very good quality local output on a smaller scale.
However full vetting is required for community stations especially those on DAB and FM.
In a word - NO...because the well branded stations have already made their mark on that specific listener target audience....and what would BE the point of another station playing 'exactly' the same output? - that is the problem with MOST radio stations in 'city' areas.... the constant competition of who can play the most repetitive format to a younger audience.. C(r)apital being a prime example.
Most 'community' stations in my area tend to completely avoid the constant 'repetition' of music from other stations and offer a much wider variety of music - which is a good thing.
Also being a 'community' station, the (ERP) output power will be much less than a 'commercial' station of which will usually be on much more power to cover a wider area than a community station.
I have more interest and faith in community radio than any commercial station because of their varied output.
Therefore might be easy to fill evening slots, not so easy to do daytime with consistency.
There may be some that have the financial means to be able to present a regular slot, perhaps even the unemployed wanting to build confidence, housewives, students?
No easy answer for community radio?
Yeah your right I know plenty of budding and pretty good radio presenters working on Community and Hospital radio that spend most days at the studio. I guess they are just getting as much experience as possible until they can go onto much better things.
Mostly funded by our members with some advertising help and a shin up from OfCom We have seen the station grow steadily in terms of the quality, quanity and depth of our programmes and judging from the increasing number of listeners who contact us (that are neither friends or family) and the scant Market Research we have been able to do - we are gaining market share month by month!
We have done this - not by trying to pretend to be an ILR or by trying to be like our local BBC (not so local) radio - But by trying to offer something which they don't offer - A different, yet popular, local music mix during the day and good quality alternative and specialist programmes at the weekend and after 7pm....
Not only that but we offer major support to all the local bands and artists in our area and our Outside Broadcast team cover all the major music events and local festivals in our area...
Keep it local - care about what you are doing - and don't forget what Reith said - Entertain - Inform - Educate - It's still a winning combination - just add Local and you've got the keys to great Community Radio!