Community Radio; station sound and output - should we raise our game?
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In the last few years I have watched posts with interest about Community Radio; and I have listened to a lot of them across the country. Something that has got me thinking… (specifically around the sound/format/programming of a Community Station that centres on a geographical community).
Is there an expectation within the industry that Community Radio stations will sound poor and be sub-standard?
I have heard a lot of Community Stations across the UK, and a lot of the time (but not all), the audio processing, mics, desk, jingles, commercials are poor. The sad thing is that when I listen; I accept it as the norm, and say to myself “It’s a community station, so well done to them for being on the air!”
The question is, in Community Radio – should we raise our “audio” game? I have believed (since 2003 when I first thought about how these stations should work and sound) that Community Radio should be a training ground, should take risks, should showcase new talent, and broadcast programmes for a community that would not otherwise be heard; but in the right way, so train and coach someone to be as good as they can get before they are given the keys to the studio, make sure the studio is set up correctly, and the audio sounds right.
I know resources are tight and mostly non-existent in Community Radio, but I would love to see a step change in quality of output. I have always believed there is no reason that a Community Station should sound "Amateurish" we are on the same dial as the BBC and commercial radio - but do listeners stay with a station and say "Ah bless them, it's not great but well done to them for having a go!"
I would love to hear from members here their opinions on the sound of Community Radio. I’m sure there will be those that disagree with me - and think I’m just another “armchair commentator” but I have a real interest/passion in Community Radio having managed 3 RSLs and setup and managed a Community Station, I do have an interest in the industry doing well.
What do you think? Do we need to raise our game?
Is there an expectation within the industry that Community Radio stations will sound poor and be sub-standard?
I have heard a lot of Community Stations across the UK, and a lot of the time (but not all), the audio processing, mics, desk, jingles, commercials are poor. The sad thing is that when I listen; I accept it as the norm, and say to myself “It’s a community station, so well done to them for being on the air!”
The question is, in Community Radio – should we raise our “audio” game? I have believed (since 2003 when I first thought about how these stations should work and sound) that Community Radio should be a training ground, should take risks, should showcase new talent, and broadcast programmes for a community that would not otherwise be heard; but in the right way, so train and coach someone to be as good as they can get before they are given the keys to the studio, make sure the studio is set up correctly, and the audio sounds right.
I know resources are tight and mostly non-existent in Community Radio, but I would love to see a step change in quality of output. I have always believed there is no reason that a Community Station should sound "Amateurish" we are on the same dial as the BBC and commercial radio - but do listeners stay with a station and say "Ah bless them, it's not great but well done to them for having a go!"
I would love to hear from members here their opinions on the sound of Community Radio. I’m sure there will be those that disagree with me - and think I’m just another “armchair commentator” but I have a real interest/passion in Community Radio having managed 3 RSLs and setup and managed a Community Station, I do have an interest in the industry doing well.
What do you think? Do we need to raise our game?
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Comments
http://www.964eagle.co.uk/radiorockz/
Its fair to say there are some excellent stations out there that justify the licence and do serve their communities well, but on the flip side there are stations to be slightly cruel are a embarrassment, as long as you can grunt your parked in front of a mic, and ran by people that haven't a clue and it appears it some cases there to serve their mates. You know the joke about how you measure listening figures of a community station ? Count the people standing in the studio.
Those are the ones that need to raise their game, should there be a minimum set of standards, probably but who do you enforce them
Community radio I think does have a very poor reputation it has it fix that. The new local radio.. No I don't think so, standards just aren't high enough.
If you want to hear a good community station, try HFM in Market Harborough. They sound pretty much like a commercial station from the 80s with the level of local content.
There are some really awful ones out there as well, although I'm not going to name and shame.
Another thing, is how big some community stations try to be.
One station I know, claims an area way over the 5km/3m area they are supposed to concentrate on. They have jingles for towns three to four times the distance from their prime area. Surprised Ofcom turn a blind eye.
How many seriously keep to their proposed licences? From pretending to have a live breakfast show to broadcasting on one channel for 6 weeks , Community radio is on the whole a real joke, but obviously there are some exceptions.
I imagine a lot of members of the public have heard the phrase 'community radio' but possibly don't understand explicitly what it means. To them, the station in question is just another option on their dial. If they listen to afternoons on Heart in the car and they don't like the song - they flick frequencies. If they tune to a community station, on the whole, they won't make any allowances for the fact staff are unpaid and possibly novices.
Those who DO understand what it means can be a bit presumptuous. They automatically associate the word 'community' with the word 'amateur' and won't even contemplate trying it out because they presume it'll be rubbish. Much the same as a story in our local news recently of a woman at an event who refused to be treated by St John Ambulance because they were volunteers - and in her eyes useless!
Money is by far one of the biggest issues though, especially if the station is run by those with no prior professional experience. The stations need advertising to function and needs to have a structured output to maintain listenership. The fact they're community focussed, in my eyes, doesn't mean they can become a mish-mash of random shows through the day. On top of that, there's only so much good will in terms of companies advertising because 'the station's local'. In this day and age, even Johns Butchers in the High Street can't take that risk!
Double that with the fact that most can't afford to market themselves in the traditional way, you end up with a vicious circle where you can't get the ad's because you can't market the brand...but to market, you need ad revenue!
It's a sad reality, that a lot of stations - at least in the day - need to have a commercial structure with a hyper local focus to compete with their rivals.
The reality is a lot of stations are going to sadly close as funding is drying up?.
Regarding the programming content, yes many sound very amateurish to my ears. But the surprising thing I find is that many people seem to like the amateurish sound - they find it kind of endearing.
Maybe I'm wrong, but my preference would be to run them as commercial-sounding stations with community content - by which I mean to say they sound professional and slick, have a music policy etc, but still do the community bit as well in a concise, entertaining way. (eg: instead of reading a list of local events in a dry manner, have the presenters just mention them ad-hoc in links throughout the day. Also, instead of interviewing some local person for 30 minutes or one hour, break it down into 5 minute chats between songs - bit like Desert Island discs. Get experienced presenters to mentor new presenters etc etc) If there are not enough good local presenters then automate or use syndicated shows, but still have plenty of local inserts and if resources allow, local news backed up by events in the community (live OB's, store openings, roadshow/discos etc etc)
The alternative many stations seem to have is a very amateurish sound that (for me anyway) is very difficult to listen to. Added to that the lack of any music playlisting on many stations means that the music swings so wildly from genre to genre that inevitably is pisses off listeners and they tune away.
As I say, maybe I'm wrong and "amateurish" is the best way to succeed. It's very easy to stand on the sidelines and lob stones - a completely different matter to actually take responsibility to run one of these stations. Hats-off to the many people who voluntarily dedicate large chunks of their lives to keep these stations running.
Literally any person can walk in off the street and volunteer as a presenter, which is fine to an extent, but some stations are offering very little or poor training. The result - a team of people on air that nobody will listen to, who are on air just because they fill a hole in the schedule.
Sadly, the management of some community stations have no idea about radio or how to run a station or how a station should be run. Some stations have simply become an ego-fest, so the management can go around saying "oh yeah, I run a radio station!". The frustrating thing (based on my experience) is that the management can sometimes be ridiculously blind to how awful a station sounds and think people will listen just because the station name is the same as the town that they're broadcasting to >:(
If you make any suggestions to the management, they think YOU have an ego. WTF?
It's harsh but it really is true. There are a lot of community radio stations that are on air right now that will struggle to survive simply because of the reasons I have mentioned here. Community radio could be good and has so much potential.
Leith FM/Castle FM is a fine example of a bad community radio station.
I was tuned into some station in Southport last year and the guy thought it funny to play Heavy Metal after midnight. As the age of the average a Southport resident is quite old, I thought this was a dreadful way to shed listeners who may look to something local over night.
I listen a fair bit to Biggles, who seem to have a good mix of music.
The kids are listening to Capital/Kiss/Radio 1/1Extra guys! Not one person I know listens to our local station, and as they know radio is my interest, it does come up.
Dave still feels great and probably sits on the management team of the station to back it up.
Why bother with OBs? In fact, why bother with any content that might be more interesting than "that was that, this is this, I'm Dave"?
This isn't to mock anyone called Dave or any community stations specifically, but there is just too much "that was, [insert very basic local reference], now here's Cry Me A River, Mickey Bubbles... haha" stuff out there without any thought to whether anyone's listening.
I'm not sure why it needs more regulation. More low cost training, perhaps?
Ultimately the worst case is that nobody listens, Community stations are generally soaking up unused capacity unsuitable for commercial stations so there's very little opportunity cost.
And what they do, is to throw them out or make their life hell so they quit, in order to protect their little bubble.
The proof of that was in my local paper last year.
And then they go on to run a really poor station in to the ground.
It's also fairly inevitable with voluntary organisations that outbreaks of squabbling and infighting develop as people try and pull the station in one direction or the other. Anyone who's been involved with hospital radio will testify to that.
Sadly in these austere times I think most people would be prepared to live without funding community radio, there are far more important things that need investment.
Having been involed with ILR and Community Radio, much of the above is true. A community station is only as good as it's worst presenter.
The community station I was with (now sadly departed, but thats another story, for another day...) did have a rule. No one was bigger than the radio station. Sadly, towards the end, this was not the case.
Audio wise, it was set up by people who had worked in the radio bussines, and did sound good. Music was playlisted between 7 in the morning and 7 in the evening. We played a wide range of music, from the 50's to the best of the current charts. Evenings had specialist progrrammes, and into auto thro' the night.
There are some good stations out there, and some dire stations, just listen to community output in Suffolk...
If done correctly, community radio does have a part to play.
The whole concept of CR is that it's parochial.
Now that ILR is networked and the localness is limited to some ads and peak time one minute local news and weather/traffic info, it's time for the licensing authority to give CR a break and allow on air advertising to increase from the one read ad per hour to perhaps 3x 2min breaks with professional ads. I realise the the hearts and the other inbetweeners like connect will belly-ache. Well tough! They have the opportunity to much greater wealth and full time paid presenters which CR hasn't.
Yes and pay presenters expenses as well. The licensing authority can put a cap on this - say no presenter can draw more than £200 per week. With the stations total expenses bill of say £1000 p/wk. This way presenters will raise their game - it's surprising what a cash incentive can do. Most of all, the listeners will get more certainty with presenters doing regular spots. Listeners get cosy with presenters, but if they never know who or what they're going to get, then how does a CR station develop a regular listenership?
I reckon our local Braintree's Leisure FM does a reasonable job of things, give it a listen here: http://www.lfmradio.co.uk/
We have the basics of a very good station where we are - some experience and skill to run the technical side, meaning that we sound pretty decent. It's quite an arty town, so many of the presenters are very passionate and try their best to keep standards high. We have a lot of very interesting and cool sounding shows, although sadly, not enough of them. We are just trying to find more weekly shows and to fill weekend schedules better but like any station out there, it all depends on enough volunteers and technical help. We do need to get more presenters better training for sure.
Our station manager deliberately veers away from trying to copy commercial radio which is fine in many ways but to be honest, our only chance of attracting more locals, is if we had a daily breakfast and drivetime show, which we don't have yet. Its a way to get them listening, as they can maybe see what else we have on offer from there. I actually think we get more listeners from outside the town than inside sometimes!
We have just moved back into refurbished studio's but the rent is still relatively high for a station such as ours, somewhere around 15k per year is our running costs all in, maybe a bit more.
Seeing the person above suggest we get paid to do this, I would love to but it will never happen if we want to stay alive - in fact, all members pay to do a show [ only a fiver a month mind you ].
But on the plus side....we have a few shows - including mine! - that have listeners from around the planet. We regularly have feature show clips included on local BBC radio. Recently, we hosted a live outside broadcast from three separate locations around the town, for the Christmas lights switch on from Jenson Button [ our home town hero ]. It shows we can provide a service that The Breeze couldn't compete with - as only we really know the town and its occupants.
It's sad that some community stations give the good ones a bad name - but I do believe the decent ones are worth keeping hold of, even if the actual listening figures are not as high as we'd all love them to be!
The two other community stations I broadcast on (HFM and Future Radio) are like that too! I guess we are lucky - or we just try harder!
The thing is - it can be done! And Community radio stations can provide a real and valued local alternative to the boring predictablity of ILRs and BBC Local stations! And we don't cost the local ratepayers a penny!
You may do more OB's but are they really needed ? To justify a OB you need a reason otherwise all it ends up is the presenter blabbing away "We are out of the studio today" with no real reason for it. While you may do more full shows as OB's the BBC most likely do live inserts from there radio car for Breakfast and Drive pretty much everyday.
Ive listened to Cambridge 105 and while its one of the better CR's it certainly isn't as perfect as you describe. It may have presenters 7am - 1am but if i'm really honest some aren't great at all, CR shouldn't be a place were any man and his dog can have a play on the radio, there should at least be basic standards. Why ? Think of it as a listener, if every time you tune in theres a crap presenter on your not going to continue listening to the station, as a result the listener misses the good presenters due to the 3-4 times they first tuned in they were greeted to rubbish. Listeners don't understand that person is doing it for free and for fun, what do you think they will choose between someone sounding awful or the slick sound of something like Heart or the BBC.
In response to your local Commercial being worried, i would highly doubt it, the only time that will happen is if you start stealing large amounts of advertising revenue. As your not in RAJAR thats highly unlikely as you don't have any figures to prove listeners and as a result the small bit of advertising you will receive won't be at commercial market rates. If you were believe me you would have some very "suspect" complaints to ofcom from "Anonymous" people regarding small technical things or content. Sorry if that sounds harsh i'm just saying whats happening.
The BBC do very few "OB" reports in Cambridge - the small amount of radio car report stuff on breakfast is largely in Peterborough which is where the breakfast show is broadcast from - mostly it is out of touch with Cambridge. And what I am talking about are Proper Outside Broadcasts covering events like the Cambridge Rock Festival, Strawberry Fair, The Mill Road Winter Fair, Royal Visits, New Band Competitions etc etc - the sort of things that BBC Cambridgeshire used to try and cover years ago when it actually used to be a local station, rather than having over 65% of it's output generated outside of Cambridge!
Of Course not all our presenters sound "professional" - because they aren't - in fact they have to pay for the priveledge - but the fact that BBC Cambridgeshire's Drive time presenter was recruited from our Sunday Breakfast show and Star's Drivetime presenter was recruited from our daytime breakfast show tells you that we are doing something right - and of course when that happens we have to train up and start again - which is part of the reason we are here!
Our big advantage is that the majority of presenters we have care about what they do (they are paying for the priveledge), care about their local community and I think that is picked up by the listeners we are aiming at - and it is very heartening that we are getting more and more positive feedback from those listeners.
We don't want to sound like Heart nor the BBC and the listeners we are picking up are generally those that want local radio but are disenfranchised by the output of both...