When I listen to TalkRADIO I hear no callers, only telephone and studio guests. They still begging for callers but without succes.

It may be one of the reasons..... but i reckon the main reason is the expensive call cost.
It should be local rate or free.

I think it will take time for people to become aware of the station. It may be my imagination but I have noticed an increase in callers since launch day. It's that and the old chestnut of call charges - I know they keep saying they will call you back but that seems like a faff that may put some people off.

Having said all that they seem to be coping very well with quiet phone lines. Perhaps they anticipated a slow start and made sure they had content and guests for the first few weeks..?

As much as i appreciate this new TalkRadio station..... it was the callers that made the old TalkRadio for me.
I'm hoping they will sort it out to get more callers..... or i may start to get bored with it.

Without callers it's one way traffic. Sometimes it's one caller per hour, except Ian Lee offcourse.

I think it might be worth simulcasting Iain Lee for a week on talkSPORT. I know it would only take listeners from their own station but it might allow them to grow their caller numbers. Hence improving the quality of the station.

Okay here's the bad news...

Being the sad git I am, I have just skimmed through the last 24 hours of talkRadio audio and counted the total number of callers (excluding phone-in guests/experts, of which each presenter usually has between 6 - 10 during their 3 hour show).

The results are as follows:

Paul Ross - 2 callers (both sounded as though they had been called back).
JHB - 1 caller who just happened to be Dennis from Dunstable.
Jon Holmes - 6 callers; all seemingly set up beforehand for the purposes of games/jokes.
Sam Delaney - No callers
Gould Bros. - 4 callers
Iain Lee (from Monday night) - 19 callers (several of them sounded like they were called back).

Make of that what you will but I retract my assertion that the callers had increased since last Monday...

Not posted in this thread yet. I usually have Two Mikes on overnight/early morning so instead of the talksport web stream, i've had talkradio stream (as they simulcast) and i've not heard anything post 1pm but the Breakfast and Mid-morning shows are 'okay' but I was expecting more callers. LBC has good content but is bitterly dull. I know Talksport is tabloid called by some, sometimes. I was expecting Talkradio to be a bit less stuffy, but not tabloidy and range of good calls. 5/10 for me so far.

Maybe rose-tinted specs - miss likes of Ian Collins or Duncan Barkes etc from few years back on TS.

It is obvious that a free number would maximise the amount of calls, so I wonder why they didn't opt for a free number? TalkRadio must understand that this is an issue, because it has been stated on air that they call people back. LBC don't usually mention on air the fact that they call people back.

JHB's show is very lively. She has 40,000 followers on Twittter, most of whom will be following her because of her media work, which consists of expressing opinions on current affairs in print and broadcast media. That means they are the sort of people who are interested in current affairs and the opinions of commentators like JHB. She had Nigel Farage on her show. He has thousands of supporters and many of them will listen to him where ever he appears. On Monday Julia took 1 call and on Tuesday she took 1 call.

My worry is that the station may be deserted by some presenters if they don't feel that the audience is growing. It could also run out of guests if people don't want to be on a national station that doesn't appear to have any listeners.

A few of my personal recommendations from Howard Hughes Unexplained podcasts, as promised.

I've only picked out a few from the past 18 months gazing back through at ones I personally found interesting. I'm sure I've missed some good ones too. Some are harder to recall than others. I may add some further ones in another post going back further. There are so many worth a listen!

#175 - 21/9/2014 - David Paulides - About very strange disappearances of people, the "Missing 411".
#177 = 11/10/2014 - Robert Salas - Did aliens disable some of America's nuclear missiles.
#185 - 8/12/2014 - Dr Judy Wood - Questioning why the Twin Towers turned to dust.
#195 - 1/3/2015 - Seth Shostak - The head of SETI talks about his work.
#207 - 1/6/2015 - Richard C. Hoagland - Discussion about his latest thoughts.
#209 - 15/6/2015 - Dr Robert Zubrin - About colonising the red planet.
#212 - 7/7/2015 - Linda Moulton Howe - Researcher and investigative journalist.
Extra un-numbered edition - 23/7/2015 - Heather Couper - New Earth like planet.
#218 - 23/8/2015 - Ron Felber - The Mojave Incident 1989.
#219 - 31/8/2015 - David Paulides - Update on his "Missing 411".
#222 - 23/9/2015 - Bob Davis - The scientific way of investigating UFO's & alien abduction.
#224 - 8/10/2015 - Fevzi Turkalp - Future technology.
#226 - 22/10/2015 - James K Lambert - Conspiracy Theories and why they don't stack up.
#231 - 30/11/2015 - Marcus Allen - Chat with the UK editor of Nexus magazine.


I'm a bit in arrears on his most recent podcasts, there seem to be some fabulous ones, and I also noticed and have yet to listen to his David Icke Special #236 - 6/1/2016, so you are ahead of me on that one! I also heard tonight that Iain Lee will be having David Icke on his late night show on TalkRadio in a couple of weeks, he said. Worth looking and listening out for, whatever you think of Icke.

I get my podcast direct and free off iTunes. They always seem to last just over an hour mostly. They are on his www.theunexplained.tv/ site too.

Hope that's been a bit useful. Certainly the list is rich in listening potential, almost 250 podcasts going back all the way to 2006. A new one has tended to come out roughly every 10 days or so, but I notice there has been a bit of a gap since the last one, probably due to the new radio show on TalkRadio. I'm uncertain whether the future of his podcasts is now going to be directly tied in with the radio show while it's on air or whether they will continue to have a separate identity. I presume they will kind of merge, as the last updated one has the interview with Jesse Ventura that we heard on Sunday night.

The future tech podcast #224 with guest Fevzi Turkalp was extremely interesting and at times a bit scary. He's the "Gadget Detective" who used to be on Mike Mendoza's TalkSport show late at night until Mendoza left in 2008. In recent times he pops up on 5 Live very late at night every couple of weeks talking tech. That podcast chat with Howard is well worth a listen.

Correction - I meant Jesse Marcel III.

He has spoken to Jesse Ventura, who was a Governor of Minnesotta, as well as actor and wrestler. He spoke to him on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination.

Out of interest I skimmed the podcasts and did the same tally of callers for LBC - to save listing them all here, suffice to say that every presenter had between 25 - 30 calls in their 3 hour show, even Darren Adam in the unsociable 1am and 6am slot. Steady calls every few minutes.

[Edit] Correction - DA's 1 - 4am slot; Steve Allen obviously wasn't included as he doesn't take callers.

This number itself seems to be the maximum they can squeeze in rather than a reflection of how many callers they get.

I enjoyed listening to Paul Ross this morning (just changed over to BBC Essex). Topics ranged from the silly to the serious and certainly a well put together programme with plenty of light and shade!
I turned the DAB off last night when TalkSPORT started blaring out! Horrible, just horrible!

I've replied to you elsewhere Chin. [wink wink]

I'm just going to throw this out there, and partly just to play devils advocate....

Maybe callers aren't the be all and end all. Maybe it doesn't need LBC level of callers. I don't think anyone could say they're happy with current mix, but maybe it's not about ALL callers all the time?

The Gadget Detective was on the car/tech show on Saturday so I wouldn't be surprised he's on every week from now on.

I have settled into listening to two shows a day, Jon and Iain. Jon clearly has his show well planned in detail and only requires two callers a day for his features/quizzes, which may well be organised in advance as well. He presumably gets fellow comedians to call in at certain times. Obviously Iain has a lot of legacy callers from his old stations. So those two shows are ticking along nicely.

Stuart in Stanmore no longer has a kebab shop and works in B&M.

I tweeted them last week and was immediately followed then direct messaged by a producer asking if I would phone in on the Paul Ross show the next morning.

Pretty much same as me then. I didn't want to bang on again about Jon Holmes, but yes, this is a show I was certainly thinking about not needing callers.

The 'big debate' is always the same 2 people isn't it, just with different names? I thought that was part of the joke.

'Ronni' who wanted her doctors telephone menu system playing out as a 'talk request' is Ronni from Radio X hence the 'love the show... it's better now' comment and laughter from the rest of them.

So yes, I think he is relying on connections and people he knows but it comes across as a lot less desperate for calls than some of the output.

Iain is Iain - people will follow him anywhere and rightly so - he's brilliant. Its by far the most successful in terms of audience interaction etc. But did anyone expect anything different?

Jon doesn't ask for callers for the "big debate" so I assumed they were people he knew. I didn't notice they are the same people each time but having thought about it, they may well be. Sometimes they have a woman on there so she isn't on every day. I don't really know enough about his show to know how it works. I liked him on LBC but he was on his own and more dependent on calls. For some reason, I didn't really like his 6 Music show so I didn't bother following him to XFM but it sounds like I missed something good.

I knew Iain's callers would follow him. My worry was that he would be told to do a stereotypical talkSPORT phone-in circa 2006 but obviously we now know he has been given complete freedom.

I agree with you and maybe I'll have to come to terms with that.

However for me personally the best radio has always been about good debates and, dare I say arguments, between caller and host. I can call on 100 podcasts in my iTunes subs that offer two or more witty commentators just talking about a topic or making jokes. Radio is not podcasting.

At least SOME callers some of the time would be nice and perhaps with patience it will happen.

As a presenter who I know is a big fan favourite on these forums might say, "If you build it, they will come".

Ahh I'm a bit behind. I've heard the welsh bloke on a few times on the big debate (starting witht the epic tunnel one!).

I only listened to a few weekday breakfasts on XFM, and religiously to the weekend breakfast show. And in case you hadn't realised, the talkradio afternoon show is the radio x weekend show without music. It's identical, and brilliant!

It sounds like Iain, Jon maybe JHB have all been told they can do what they want?

JHB said on the first day that they said she could do what she wanted.

They call it TalkRadio, with a slogan "we'll get you talking"

Maybe they should rephrase that to "we'll get our studio guests and pre-prepared callers talking"

I listened on the first day, and found it odd, about the lack of callers, but i put that down to it being their first day - Paul Ross - one caller from New Zealand, very early on, when a lot of people were not listening, and then one call from his Mum, later on

I come on here, and read they are still lacking callers

Somehow i don't think Gaunty is quaking in his boots, any talkradio is good

An 18 second dump button, my goodness, don't expect anyone with controversial views to speak on talkradio