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| Christian O'Connell on The Breakfast Show |
This tour was one of the best - we got to go on Air with Christian O'Connell on The Breakfast Show! It is a very surreal experience seeing in the flesh what we usually listen to on the radio - seeing the banter between the radio hosts, the travel update and the news. It seems to me that to be a radio show host, you need to have the ability to multi-task VERY well. They have to fit in everything they want to say between songs, provide a good banter experience for their listeners, read the advertisements they get word for word and generally keeping their audience entertained whilst flicking the right buttons at the right time (they have many buttons in front of them including 4 computer screens). We each had to ask him a question about the radio industry, which I had a complete blank and forgot to even say my name...so I asked....'What's the worst thing about Radio?' .... original? I don't think so! Anyway, they responded with the fact that they had to get up at 5:15 every morning - to be honest, that does sound pretty horrible!
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| Me on Air |
The rest of the day consisted of a presentation about what they did, in terms of the stations they offer, who they target and their popularity - Absolute Radio are one of the leading stations and have a very successful format which attracts more than 1.2million listeners (including myself). We then had a 'higher or lower' quiz about how many listeners we thought each station had - our team lost on the tie breaker question, it's OK, i'm over it now.
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| The Grads at the station |
We then had a tour around all the studios and the departments etc, it is a very unassuming building and not massively big - which is surprising as it is home of one of London's biggest radio stations. It was such a good experience as I had never been to a Radio station before. The morning also made me excited about the potential of advertising in Radio and what you can do with it - sponsor shows, sponsor stations and channels..... you take the medium outdoors and have tie-ins with the radio and music festivals - exciting!
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| Painting of Debbie Harry - Defaced by Slash from Guns n' Roses |
I didn't really consider much about radio advertising, and then I thought, actually it is a very powerful medium in supporting a campaign... the radio only uses one sense - your ears. Therefore it heightens that sense, you listen to it more carefully as you have no visual to help you along. Also when do you listen to the radio? Usually when you are doing something (like cleaning the house/driving etc) - so in essence Radio is used to keep us company - there is low ad-avoidance on radio as people enjoy being talked to and that is why they are listening to it in the first place - therefore people trust the adverts more? It is a very interesting medium ... it can be powerful when used on its own but also just as powerful when used alongside TV led campaigns as it acts as a reinforcement.... needless to say you can be very specific with your targeting in radio (type of music/region etc).
Lesson 8: I love Radio
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| Thanks for a wicked Day absolute! |
