chrismoyles.net
- Tue Apr 27, 2004 1:54 pm
#142659
There's an interesting article in The Guardian about how radio shows have become so reliant on texting. Thought I'd post it here as it mentions the Chris Moyles show a lot and Aled is one of the interviewees!
Edit: Pasted whole article as I forgot you have to register to read articles on the Guardian online
TEXT IF YOU'RE TUNED IN
Radio stations are being bombarded by text messages from listeners. Now broadcasters are finding ways to exploit this new relationship, reports Bobbie Johnson
Whether you listen to teen pop radio or relaxed talk radio, it is hard to get through any show these days without DJs asking for listeners to send in text messages. A few years ago this kind of interaction seemed either optimistically cutting edge or foolishly faddish, but now texts are an integral part of any presenter's on-air armoury. Every day, listeners are urged to send in messages, votes, opinions and requests, and what started as a minority medium is now beginning to emerge as a driving force behind modern radio.
"Even 18 months ago we weren't using text very much," says Aled Hayden-Jones, the broadcast assistant on Chris Moyles' Radio 1 breakfast show. "It was very phone heavy when I started working on the afternoon show. We're very lucky because we have an audience who text quite a lot. They're young and tend to use it a lot more than email - it's more convenient for them."
Around 2bn text messages were sent in the UK last month alone, and the mobile phone is now a ubiquitous accessory, so the trend for texting is set to grow. For radio, it is a chance not to be missed.
"It's instant feedback," says Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills. "Text really steers the whole direction of the show. People don't necessarily like to ring the station, and email is quite slow - with text messages, anyone can do it and you could be anywhere."
One of the catalysts for change has been the shifting demographic of texters. The medium is slowly moving from the realm of teenage texters into the more lucrative adult market. That is something radio executives hope they can harness.
"There is still a drop-off in the upper demographics," says Tom Laidlaw, head of mobile and interaction at Capital Group, which runs stations including London's Capital FM and Xfm and Birmingham's BRMB. "But mobile phones are in everyone's pockets these days. Listeners can use them there and then."
Asking listeners to send in their messages is one thing, but managing the flow of texts streaming into a show can be a demanding task. Laidlaw says the annual number of messages that might come into Capital's flagship 95.8FM station - now proudly sporting Johnny Vaughan as its latest recruit, of course - is in the millions.
Hayden-Jones claims that the Chris Moyles show regularly receives more than 5,000 messages during a three-hour broadcast. Such figures make impressive reading when the size of the audience is taken into consideration. Capital FM's official audience is 2.3 million, while Radio 1 reaches around 9.5 million listeners. The levels of interaction being achieved are not to be sniffed at.
Some are surprised at how swiftly texting has entered the consciousness of the nation's presenters. "I heard an old show we did about four years ago, and I was asking people to fax us. I mean, who can be arsed to send a fax now?" asks Mills. "You hear some stations just reading out messages that they've been sent, which can be pretty dull, but it can be used creatively."
Radio 1's Ten-Hour Takeover was a prime example of the remarkable progress that radio's relationship with text messaging has made in the past few years. On Easter Monday, the station's listeners were invited to send in their song requests by text, with the day's playlist built out of their messages. "There was a huge diversity of artists requested," says Dan Hill, the technology and design manager for BBC radio and music interactive. His 30-strong team helped to develop the system used to organise the 150,000 messages sent in during the day.
"We built an interface that would work with the demands of a live radio show," he says. The system let broadcasters "aggregate all the incoming text messages, enabling them to identify tracks to play and listeners to credit. In total, 133 listenersuggested tracks got played."
Hill says it was an unprecedented project and, with around 150,000 messages making the experiment the largest ever radio request show, it showed a possible new direction for listener-driven content. Critics says there are downsides to this kind of popularity. It seems inevitable, for example, that marketers will try to harness the strong relations built up between radio stations and texters. Capital's Laidlaw says that while radio is keen to avoid the murky world of spamming, both he and his counterparts at other stations are well aware of the benefits of making the relationship work on a commercial basis as well as an editorial one.
"One of the challenges is how we turn the pretty high levels of response into something more," he says. "You've got these people texting you, but what does that mean for a station? What does a listener want? We're looking to manage that communication, to turn interactions into relationships."
Text is beginning to exert its influence elsewhere in radio as well. Some stations are starting to use listener input to guide playlisting decisions, while others are trying to boost interaction in new ways. Those listening to digital radio through their televisions, for example, are increasingly being encouraged to interact through an onscreen information service. It is all a sharp contrast to two years ago, when broadcasters and mobile operators alike came in for stinging criticism over their promotion of text. It emerged that phone networks were deleting thousands of messages because stations were unable to handle the sheer volume and listeners were paying for messages that never got to their destination.
Now, though, the systems are built to handle whatever the public can throw at them. "In the early days, Chris would try to crash the system," admits Radio 1's Hayden-Jones. "But the last couple of times he's tried to do it, it hasn't worked. When we were trailing the Ten-Hour Takeover, he attempted it, and we received around 21,000 in an hour, but the system coped." Cynics may claim that this is simply handing over responsibility to listeners, but audiences continue to lap it up. For the jocks on the frontline, critics are simply missing the point - text has now become one of the most important tools they have for connecting with their audience, to an extraordinary degree.
"Listening to texts can completely take you in another direction," says Mills. "You end up wondering, 'How did we do without it?'. It's become vital. If it ever breaks down, the feeling is very strange. It's almost like being naked."
Now there's an image
Edit: Pasted whole article as I forgot you have to register to read articles on the Guardian online
TEXT IF YOU'RE TUNED IN
Radio stations are being bombarded by text messages from listeners. Now broadcasters are finding ways to exploit this new relationship, reports Bobbie Johnson
Whether you listen to teen pop radio or relaxed talk radio, it is hard to get through any show these days without DJs asking for listeners to send in text messages. A few years ago this kind of interaction seemed either optimistically cutting edge or foolishly faddish, but now texts are an integral part of any presenter's on-air armoury. Every day, listeners are urged to send in messages, votes, opinions and requests, and what started as a minority medium is now beginning to emerge as a driving force behind modern radio.
"Even 18 months ago we weren't using text very much," says Aled Hayden-Jones, the broadcast assistant on Chris Moyles' Radio 1 breakfast show. "It was very phone heavy when I started working on the afternoon show. We're very lucky because we have an audience who text quite a lot. They're young and tend to use it a lot more than email - it's more convenient for them."
Around 2bn text messages were sent in the UK last month alone, and the mobile phone is now a ubiquitous accessory, so the trend for texting is set to grow. For radio, it is a chance not to be missed.
"It's instant feedback," says Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills. "Text really steers the whole direction of the show. People don't necessarily like to ring the station, and email is quite slow - with text messages, anyone can do it and you could be anywhere."
One of the catalysts for change has been the shifting demographic of texters. The medium is slowly moving from the realm of teenage texters into the more lucrative adult market. That is something radio executives hope they can harness.
"There is still a drop-off in the upper demographics," says Tom Laidlaw, head of mobile and interaction at Capital Group, which runs stations including London's Capital FM and Xfm and Birmingham's BRMB. "But mobile phones are in everyone's pockets these days. Listeners can use them there and then."
Asking listeners to send in their messages is one thing, but managing the flow of texts streaming into a show can be a demanding task. Laidlaw says the annual number of messages that might come into Capital's flagship 95.8FM station - now proudly sporting Johnny Vaughan as its latest recruit, of course - is in the millions.
Hayden-Jones claims that the Chris Moyles show regularly receives more than 5,000 messages during a three-hour broadcast. Such figures make impressive reading when the size of the audience is taken into consideration. Capital FM's official audience is 2.3 million, while Radio 1 reaches around 9.5 million listeners. The levels of interaction being achieved are not to be sniffed at.
Some are surprised at how swiftly texting has entered the consciousness of the nation's presenters. "I heard an old show we did about four years ago, and I was asking people to fax us. I mean, who can be arsed to send a fax now?" asks Mills. "You hear some stations just reading out messages that they've been sent, which can be pretty dull, but it can be used creatively."
Radio 1's Ten-Hour Takeover was a prime example of the remarkable progress that radio's relationship with text messaging has made in the past few years. On Easter Monday, the station's listeners were invited to send in their song requests by text, with the day's playlist built out of their messages. "There was a huge diversity of artists requested," says Dan Hill, the technology and design manager for BBC radio and music interactive. His 30-strong team helped to develop the system used to organise the 150,000 messages sent in during the day.
"We built an interface that would work with the demands of a live radio show," he says. The system let broadcasters "aggregate all the incoming text messages, enabling them to identify tracks to play and listeners to credit. In total, 133 listenersuggested tracks got played."
Hill says it was an unprecedented project and, with around 150,000 messages making the experiment the largest ever radio request show, it showed a possible new direction for listener-driven content. Critics says there are downsides to this kind of popularity. It seems inevitable, for example, that marketers will try to harness the strong relations built up between radio stations and texters. Capital's Laidlaw says that while radio is keen to avoid the murky world of spamming, both he and his counterparts at other stations are well aware of the benefits of making the relationship work on a commercial basis as well as an editorial one.
"One of the challenges is how we turn the pretty high levels of response into something more," he says. "You've got these people texting you, but what does that mean for a station? What does a listener want? We're looking to manage that communication, to turn interactions into relationships."
Text is beginning to exert its influence elsewhere in radio as well. Some stations are starting to use listener input to guide playlisting decisions, while others are trying to boost interaction in new ways. Those listening to digital radio through their televisions, for example, are increasingly being encouraged to interact through an onscreen information service. It is all a sharp contrast to two years ago, when broadcasters and mobile operators alike came in for stinging criticism over their promotion of text. It emerged that phone networks were deleting thousands of messages because stations were unable to handle the sheer volume and listeners were paying for messages that never got to their destination.
Now, though, the systems are built to handle whatever the public can throw at them. "In the early days, Chris would try to crash the system," admits Radio 1's Hayden-Jones. "But the last couple of times he's tried to do it, it hasn't worked. When we were trailing the Ten-Hour Takeover, he attempted it, and we received around 21,000 in an hour, but the system coped." Cynics may claim that this is simply handing over responsibility to listeners, but audiences continue to lap it up. For the jocks on the frontline, critics are simply missing the point - text has now become one of the most important tools they have for connecting with their audience, to an extraordinary degree.
"Listening to texts can completely take you in another direction," says Mills. "You end up wondering, 'How did we do without it?'. It's become vital. If it ever breaks down, the feeling is very strange. It's almost like being naked."
Now there's an image
Last edited by Matt F on Tue Apr 27, 2004 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
