New upstarts clobber complacent commercial radio industry two-decade market monopoly : 1973-2005 : Independent Local Radio, UK

 The UK commercial radio industry has grown dramatically since the first station launched in 1973. The history of the industry can usefully be divided into two chapters:

1.  1973 to 1990

At the beginning of this period, local commercial radio stations were opened only in the UK’s biggest cities and then, in the 1980's, new stations were launched in smaller cities and in largely rural counties. The regime was characterised by the word 'monopoly', as only one commercial station was licensed in each location (London was the only exception, with two stations licensed with very different formats). Each station broadcast its programmes simultaneously on the AM and FM wavebands, enabling it to reach the maximum possible audience in its coverage area. Each station’s success depended upon its ability to attract listeners away from national and local BBC stations, and its ability to attract advertising to the new radio medium and away from competitors such as the local press and regional television.

Listening figures to local commercial stations were generally very high. They were new, exciting and offered something more local and less stuffy than BBC stations. Because each local station was a separate local company, run by a local Board and financed by local shareholders, each station cultivated its 'localness' to the maximum in order to attract listeners. London’s 'Capital Radio' was a prime example of the success such a strategy could have. Using the slogan 'In Tune With London', every day the station used its converted red double-decker bus to visit a different London location, handing out stickers and leaflets, as well as offering listeners the opportunity to meet presenters and request songs. These 'personal contact' strategies paid enormous dividends and generated substantial loyalty between listeners and their local station. By the 1980's, they were supplemented by community outreach projects and charity fundraising marathons. 'Capital Radio' had a JobCentre branch and a flat share information service in its foyer [see blog], which became young Londoners’ first means of finding accommodation in the city.

By the end of the 1980's, local commercial radio was a big success with listeners and had developed a loyal following across two generations of listeners, giving it substantial audience figures across a wide variety of ages. Up and down the country was a range of fiercely individualistic, quirky stations, each with their own name, each with their own 'star' presenters, and each adopting their own idiosyncratic music format. By now, each had woven itself into the fabric of its community and was as much a part of local life as the town’s football team or the local bakery chain.

The one aspect of local commercial radio that proved problematic was stations’ inability to surpass their 2% share of total UK advertising expenditure. This percentage stubbornly refused to grow, even during times of an advertising boom and radio became known within the advertising industry as the '2% medium'. It was viewed as an 'extra' to be added to media campaign plans in times of boom, but quickly struck off when the economy was not so good. As a result, advertising revenues fluctuated enormously during downturns in the economic cycle and one local station was even forced into liquidation.

Radio’s main problems in attracting national advertising were:

• Even all the stations added together did not cover the whole UK

• Because each station was independently owned, buying a campaign on all existing stations was a labour-intensive task

• Station advertising rates and packages varied hugely, more dependent upon stations’ ability to extract such prices from local advertisers than any standard cost per thousand

• Station formats varied as much as their names, so that some stations delivered considerably older or more female-orientated audiences than others.

Because national advertising was so problematic, the majority of advertising sold on local commercial stations was derived from local businesses. By the late 1980's, local radio had proved its effectiveness at marketing local products to local listeners, and a bond had been forged between local business owners and the local sales teams of stations that was the economic lifeline of these broadcasters.

At the same time, by the late 1980's, complacency started to infiltrate local radio that resulted directly from stations’ lack of competition for listeners and lack of competition for local advertisers. Stations started to work less hard than they used to in order to please both their audience and their local business community. The government’s regulator released stations from having to fulfil many of their community obligations. Instead of seeing that work as an intrinsic part of their loyalty-building strategy, stations such as 'Capital Radio' closed their Community Department overnight [see blog]. At the same time, stations had their eye on merging with nearby stations to increase profitability, or arranging stock market flotations to generate capital for acquisitions. Several stations diversified into all sorts of businesses from theatres to restaurants, seeing themselves as 'entertainment' rather than purely 'radio' companies. In the 1980's, anything that involved making money seemed a good idea.

For the first time in its history, the late 1980's saw 'Capital Radio' suffering declining audiences and, like other local commercial stations, it had no idea what to do about the problem. It had only ever competed against the BBC for audiences and, only then, back in its very early days. Since then, it had always taken its audience for granted and simply presumed that listeners would never turn to any other station. All the local stations still enjoyed a monopoly over commercial radio advertising in their patch. It was something they felt they had a right to. The 1980's economy was booming. Everyone was getting rich quick.

2.  1990 to now

The existing radio stations received their first major shock when the regulator suddenly licensed a range of 'incremental' stations in areas that already had existing local stations. This was the first time that the so-called 'heritage' stations had ever faced competition from newcomers. For example, in London, 'Capital Radio' lost audience straight away to 'Melody Radio' (targeting older people), 'KISS FM' (young people), 'Jazz FM' (wealthy middle-aged people) and 'Choice FM' (the Afro-Caribbean community). Suddenly, the audience that 'Capital' had taken for granted for so long was deserting it in droves for stations that sounded new, fresh, innovative and in touch with London, something that 'Capital' had done less and less of in recent years.

The second shock came when the regulator licensed three national commercial radio stations, a full thirty years after local commercial stations had been introduced. The industry had been arguing for years that it could never break through the 2% barrier (of all advertising spend) unless businesses and agencies were able to offer clients a proper 'national' opportunity to book a single campaign across the whole UK. New national commercial stations could offer such a deal and give the existing local radio stations a chance to share in radio’s enhanced visibility. As a compromise, the new stations were deliberately introduced in such a way so as not to impact local commercial radio audiences too greatly. The national 'popular music' station was to be confined to the poor-quality AM waveband, while only a minority-interest music station would be allowed the coveted national FM slot.

The third shock came when, having seen the success achieved by some of the specialist music stations that were part of the 'incremental' experiment, the regulator decided to roll out a programme of many more new local stations in more areas with existing 'heritage' stations. Thus, the 1990's heralded the biggest and fastest expansion of radio stations the UK had ever seen, immediately after a period of relatively slow industry growth in the 1980's. The shock of moving from a stagnant period of complacency to suddenly being immersed in a highly competitive situation where they had to fight for both listeners and advertisers proved a wake-up call for many local stations. What followed still has a considerable impact on the radio landscape of today. The radio industry underwent a fundamental re-structuring that included:

a.   The emergence of radio groups

A limited amount of consolidation had occurred during the 1980's, largely based on regional geography, whereby groups were formed from the combination of several local stations in a region (i.e. Midlands Radio Group Ltd, Suffolk Group Radio Ltd). As early as 1985, GWR Radio Ltd started a series of acquisitions based on the simple motivation that 'big is better' and the trend continued throughout the 1990's with stations bought and sold for greater and greater sums of money.

b.   The entry of media groups

Starting in 1990, large cross-media groups such as EMAP plc, Virgin Group Ltd and Chrysalis plc bought their way into the radio industry, acquiring a mix of heritage stations and newly launched stations. This substantially increased the sale prices of local stations.

c.   National advertising

The launch of the three national radio stations had the desired effect of attracting national advertisers and agency media buyers to radio for the first time. With local stations now consolidated into fewer groups, it became easier to buy campaigns through a single selling point to run on stations across a region or regions. Both the national and local stations benefited from the influx of national revenues.

d.   Cost cutting

In an industry where costs are mostly 'fixed costs' and revenues are almost infinitely 'variable', GWR Group pioneered the strategy of cutting costs to the bone at the many stations it acquired. According to GWR CEO Ralph Bernard: “It became very evident that if you don’t have size, you don’t have the ability to do things and you are forever trying to find the money to fix leaks, literally.” GWR’s policy of implementing economies of scale across its stations led to the centralisation of many tasks.

e.   Local advertising

As stations became incorporated within larger and groups, national advertising became of more and more importance to their owners. The bedrock of local radio, local advertisers, soon became serviced by regional rather than local sales teams, until eventually they were serviced hardly at all from a national sales office. As a result, local advertising revenues became less and less important to groups that were growing bigger and bigger.

f.   London agencies

With the rise of youth brands in the marketplace, and the evident success of London youth station 'KISS FM' [see blog] in creating a commercial focus for a demographic that had never before been served by commercial radio, London advertising agencies suddenly wanted to buy campaigns on stations that delivered 15- to 34-year-olds. Faced with both local and national competition for audiences and revenues for the first time, local heritage stations suddenly started chasing a younger audience. As a result, the middle-aged audience that had been loyal to their local commercial stations for many years started to drift away (mainly to 'BBC Radio Two'), alienated by stations playing too much dance and rap music.

g.   'BBC Radio One'

Although the turn of the 1990's had been a scary time for local heritage stations as they suddenly faced competition in their own areas from competing commercial stations for the first time, they were all helped immeasurably by the BBC’s decision to change drastically the programming of its most popular station, 'Radio One'. Until then, this station had a remarkably large audience of diverse ages that overshadowed local commercial stations in most regions of the country. As a direct result of the BBC’s bizarre volte-face, between 1992 and 1994 five million listeners left 'Radio One' and most sought refuge in local commercial radio. These latter stations’ audiences suddenly boomed and they became the most listened to in their markets, without having to change or do anything different. The BBC had unintentionally saved their backsides.

h.   Lack of investment

With audiences growing hugely because of the demise of 'BBC Radio One'; with revenues booming because of the ability to sell national advertising on larger and larger groups of stations; and with stock market values of radio groups buoyed by the industry’s breakout from its former position as the '2% medium', group owners were quick to redistribute their substantial profits to shareholders. After a relatively lean period in the 1980's, 'radio' was suddenly riding on a 'high' in the financial community. Ignoring the fact that their product had only become popular as a haven of last resort for listeners fleeing 'Radio One', group owners invested almost none of their lucky profits back into the development, improvement or update of their product.

i.   Networked programmes

Instead, station owners sought ways to cut even further the fixed costs of their station operations. Led by GWR Group plc, groups persuaded the regulator to let them network some programmes from a central production studio, instead of each of their stations producing all of its own content. In a lengthy process of attrition, by bullying a regulatory agency that lacked any long-term strategic plan for the industry, group owners were allowed piece by piece to extract the 'localness' from their local stations. Local voices, local station names, local celebrities, local music, local content and local news all became sidetracked or dispensed with by many group-owned stations.

j.   The rise of brands

Led by EMAP plc, which championed the notion that nationally recognisable brands were preferable to local identities, many local radio stations were stripped of the very characteristics that had made them 'local' in the first place. In an attempt to make their product controlled, homogenous and universal, the largest radio groups invested considerable sums in state-of-the-art technology that enabled stations up and down the country to be playing exactly the same record at exactly the same time, appended at the end of the song by a jingle that said 'Coventry' or 'Newcastle' as appropriate, depending upon the station’s location.

k.   Format convergence

Although the listener is now offered a considerably wider choice of commercial radio stations in most local markets than was the case in the 1980's, the industry is plagued with competitors who are all trying to move towards the same middle ground [see blog]. In yet another war of attrition that the regulator has lost again and again, many stations have stretched the definition of their prescribed programme formats to (and often beyond) their limits. This has created a situation where stations that are (by the regulator’s definition) meant to be complementary are in fact found to be competing for the same audience demographic and for the same advertisers in the very same market, by playing exactly the same music. This leads to substantial market 'cannibalisation' whereby competitors merely steal audience from each other, rather than attract listeners from the biggest competitor, the BBC.

l.   The decline of the music industry

Commercial radio in the UK, modelled on 'BBC Radio One', has always relied upon the universal popularity of 'popular music' to be the cornerstone of its programmes’ appeal. Until around 1990, almost everyone in the UK had a common notion of what a 'pop hit' was. But from the time that 'Radio One' refused to play the first 'house music' record that reached Number One in the singles chart, it was obvious that such communal experiences were on their way out. The subsequent rise of 'dance' music amongst young people polarised popular music and led to a substantially fractured music market. Now, the market for singles is all but dead, CD sales are at an all-time low, and the cult of 'celebrity' has replaced the cult of 'pop stars'. Frankly, commercial radio stations have almost no idea any more what music they should play to attract listeners.

[Excerpt from 'A Brief History Of United Kingdom Commercial Radio & A Strategy To Create Genuinely Local Radio', Grant Goddard, 2005, 33 pages]

You can lead a boss to wisdom but you can’t make her an expert Expert Witness : 2006 : Claire Enders, Enders Analysis

 Another day, another meeting. Though this one was most unusual. Not a word had been spoken during the past hour. I was sat in the basement Meetings Room. I had a pile of papers in front of me to discuss. I had thoroughly prepared. However, after arriving early, I was still the only person present. My boss had insisted upon this meeting. So where was she? There was no phone call or message to inform of a delay. One really is the loneliest number. Having waited an hour, I returned to my desk upstairs in the team office. Strangely, nothing would ever be mentioned to me about that meeting. It was as if it had never not happened.

Once is an accident. Twice might be a coincidence. Three times is an act of passive aggression. This should have been the last of three meetings demanded of me in an email from my boss’ personal assistant. Their purpose was to brief Claire Enders about the processes by which British radio stations make payments to songwriters for playing their music. She was to be grilled as an ‘Expert Witness’ during a landmark hearing of the obscure ‘Copyright Tribunal’ that had all the trappings of a court proceeding. However, she never arrived for any of those three meetings, never explained her absences and no subsequent attempt was made to reschedule them. For three hours across three days, I had been waiting in vain. The email to me had read:

“We have put in the diary 1pm on Wednesday 13th September for you to spend the afternoon with Grant. We have also blocked off 10th/11th October for your second session with Grant.”

Claire Enders had responded to me and two colleagues who were tackling non-radio issues:

“The initial format I would favour is seminars each w GG [me], JB and AE to outline the key issues covered by each and how we have dealt w them. I will take notes. Ideally, each of GG, JB and AE should this week prepare a set of materials for the topic covered which includes all pleadings and relevant points and witness statements divided by topic. I will then read the materials then expect to be quizzed by each of GG, JB and AE on each topic until I am word perfect. Plse copy this to GG Thank you Plse don't forget that either GG or JB need to be in court with me for my evidence (two full days) and either one will have to have an encyclopedic grasp of our three reports in order to assist.”

After our September meeting had become the first unexplained no-show, the timing of two further dates arrived by email: “GG in for 9th October 3pm, 10th October 1.30pm”.

Why had it fallen upon me to tutor the ‘star witness’ of the defence team? I had been hired by Enders Analysis that April to research and write analyses for its subscribers about the British radio industry [see blog]. However, by year end, I had found no time to write anything for publication. Instead, I was waylaid once my employer discovered that I seemed to be the only person in the office who understood the intricacies of music copyright. I was surrounded there by ‘analysts’ who wrote reams about their specialist media industries but who seemed scarcely to have sullied their hands working on the ‘shopfloor’ of sectors they professed to understand intimately.

I was different from them. They knew it, I knew it. They were posh. I was not. They had been privately educated. I had been born in a council house. My knowledge of the radio industry had been amassed from working my way up from ground zero, fuelled by a childhood thirst for knowledge about broadcasting. I was still at junior school [see blog] when I created multiple scrapbooks filled with newspaper articles about radio, scissored and UHU-ed from my parents’ and grandparents’ daily newspapers. I was still at secondary school [see blog] when I presented weekly music programmes on multiple London pirate radio stations, as well as producing identification jingles played across their output.

In 1980, my first paying job was at Newcastle commercial radio station ‘Metro Radio’ [see blog] whose declining ratings I turned around using my knowledge of pop music, my study of American music radio playlist systems and my economics training. One of my additional responsibilities as acting head of music was to correlate the reporting to copyright agencies of all the music played. Every presenter of every programme was required by law to handwrite A4 forms that recorded for each record played its song title, its artist, its record label, catalogue number and the duration in minutes and seconds it was used on-air. Around 300 songs played each day resulted in dozens of scrappy pages that regularly contained only partial information and blank spaces. A replacement computer system had been promised but never appeared. The forms had to be dispatched to three British statutory music copyright agencies: PPL, PRS and MCPS.

Some presenters hated this ‘extra’ work. They would put off doing the paperwork until their live show had finished, then forget and zoom off, instead piling all the records they had played in their locker, along with the blank forms and a vague promise to do it ‘later’. Much of the station’s record library ended up locked away for weeks in presenters’ lockers bursting with vinyl unavailable for airplay. When pressed to complete forms weeks later, they would have no memory of which track they had played from an album or its on-air duration so, naturally, they just made it up. From my perspective, any completed form – however inaccurate – was better than none at all and would reduce the grief I received from copyright agencies about missing data amongst the reams of paper submitted. It was chaotic. Did any artist or songwriter ever get paid the correct amount by the radio station using their works?

In 1990, prior to launching London’s KISS FM [see blog], I had to create a reporting system from scratch for the music it played. I was the only management team member who even understood our legal copyright obligations. Again, the promised computer system never arrived. I appointed one team member, Myrna McHugh, to co-ordinate the paper-based administration and, during our busiest times of the year, the workload required her to supervise a team of ‘temps’ hired to collate the voluminous information. The station regularly played ‘mixes’, ‘dubplates’ and ‘white label’ records whose copyright details were particularly challenging to determine.

In 2001, working in India on the launch of its first commercial FM radio station ‘Radio City’ [see blog], I met with the country’s copyright agencies to understand how to create a system to report the music played. Though our station was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Star TV’ business, I invited our competitors, including ‘The Times of India’ newspaper, to my presentation in a Mumbai hotel conference room to explain how music copyright functions and the legal requirements with which all our newly licensed radio stations would have to comply. I was pleased to be teaching my acquired knowledge to others.

By the time I joined Enders Analysis in 2006, my three-decade media career had also taken me to work at radio stations in Israel, Russia, Hungary, Germany, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Estonia [see pdf].

I stumbled into my latest job just when a music copyright dispute was about to be heard before the Copyright Tribunal. The earliest wave of American online music streaming businesses had launched in Britain and disputed how much they should have to pay for the music they played to their subscribers. Their argument was simple: claiming their business model was no different from existing British commercial broadcast AM/FM radio stations, such as London’s ‘Capital Radio’, so they should pay the same low rates. However, those rates had been agreed in 1973 when commercial radio was first licensed in Britain, an era when it was unimaginable that consumers would someday request and hear specific songs via the internet.

The songwriters, represented by the Performing Rights Society (PRS), disputed the argument of these online businesses who added no ‘radio station’ value in the form of presenters, information, news and features to their non-stop back-to-back music. PRS had hired Enders Analysis to provide data and arguments to win its case. Claire Enders would appear before the Tribunal as an Expert Witness for PRS. During the months leading up to the Tribunal hearing this case, my role was to refine those arguments and to research/analyse the radio and music streaming markets to provide documented evidence. Some of this work I have subsequently published, such as ‘The Differences Between Traditional Terrestrial Broadcast Radio and Internet Radio’ and ‘Audio Podcasts and The Market for Podcasting’ (23 and 35 pages respectively).

I recall that one day, waiting at the Lebanon Road tram stop, a ‘Eureka’ moment made me realise that a document I had earlier found online undermined the argument presented by the music streaming companies that their product was ‘radio’. I contacted PRS and, working with its lawyers at Denton Wilde Sapte [see blog], we jointly developed a cohesive case backed by evidence to present in writing prior to the commencement of Tribunal hearings on 28 September 2006.

It was 5 December 2006 when Claire Enders was called as an Expert Witness before the Tribunal. I was sat in the front row on the lefthand side, between the PRS lawyers and their barrister, while the American internet team were on the opposing benches. Throughout the Tribunal, I would follow carefully the proceedings and write thoughts on Post-it notes passed to the lawyers who then made suggestions to their barrister. Enders faced me from the witness box a few metres away to the left of the Bench of three elderly judges. It resembled one of those courtroom scenes so beloved of television dramas. Enders was pressed by the barrister for the streaming services as to her expertise in the radio industry:

Kenneth Steinthal [New York Bar representing MusicNet, Yahoo!, AOL, RealNetworks, Napster and Sony]: “What exactly did you do to analyse the webcasting business before submitting your first witness statement?”

Claire Enders [Expert witness for PRS]: “In preparation of it?”

Steinthal: “Yes.”

Enders: “In preparation of it, the radio specialist I have on the team, who is called Grant Goddard, and I discussed, you know, what we were looking for, and in particular we looked at a large number of webcasts. We did a lot of internet research into the various models. We looked at what had been written about them in the US. It was also part of the job to look at how the different services behaved, you know, actually experiencing them.”

Enders: “My colleague, Grant Goddard, spends a lot of time analysing various web-based phenomena, as do many of my team, and so we listened to them and looked at how they behaved and so forth. So a lot of desk-based research and experimenting with the services themselves.”

Steinthal: “Can we separate what your colleagues did from what you did and ask you to focus on what you personally did to analyse the webcasting industry?”

 Enders: “I personally spent time on ‘Yahoo!’ and ‘AOL’.” […]

Steinthal: “Other than spending time on ‘Yahoo!’ and ‘AOL’ to get a sense of what those services were comprised of and looking at ‘Shoutcast’, again focusing on what you did to analyse the webcasting market, what else did you do, if anything?”

Enders: “I also read the -- I am sorry, I am not a lawyer, but the various documents that had been prepared by the various parties, various legal documents making various claims about their industry -- about the specific aspects of both ‘iTunes’ with the MNO’s and so forth so. I am sorry, I think those are called pleadings, but there are other documents that have different names. So I was trying to understand what the issues were between the two sides.”

Steinthal: “Did you interview anyone engaged in webcasting?”

Enders: “I did not do so personally.”

Steinthal: “Is there anything else you did, other than what you have just testified to, to ready yourself for preparing your first report in May 2006?”

Enders: “No.”

Steinthal: “Other than your experience in connection with the potential ‘EMI’ interest in ‘Viva’ and in ‘Classic FM’ in the early 90’s, do you have any first-hand experience in broadcast radio?”

Enders: “It depends what you call first-hand, because I have always been an analyst and a strategist, so that -- I am not an operations person. I have not run a station or anything, I just analyse business models. So, by that nature, one is always a bit removed from the coalface, if I may say.” […]

Steinthal: “Prior to this case, had you had any experience with respect to the licensing by MCPS or PRS of either terrestrial radio stations or internet radio stations?”

Enders: “No.” […]

Steinthal: “… I am trying to find out whether you did anything other than looking at the industry reports, for example, and talking to your colleagues as you testified earlier in doing –"

Enders: “Desk research, we did a lot of desk research.”

Steinthal: “Excuse me?”

Enders: “We did a lot of desk research, looking for – searching for information online.”

Steinthal: “Anything else that you did to inform yourself, to make the comparison that you made in your various reports between terrestrial radio and webcasting?”

Enders: “Other than looking at websites and doing desk research and listening to the stations themselves and so forth?”

Steinthal: “Right.”

Enders: “No.”

It was 11.35 on the morning of the first of day of testimony by Claire Enders. We had only started at 10.30. For the remainder of that long day and all of the next, I put on a poker face whilst cringing inside at my boss’ difficulty providing detailed answers to questions fired at her about the British radio industry. She had undoubtedly read my documents for the Tribunal, but why had she not been prepared to meet me so that I could share my acquired knowledge and expertise? Why the reluctance to fulfil face-to-face meetings she herself had demanded? Enders’ apparent view was that I toiled at “the coalface” whilst she was “not an operations person” but worked to “just analyse business models”, a latter-day Ian MacGregor to my underground mining activity. She and I never spoke about her performance those two days.

After twenty days of hearings, it took until 19 July 2007 for the judges to publish their 91-page verdict. It noted criticisms voiced during the hearings that Enders was “a commentator or a highly-paid industry observer rather than being a lively participant in any relevant field”. However, it did highlight that “in particular, she gave evidence to refute the suggestion that webcasting [‘streaming’ in today’s parlance] and commercial broadcast music [‘radio’] should be regarded as comparable products”, the argument I had successfully proven.

Overall, the judges’ verdict on Claire Enders’ performance as an Expert Witness was hardly positive:

“Even taking into account Ms Enders’ inexperience in this jurisdiction, her performance as an expert was, we thought, rather uninspiring. Her reports (which comprised a fulsome lever arch file of evidence together with numerous lever arch volumes of exhibits thereto) consisted to a large extent of data which had indeed been sourced by others, sometimes by a team which she herself led and the reliability of whose work she (often unquestioningly) relied on - only to find it wanting on closer examination. We certainly sympathise with the impossibility of mastering everything within so large a corpus of material. Nonetheless, on a number of key issues, she seemed confused, occasionally inaccurate and, more importantly, sometimes unable to provide reasons for the assumptions upon which her evidence was based. Surprisingly, she had not actually read the New JOL [‘New Joint Online Agreement’] but relied on a summary thereof. We do not wish to give the impression however that Ms Enders’ evidence was misleading; it was not. But we were not greatly assisted by it.”

Nevertheless, our client PRS and its legal team at Denton Wilde Sapte were very pleased with the Tribunal’s outcome. They invited me to participate in celebratory drinks after work in a Fleet Street members club. As the only Enders Analysis employee to have sat between them on the legal front bench throughout the proceedings, I had been impressed by their professionalism and gratitude for my contributions. My work had made a difference. Henceforth, music streaming businesses operating in Britain would be required to make considerably greater payments (‘royalties’) to songwriters whose music they were using. Not merely songwriters within Britain but throughout the world. The business model of American music streaming services operating in the UK would necessarily have to change.

In a subsequent presentation 'Online Radio: The UK Business Model' I made in 2012 to the ‘Music 4.3: Smart Radio’ conference in London, I noted how this Tribunal had determined music streamers’ costs for using songs would be much more expensive than rates paid by UK commercial radio stations. The Tribunal had decided that “the per play rates in [online] agreements for pure webcasting [music streaming] are approximately six times those … under the [commercial radio] agreement.” The reason it gave was that “the Tribunal was of the view that independent commercial radio offered quite a different service to an [online streamed] ‘music, music, music’ service”.

As the Tribunal verdict had produced a ‘win’ for PRS, Enders Analysis offered to pay for myself and my work colleagues to share a celebratory afternoon outing. I should not have been surprised that they chose to take ‘afternoon tea’ at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand, a venue for the rich and privileged I had heard of but never coveted. My younger posher colleagues enjoyed themselves at “London’s most famous hotel”. I would have much preferred to spend an evening at the Jah Shaka reggae sound system.

The Tribunal verdict noted that Enders Analysis had charged its client PRS £750,000 for “preparing their reports” though additionally there were “VAT [at 20%] and charges for [Claire Enders’] attendance at the hearing”. The judges concluded that “incurring expert fees of this order of magnitude (and even taking into account […] the substantial sums of money at stake) was, in our view, seriously disproportionate”. Enders Analysis’ billing to PRS had likely exceeded one million pounds.

Within only a few years, most of the American ‘applicants’ who had forced this costly Tribunal – Yahoo!, AOL, RealNetworks, Napster and Sony – exited the UK music streaming market, each having spent millions on legal fees and their own bevy of Expert Witness submissions and expenses. It demonstrated what a ‘black hole’ exists for American online start-ups who seem to have unlimited money to try to push their way into countries around the world on their own terms, using their own lawyers to argue the unarguable and to attempt to stomp on overseas legal precedents. 

My first nine months at Enders Analysis had been diverted into full-time work on this legal case instead of writing media analyses for its subscribers. Regardless, I had been pleased to utilise my ‘expert’ knowledge of music copyright gained over decades on the radio industry shopfloor. One day at work, Claire Enders stopped me on the office staircase, thanked me for my work on the Tribunal and unexpectedly offered me a bonus which I gratefully accepted. It may have been no more than a few percentage points of her ginormous fee but, combined with accumulated savings from my and my wife’s salaries, it provided us a deposit for the purchase in 2007 of our first home … at the age of forty-nine.

It was the first and last bonus I received in any workplace.

You just keep on using me ... until you use me up : 1989 : Brian Davis, Radio & Music magazine, EMAP plc

 In March 1989, an advertisement appeared in the press, seeking staff to work for a new radio industry magazine. There had been several attempts to publish a radio-only trade publication since the launch of commercial radio in 1973, all of which had ended in failure. The industry had still not become large enough to sustain substantial amounts of paid-for advertising, or to build a large enough circulation to make such a publication financially viable. Then, EMAP plc, a major publisher of consumer magazines and regional newspapers, announced plans to launch ‘Radio & Music’, a fortnightly, glossy magazine aimed at the music radio sector. EMAP had established its reputation as one of the twenty fastest growing companies in the UK, with an annual turnover of £189m. It believed the time was right for a radio publication: “The radio industry is undergoing a radical change and deserves a radical voice to reflect the new environment ... We will be the sole magazine devoted to the radio industry in all its guises ...” 

I was eager to secure further outlets for my writings about the radio industry [see bibliography], so I rang the phone number in the recruitment advert. I spoke to Brian Davis, the magazine’s managing editor, and arranged to meet him at EMAP’s John Street office at 6 pm on 22 March. There, on the top floor of ‘MEED House’, I found a group of advertising executives selling space in EMAP magazines by phone with a ferocity and aggressiveness I had never before witnessed. Davis greeted me warmly and the two of us moved into the penthouse meeting room, where he expanded upon the philosophy behind the magazine’s launch. I ran through my experience in radio [pirate radio presenter/producer since 1972; executed turnaround strategy in 1980-81 of Newcastle’s ‘Metro Radio’ whose “audience figures show[ed] the greatest improvement [of all UK commercial stations]” and were “the highest since the station’s establishment” according to the IBA regulator [see blog]; managed the production team at London community station ‘Radio Thamesmead’ in 1986 [see blog]; project manager at London’s ‘Capital Radio’ in 1986-88 (see blog)], and my writings about the radio industry [Radio Editor at London consumer magazine ‘City Limits’ since 1988; Radio Editor at ‘For The Record’ trade magazine in 1989], and I expressed interest in writing for the magazine in either a full-time or freelance capacity. Davis showed me the draft layout of a pilot issue scheduled for April publication, and he asked my opinion of some of the planned content.

He expressed interest in employing me in some capacity on the magazine, and asked me to submit two examples of my work: an opinion piece on one aspect of the radio industry that I felt was pertinent to the magazine’s readership; and a list of twenty editorial items I felt should be included regularly in the new publication. I obliged by writing an editorial on the conservatism of commercial radio playlists, and I drafted a list of twenty suggested features that included:

• “sit in on a particular show & examine success/failure
• pick a city/area & examine the radio market
• details of artists’ radio promotion tours
• who’s pushing what – record companies/pluggers’ hitlists
• giveaway sampler CDs.”

I sent my suggestions to Brian Davis and awaited his response. I was still keen to be more involved in [off-air London pirate station] ‘KISS FM’ [see blog], but it was not earning me any money. Right now, some additional income from writing about radio would be particularly useful for me. I was hoping that Davis might offer me a post or, at the very least, some freelance work. While I awaited a response to the ideas I had sent to Davis, the competition for the London-wide FM radio licence was intensifying.

In a seemingly unrelated occurrence, I attended the opening ceremony of the fifth ‘UK Music Radio Conference’ on the evening of 4 April 1989, organised by the ‘Radio Academy’ at the ‘HMV Megastore’ record shop in London’s Oxford Street. The event itself was largely an opportunity for the radio industry to indulge in mutual back-slapping, but I was there in the hope that it might provide some source material for a radio article. I bumped into Brian Davis, managing editor of publisher EMAP’s new magazine Radio & Music, to whom I had not spoken since our initial meeting the previous month. I had yet to receive a response from him to the ideas I had submitted. Davis introduced me to his associate publisher, Peter Gould, and we exchanged small talk about the magazine’s impending launch. Recognising me across the crowded room, KISS FM’s Lindsay Wesker came to join our conversation and, once I had introduced him to the others, the topic switched to the ex-pirate station’s prospect of winning a London FM licence [see blog]. Gould was very enthusiastic about KISS FM’s chances and showed particular interest in learning that the station was seeking a further investor. He suggested that a meeting with his superiors at EMAP could prove productive.

In early April 1989, EMAP launched the pilot issue of Radio & Music magazine although, strangely, its editorial was not particularly positive about KISS FM’s chances of winning the London FM licence. From a personal perspective, I was frustrated to find that, during this and the magazine’s following issues, several feature ideas which I had proposed had been used. The magazine’s managing editor, Brian Davis, had never contacted me again.

[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

Aggrieved by UK government insistence it launch a national popular music radio station, the BBC unilaterally created a high culture network : 1945 : BBC Radio 3

 In terms of delivering value for money for the Licence Fee payer, ‘Radio 3’ is easily the most expensive of the BBC's five analogue radio networks. My calculations for 2009/10 show it had cost 8.5p per listener hour, compared to 1.7p for ‘Radio 4’, 2.5p for ‘Five Live’, 0.9p for ‘Radio 1’ and 0.6p for ‘Radio 2’.

There may be arguments about the artistic merit of Radio 3 (though I would argue exactly the same for Radios 1 and 2), but there is no denying that, in value for money terms, it is up there with the ‘BBC Asian Network’ [9.0p per listener hour] and ‘Radio Cymru’ [14.6p] on the expensive-ometer.

Remember the network's history. After World War Two, the BBC was 'persuaded' to continue the popular wartime ‘General Forces Programme’ as a new domestic network - the ‘Light Programme’. Until then, the BBC had resisted the notion of a full-time comedy and popular music network as horribly downmarket. At the same time, as a cultural response, the BBC made its own decision to launch the ‘Third Programme’ (renamed ‘Radio 3’ from 1967) on which then Director General WJ Haley promised "operas, plays, discussions, features will be given the fullest time their content needs."

As Sean Street wrote in his excellent account of UK radio from 1922 to 1945, 'Crossing The Ether': "The message for the old guard was clear: taste would not be undermined by change, culture would not be sacrificed for populism."

Radio 3 exists because the section of the BBC that would not be seen dead listening to Radio 2 (as the Light Programme was renamed from 1967) wanted their own high-brow radio station. The question is - should the rest of us still have to pay so highly for them to enjoy that privilege?

There is no doubt that Radio 3 produces some excellent unique programmes. The problem is that too few people ever get to hear them. And, if BBC Asian Network is still on the chopping board for these very reasons, how is it that Radio 3 has always managed to justify its continuing existence as a network that is virtually 'untouchable' when axes fall?

[Published reader comment to 'Radio 3 Is Letting Its Listeners Down', Sarah Spilsbury, The Guardian, 5 Oct 2011]

Why are Canadian radio station audience data a state secret? : 2000 : BBM Canada

 Letters to the Editors, Marketing Magazine, Toronto

Dear Sirs

I am a radio programming consultant based in Toronto with twenty years’ experience in the industry. My work has created successful commercial radio stations in the UK, Russia, Hungary, Latvia, Czech Republic, Estonia & Lithuania [see PDF]. When I start a new project in a city, the first thing I do is contact the designated agency for media ratings. On every occasion, agency staff have always been very happy to share their data with me and are always pleased to discuss their findings with a fellow professional. Some agencies have even produced custom reports to help me better understand their media market. They recognise implicitly that we are both working towards the same goal – a wider understanding of audience research data will produce a more efficient medium that delivers bigger audiences to more satisfied advertisers.

The story could not be more different in Canada. I called the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM Canada, founded 1944) this morning and was surprised to learn that it offers no public access to documents at its offices, and expressly forbids public access to any survey less than a year old, even to industry professionals such as myself. I was given two options: subscribe to BBM at a cost of over a thousand dollars; or consult back issues of surveys at Ryerson University. I had visited Ryerson earlier this week, where the latest data on the shelves is 1998 (prehistoric in media terms) and I was told by the Librarian that the University's contract with BBM expressly forbids access to any data more recent.

I am at a complete loss to understand why the broadcasting industry in Canada funds BBM for research purposes and then does its utmost to hide the results. The radio industry may whine about declining audiences but, unless consultants such as myself are permitted to read, understand and interpret the latest market data, how can we make any positive contribution to our industry? I can call the Audit Bureau of Circulation in Canada, enquire about magazine readership, and be bombarded with reams of statistical data. But the radio industry in Canada – nothing!

In the UK in the 1990’s, I made a modest contribution to the development of radio research by tabulating and publishing the first Arbitron-style radio station rankings for every major market in the country [see 'Radio News']. Such basic, easy-to-understand information seems to be impossible to collate in my own backyard, even for professional purposes. Or is that the way Canada's cosy little media cartel wants it? And how does such a policy help grow the broadcasting industry in the long run?

Yours sincerely

GRANT GODDARD

11 August 2000

Kick archaic studio-bound public radio production out into 21st century public spaces : 2011 : BBC Radio

 Technological advances made during the last two to three decades have changed our world almost beyond recognition. Everyone now has the ability to be almost permanently 'connected' to a world beyond their immediate personal space.

Has BBC radio fully embraced the benefits of these technological advances? From an external perspective, the answer appears to be both 'yes' and 'no'. BBC radio seems to have implemented new technologies less obviously than BBC television. Yes, BBC radio programmes and stations now have an online presence, receive e-mails and tweets, and distribute their output live and on-demand via IP. But no, the basics of radio production have changed very little beyond a conversion from analogue tape to digital hard-drive storage.

In the 1920’s, a male radio announcer would sit in a BBC radio studio, dressed in a dinner jacket and reading a pre-prepared script. In order to be interviewed, guests would have to physically come to the studio. Everything had to be broadcast live, as there was no technology to include 'actuality' from beyond the studio's confines. All the news and information had to be filtered through the on-air presenter. Listener involvement was limited to letters submitted, selected, edited and read on-air by the presenter.

Surprisingly, the radio production format has changed little in the interim ninety years. Presenters still sit in studios filled with expensive radio hardware and they still act as filters for the information that flows into the studio. Only three substantial changes are evident: recording systems have allowed interviews and actuality to be incorporated into programmes, and a programme itself to be time-shifted; phone-ins have allowed listener voices to be put live on-air via the telephone; and BBC reporters can be incorporated live into programmes via ISDN or IP from around the world. All these developments were pioneered by the BBC.

If we look at BBC television, we see that an increasing amount of content broadcast on the 'BBC News' channel comes in the form of photographs, poor quality mobile phone video (viz the 'Arab Spring' in Syria), eyewitness reports by phone line and Skype video/audio interviews supplied by the public from their offices or homes. In the current jargon, much of this could be called 'user generated content'.

However, in radio, this revolution has simply not happened. When did you last hear a piece of audio on BBC radio that had been recorded and submitted by a member of the public? Never? In radio, public participation in the output still remains limited to content initiated or filtered by the production team. A member of the public will be asked to connect to the studio for a formal interview with a presenter either live in the studio, from a BBC contribution studio or via a phone line. Or a reporter may take a portable audio recorder out to interview a member of the public on location and the outcome is edited before transmission into an audio 'package.'

The result is that, just as in the 1920’s, what we hear on the radio has still been filtered through the programme presenter and producer, so that the resulting programme is delivered from the confines of a cosy, air-conditioned studio. Radio is still largely produced in a vacuum that is far apart from the real world. Of course, there are obvious exceptions such as 'From Our Own Correspondent' and 'Question Time.' But these remain exceptions.

The continuing reliance within radio upon the hardware-equipped studio is particularly hard to understand when digital audio equipment is smaller, lighter, more portable and cheaper than its analogue ancestors. A radio programme can be produced, mixed, edited and broadcast from a basic laptop computer using software-based technology rather than considerably more expensive hardware. In this sense, radio should by now be far ahead of television, where digital equipment remains expensive, complex and still requires substantial bit rates and data storage for broadcast quality.

These incredible technological advances in radio production have been well understood and seized upon by people outside the BBC who do not have privileged access to expensive hardware-based recording studios. In their thousands, these people are making their own radio programmes (‘podcasts’) and creating their own online radio stations. The technology has filtered down so far that even a local primary school has its own radio production studio, linked to a low-power FM transmitter on the school's roof so that children can listen on ordinary radios to the programmes they make.

London is one of the most exciting cities in the world. Yet, when I listen to 'BBC London 94.9 FM', I do not hear that excitement reflected much in its output. What I do hear are presenters sat in hardware-based studios, talking with guests they have invited there or talking via phone lines to selected contributors outside. What is sorely missing is 'actuality.' News stories are often reduced to 'packages' that can be inserted into hourly news bulletins. Yet the technology already exists (smartphones, IP, 3G) so that the hundreds of news stories that happen in London each day could be put to-air quickly using actuality live or 'as-live' recorded by either BBC reporters or the public.

Existing technologies could be implemented to create an exciting news and information driven radio station for London that more closely reflected life in the capital. It would entail taking risks, but it is only through risk-taking that innovation will happen. BBC London's share of radio listening in London is only 1.4% and the station reaches only 5% of the population each week. Licence Fee payers could be better served by a local radio station in London that used new technologies to create an audio soundtrack that reflected their lives in this city. Such opportunities to use new technologies to change the face of radio are being missed, or being left to television to implement.

I lived in Toronto for five years and the city's only independent television station, 'CityTV', offered one of the most impressive uses of new technology I have ever seen. For a start, the station did not have traditional TV studios. News programmes were presented by anchors perched on the corner of their own office desks. The nightly one-hour local news programme was filled to the brim with reports from a small team of one-person 'videographers' who whizzed around the city all day and recorded every available story using a single handheld camera. Sometimes the quality was not great, but the content accurately reflected the life of the city much better than any other local medium in Toronto.

At CityTV, the weekday morning show was presented from the station's ground floor foyer. Cameras, lights, cables, production staff were all left in-shot, as were the people on the busy street outside and casual visitors to the station's offices. CityTV's owner, 'media visionary' Moses Znaimer, called this infrastructure "the streetfront/studioless television operating system" and it worked fantastically. Every Friday evening, the same foyer was turned into a free nightclub that was televised live for several hours with DJs, visiting music acts and short interviews. Admittedly, CityTV's output was sometimes chaotic but it used cheap, lightweight technologies to successfully break down the barrier that had existed previously between formal, studio-limited programmes and their audiences. The people of Toronto felt truly connected with CityTV because every city dweller knew the location of its downtown building and could wander in, even during its live shows.

I had marvelled at CityTV's bold use of cutting-edge technology fifteen years ago. And, since then, technologies for television have advanced much further. But it is the medium of audio where even more fundamental breakthroughs have taken place. The ability to use a smartphone, a laptop or a cheap audio recorder to record perfect digital sound quality in WAV format has opened up the possibility to produce content for broadcast much more significantly than in television. Yet, from the outside, there seems to be no strategic vision to implement these technologies within the BBC in order to change the way in which radio more pro-actively involves itself with the world outside its radio studios.

Individual BBC reporters are doing amazing things with new technology. Nick Garnett provided live interviews for 'Radio Four' about the outcome of the last election from a moving tram in Sheffield using only his smartphone installed with the 'Luci Live' application for broadcasters. His personal website demonstrates in videos his evangelism for these new technologies. He contrasts his ability to produce live coverage of the recent Salford/Manchester riots safely using only his handled smartphone with the impossibility twenty years earlier when a high-tech van was necessary, even for a short live report, and the job of holding the microphone remained the responsibility of a BBC Studio Manager.

At the heart of technological change is a necessary accompanying change in working practices in many parts of BBC radio. Whilst television underwent fundamental change when it was transformed into 'BBC Vision', the radio infrastructure has remained much the same. Whilst BBC television has been mostly casualised by freelance staff, radio remains dominated by full-time employees. Although BBC television has stiff competition from commercial stations, BBC radio attracts the majority of listening (54% currently) and its share continues to grow. The grave danger is that complacency in BBC radio from high ratings can stunt innovation. 

Whilst there is no doubt that technological innovations have been successfully incorporated into current working practices within BBC radio, it is a much greater challenge to incorporate the disruptive influences of those technologies in a way that forces change in current working methods. For example, at present, producers and editors of radio programmes set the agendas of programmes themselves and then seek to fulfil those plans by inviting 'talking heads' and commissioning 'packages' to make their points. This is a demand-led production system, working from the demands of the producer.

However, in a world where there are already hundreds of pieces of audio content available to choose from to make a programme, the production system could become more supply-led. The editor would use a mix of commissioned pieces and the best or most appropriate of what already existed from BBC contributors or the public. In fact, the radio editor would become more like an editor of a newspaper, selecting from what content already existed, rather than commissioning every item from scratch.

If the thought of including 'user generated content' from the British public in network radio output proves alarming, it is worth remembering that there are dozens of media courses up and down the country whose students would love to add some BBC radio contributions to their CVs. There are also 300 community radio stations that have an existing ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with the BBC to share content in both directions. Yet BBC radio at network level does not seem to have reached out to the wider constituency of audio producers beyond its own staff and ex-staff. When I interviewed senior BBC network radio staff last year for a ‘BBC Trust’ report and asked why no audio was being recycled from BBC local radio, student radio or podcast producers, I was told that they would not meet the 'quality' threshold. Equally, you might ask why the Sony Award-winning 'Hackney Podcast' is not a regular part of BBC London's output.

This 'quality' barrier is an anachronism that remains in place in radio and yet seems to have been largely overcome in television. Within BBC radio, 'quality' is even used as a means to segregate one division's content from another's. In television, if the content communicates something newsworthy or significant, blurry mobile phone footage is broadcast. Yet, in radio, the audio quality often seems more important to producers than the content itself. This requires not so much a change in technology, as a change in attitudes and editorial policies that have not caught up with the technological possibilities.

A station such as 'BBC 1Xtra' should be an exciting and ground-breaking experience to listen to. Yet, on the occasions I have listened, its output has seemed hideously studio-bound and insular to me. There appears to be little difference between 1Xtra and 1920's BBC radio, as a presenter still sits in a hardware studio, but with an assistant who reads tweets instead of letters. During one show I heard recently, the presenter was reduced to bemoaning that he had left his lip balm at home, and a clip was used of musician interviews made days earlier backstage at an awards ceremony.

Surely a station such as BBC 1Xtra that is aimed at young people should have an immediacy and an incredibly 'live' feel to it that is able to challenge the speed of competing information sources delivered via the internet. 1Xtra should be overflowing with exclusive news, information and music, artists dropping in for short chats and 'actuality' broadcast live or 'as-live' that reflect the diversity of the British black music scene. Yet I do not hear this kind of excitement when I listen to 1Xtra. The station would be a perfect candidate to adopt CityTV's studio-less operating system, where it could operate from an open-door shopfront rather than from the remote bowels of a BBC office. It could even broadcast from different cities week to week, like an ever-travelling roadshow.

I have a particular interest in 1Xtra because, twenty years ago, I had launched 'KISS FM' in London as the UK's first black music radio station [see blog]. Even then, I had used what few new technologies were available to make the programme content less studio-bound. I regularly sent one reporter out with my mobile phone (at a time when they were uncommon) and her interviews and actuality were put live to air using nothing more sophisticated than the phone's low-quality microphone. The audience loved that immediacy. Then, after work, I would take a digital recorder to London clubs and record the whole night's DJ set for subsequent broadcast. These technological innovations made KISS FM one of the most successful station launches of its time [see blog] because listeners understood that the station was 'out there in London' rather than always studio-bound. 

 Let us be clear here. Radio needs to implement as many new technologies as possible in order to adapt and change what it can do if it is to remain relevant and valuable to its audiences. Although, in total, radio listening in the UK has reached an all-time high (partly as an outcome of the increasing population), there are some disturbing long-terms trends. Six years ago, 15–24-year-olds started to spend significantly less time listening to broadcast radio. More recently, 25–34-year-olds are also spending less time with broadcast radio. If this trend continues, part of an entire generation could lose the radio habit.

BBC Radio needs to compete for consumers' time with every other distraction out there – particularly the internet, games, social networking and video. To do that, radio has to re-invent itself so that it is exciting and entertaining for a whole new generation. That requires radio to respond to the disruptive influences of new technology, not in a defensive way, but to embrace change and to understand that, just as with other businesses, if you do not change and adapt with the times, your brand could easily die.

At present, the BBC's strategy for implementation of new technologies in radio could appear to be somewhat slow, scattershot and disjointed. What is needed is a joined-up roadmap to bring BBC radio firmly into the 21st century, a determined push to move radio beyond its 1920's production methods, and a programme to combat internal complacency and inertia through persuasion and education. The biggest enemy to such change often derives from the people entrenched in an organisation, not from the availability of technologies. In that sense, the imperative for change has to come from within.

The BBC has a long tradition of being at the forefront of new technological developments in radio. It is admired the world over for its innovation in the radio medium and the quality of its outputs. The biggest current danger is that, unless a strategy is developed for BBC radio that combines the implementation of new technologies with changing methods of radio production, the BBC's track record of innovation could be acceded elsewhere.

In our enlarged, globalised radio marketplace, it would be perfectly possible for Google or Microsoft to invest sufficient R&D seed money to develop a new style of radio that could set the youth of the world on fire (viz Facebook). Until now, the main threat to broadcast radio from the internet has been in back-to-back music applications (Spotify, Last.fm) which add no value to widely available pre-recorded music. However, compared to the visual medium, it would prove relatively cheap to add value to that audio content if you could identify the appropriate editorial that will appeal to a whole new generation as 'the new radio.' It is important that BBC radio faces this global threat by implementing innovation as a must-have-now rather than as a long-term objective.

Within the BBC, there are already plenty of staff embracing such change on an individual level. More than 300 BBC staff have signed up to Audioboo, a UK-based online exchange for short audio clips. Similarly, some BBC programme makers are contributing to PRX, a US-based online marketplace for both complete programmes and short audio clips. I understand that the BBC is currently developing its own in-house version of these sort of E-Bay's for audio content.

The imperative to centralise data storage of BBC audio so as to create an internal 'cloud' system for radio content provides the perfect opportunity to develop new production systems that can share content, both internally and from outside the BBC. The traditional 'silo' system, whereby individual radio programmes and individual radio stations have managed their own content resources, cannot be productive during a time when the Licence Fee produces pressures to share and consolidate resources as much as possible.

More than ever, in BBC radio, change is necessary. But change can also be very hard to make happen, particularly within large organisations. I would suggest that the task ahead is to develop an interlocking roadmap for radio technologies that embraces:

•   more agile content ingest, storage and accessibility (avoiding transcoding)
•   radio production processes that focus on the intrinsic public value of content, more than its audio quality or source
•   the evolution of radio studios from fixed hardware to portable software
•   a plan for multi-platform distribution based on cost-benefit analysis and accurate usage data (RAJAR platform data are inaccurate)
•   IP delivery of radio via frictionless technologies, reducing bandwidth through multicasting
•   a focus on content availability, connectivity and 'searchability'
•   the unlocking of BBC archive radio content
•   an appropriate and future-proof metadata architecture for audio content distribution
•   use of commodity software or collaborations with external suppliers wherever possible.

The aim: to ensure that the connections between BBC radio and its audiences are maximised through available technologies, delivering content efficiently and easily wherever and whenever it is demanded.

[In 2011, London recruitment agency Lonmoor invited me to apply for the vacancy of ‘Technology Controller, Audio & Music’ at the BBC. Following initial discussion, it was suggested I submit these ideas on paper, after which I received an email response: “We shall conclude our shortlisting process in the next week and be back in touch.” I am still waiting. It became the fifty-ninth consecutive BBC job for which my application was rejected.]

[Available as a download.]

You little trust-maker, you’re a heart-breaker : 2006 : Claire Enders, Enders Analysis

 I was seated in the London Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane watching a performance, hardly my usual weekday evening entertainment. It was my first time ‘at the opera’ and I had absolutely no comprehension of the storyline unfolding on-stage. Instead, my mind was wandering to a recent re-watch of the 1976 horror film ’The Omen’. It was ostensibly about the cruel, devilish offspring of a United States ambassador to London who delights in plotting terrible ends for the adults around him, his elevated status immunising him from scrutiny. Viewing it again, I had wondered if the movie had been written by American screenwriter David Seltzer as an allegory for the subset of wealthy, privileged heirs who zealously execute their destructive ambitions to make life hell for the ‘little people’ around them. In Hollywood? In London?

During my career in a media industry dominated by the privileged, I have observed many such ‘fortunates’ seemingly glide effortlessly through their gilded lives, exercising a steely determination to wreak havoc and mayhem on us ‘unfortunates’. One colleague at a London ‘indie’ record company was driven to suicide by his manipulative, lying boss who subsequently was promoted to the top of the industry with impunity. I had mentored an excellent daytime radio presenter with incredible ratings who was sacked by a new station boss lacking any radio production experience, ostensibly because the DJ in question was black. Sadly, he never worked in radio again. I have witnessed the ease with which talented Brits’ careers and lives have been destroyed by managers wielding their power of destruction in a sad indictment of Britain’s rotten class system.

The British political system stinks in exactly the same way. Think chancellor George Osborne’s imposition of a wholly unnecessary ‘austerity’ policy in 2010-2016 that reduced so many to poverty in order to further enrich the already rich. Think the entire ‘Brexit’ scam dreamt up by Old Etonians to wilfully impoverish the entire non-privileged nation. While the rest of us lose sleep fretting about how to pay our red reminders, those lacking such money worries are granted sufficient time and energy to plan and plot ways to destroy others’ lives. I have no idea why some who inherit so much wealth seem to delight in destroying the lives of those of us lacking silver spoons.

Why was I at the opera? I was three weeks into a new media analyst job in London when my boss kindly offered me and a work colleague two tickets each to attend English National Opera’s performance of Monteverdi’s ‘Orfeo’, described by the ‘Financial Times’ as “so entrancing that analysis can only belittle its impact.” This unexpected invitation to such a posh event had necessitated the hasty purchase of a designer formal jacket for me, my most costly clothing purchase ever, and a smart dress for my wife, rendering the invitation not as ‘free’ as it had initially appeared. I had never had to dress up like this to skank beside the speaker columns of Jah Shaka’s reggae sound system nights! However, having just started with my latest employer, it seemed churlish not to accept such an apparently generous offer.

So, there we were, my wife and I sat together for two hours (without interval) on the venue’s plush front row seats in our finery, accompanied by my work colleague and her partner. I had no inkling my boss would be attending too, but there she was, sat between us two couples as if an enthroned queen flanked by loyal courtiers. It was all very civilised. A night at the opera! How innocent the occasion appeared. I wondered whether there would be further ‘refined’ cultural events I might be invited to attend, their expense normally off-limits during two decades living in London. At the end of the performance, we said our goodbyes and headed home our separate ways. For one night, I had been a guest in posh peoples’ world. I was not reflecting upon why my new workmate and I alone out of the larger analyst team had been offered invites.

My young female colleague had arrived at Enders Analysis unannounced soon after me. ‘HT’ was likewise employed as a media analyst, having just relocated from a plum job at the German office of a global entertainment business in order to join her boyfriend in London. Until her appearance, I had been hastily installed at a spare desk in a cramped, noisy upstairs office shared with other analysts. It was less than ideal to be in such close proximity to the incessant banter of loud, patronising former private schoolboys. Then, Claire Enders instructed HT and me to work together in a previously unoccupied large basement office that was eerily spacious and quiet. We were given our first client project that would utilise our combined knowledge of the music industry and copyright systems.

We quickly found other things we had in common. We were both ‘outsiders’ compared to the company’s all-male all-Brit analyst staff that, mostly toff, appeared to have scant hands-on industry experience. HT was North American, while I had relocated there for six years and had worked for a large American media public corporation. We set to work on our first little client project which pleasingly necessitated little contact with our colleagues sat two floors above us. Our basement room felt like a private oasis of calm compared to the strident, booming male voices prevalent upstairs. 

For lunch, the men upstairs would frequent a local ‘greasy spoon’ café whose food had made me ill after accepting an invitation to accompany them during my first week, or they visited a ‘Spaghetti House’ restaurant. Cooked lunches had never been my thing. I preferred a sandwich or wrap, so I would accompany HT to the local ‘Pret A Manger’ or ‘Eat’ to buy takeaways. Frankly, after my initial attempt at social lunching with the lads upstairs, during which they had grilled me about which school I had attended thirty years ago, enquiring whether it was a ‘private’ grammar school [see blog], I was relieved to have an excuse to escape their company.

London’s Mayfair district proved a bizarre place to work. Not only is it the most expensive square on the ‘Monopoly’ board, it remains home to the city’s richest residents, costliest townhouses and most exclusive shops. Around the corner from our office was the shop window of ‘The Spy Shop’ in South Audley Street, displaying secret camera apparel and surveillance equipment hitherto only seen in James Bond movies. Shopfronts with beautifully lit showrooms had inordinately expensive huge shiny new cars inside to tempt a passing resident to pop in impulsively one lunchtime and casually lay down a volume of cash that could have bought me my first house.

HT and I would regularly walk past the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square where former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko would be poisoned later that year. When the weather allowed, we sat in the Square on a bench to eat our takeaways, overlooked by the United States Embassy and opposite the statue of American wartime president Franklin Roosevelt. HT laughed when, reading the plaque beneath the monument, I pronounced his middle name as ‘Del-AH-no’. The only person I had come across before with that name was Jamaican singer Delano Stewart whose song ‘Stay A Little Bit Longer’ had been one of my first reggae purchases in 1970.

Other days, we would walk further to the ‘Eat’ shop on Berkeley Square, sit inside if it was wet or otherwise find a bench in the calming Square, chatting about our working lives before having been thrown together by our present employer. On one occasion, we walked after lunch to the Myanmar embassy on Charles Street to pick up visitor visas for HT and her boyfriend to take a vacation booked there. I kept my opinion to myself about supporting an oppressive regime through international tourism. These carefree lunchtimes made my job bearable at a time when I was already finding our employer’s master/servant management style worryingly reminiscent of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ [see blog].

After a few weeks in the basement office, we completed our first project successfully and I was hoping that we would be asked to work together in the service of a further client, given how successful and productive we had been. However, it was not to be. I was sent to the offices of a law firm to work on a project that would occupy the rest of my year [see blog]. Despite her expertise on the issues with which I was now tasked, HT was elsewhere working on other projects. At my new location in an office block above City Thameslink station, I now ate lunch alone in a cheap nearby takeaway. Those carefree spring and summer days munching our food together became a distant memory. I no longer had a lunchtime respite from the oppressive work environment in which I was immersed.

Months later, on a rare occasion when I returned to the Mayfair office, HT buttonholed me and asked if we could chat privately. She seemed uncharacteristically worried and upset. She told me about two distinct issues that had understandably shocked her. Our boss, Claire Enders, had contacted her boyfriend after the opera event we had attended and the two had talked without her prior knowledge. Secondly, her boyfriend had come to believe that HT and I were having some kind of workplace affair. I was astonished. This was all unknown to me, I explained. I had certainly done nothing to propagate such a falsehood. Whether she believed me or not, I never discovered. Mine was an innocent friendship with a woman who was closer to the age of my daughter than to old-man me. What could I do to rescue this situation? Apparently, nothing.

Weeks later, I learnt indirectly that HT had quit work, though there had been no goodbye or official announcement. She had simultaneously broken up with her boyfriend and returned to her home city in North America, presumably to rebuild her upended career. I was shocked and saddened. What had precisely happened I would never know, but it might appear to an observer that my positive working relationship with HT, unbeknownst to me, had proven a catalyst for forces that I had neither anticipated nor understood. Nobody else in our workplace seemed the least concerned about HT’s disappearance after her few months there.

Much later, in March 2007, Claire Enders asked me to contact HT to request some information about a project she had done during her time in our office. I refused, explaining that I did not feel HT would want ever again to hear from anybody at Enders Analysis. I did wonder why I was being singled out for this task rather than any one of my colleagues. It felt like a concerted effort to rub salt into the fatally wounded relationship between myself and HT. Enders persisted and so I eventually did write a cringingly inappropriate email begging for information. I received no reply and understandably so. I never heard from HT again.

Perhaps this was just a strange workplace misunderstanding into which I might have read too much, you could be thinking. Mmmm. Later that year, a young female intern was given a temporary desk in our now crowded basement office of all-male analysts in Mayfair. Such interns were usually the offspring of high-flying media owners whom Claire Enders had befriended and they often displayed almost zero interest in our work. This one was unusual because she was a student friend of Claire Enders’ daughter at St Andrews University, the alma mater of British royalty and the rich.

Everyone else in the office rudely ignored her presence so I chatted with her and discovered she was a big music fan. I lent her my ‘C86’ NME cassette, a compilation of my original Scottish ‘Postcard Records’ singles that I treasure, and a reissued Ella Washington CD of soul recordings for ‘Sound Stage 7’. When she admitted she had no record player in her rented London accommodation, I lent her one of my vinyl turntables, barely touched since my pirate radio days. We chatted regularly in the office environment and that was it. She was around the age of my daughter.

After a few weeks’ work, the intern confided that Claire Enders had started to allege she was self-harming. I had seen no evidence to support such an accusation and was shocked that such a serious assertion had been made. I could offer no explanation as to why this was happening. Then, at home in my kitchen one evening after work, I received a call from the intern’s parents who asked if I could elucidate why their daughter was being falsely accused of self-harm. I could not. Then the parents alleged that they had received numerous unprompted calls from Claire Enders insisting they act to resolve their daughter’s supposedly poor mental health. They told me they were considering a referral to the police to stop these unwanted calls. Their daughter left our workplace immediately afterwards and later returned by post the articles she had borrowed from me.

By now, I had witnessed sufficient strange behaviours in that workplace to understand that the environment there was not what I considered ‘normal’. I hung on to the job for almost three years before being edged out myself in similarly bizarre circumstances. Afterwards, I discovered that Claire Enders is the offspring of a former United States ambassador born “into a family of wealthy patricians” who, attending Yale, was “a member of one of the secret societies which are said to guarantee success in life”, according to ‘The Independent’. His 1996 ‘New York Times’ obituary said his “career was highlighted by cold war intrigues in tropical climes”, having survived three assassination attempts whilst stationed in Cambodia. Why was I reminded of 'The Omen'?

During 2008, I was given so much work at Enders Analysis that I only managed to take a single day’s holiday the entire year to attend my daughter’s graduation ceremony. Having explained the reason for my absence, Claire Enders regularly suggested she could find employment for my daughter through her contacts. No enquiry seemed necessary about her studied subject or what might be her interests or ambitions. This is how the job market appears to work amongst the privileged. You can always be found a highly paid job bossing around ‘little people’ in some workplace, regardless of having no relevant experience or understanding of the industry. Admittance requires only proof that you too are proposed by one of the chosen few. After the things I had witnessed in my workplace, I would have preferred my daughter be unemployed than participate in the ‘gravy train’ of the upper classes. No interloper will be infiltrating my harmonious family!

After my first night at the opera, I was never invited by Enders to another social event. Neither have I had occasion to wear my expensive jacket again.