Happy Birthday, Radio
This weekend saw Commercial Radio in the UK, celebrating its 50th Anniversary marking the date of October 8th 1973 when the London Broadcasting Company began transmissions at 6am
I was curious to hear what it sounded like, so I went digging and found Tim Crook’s archive on Soundcloud – the link is here - LBC Launch
It’s a remarkably calm and polished first broadcast and it’s bizarre to hear war in the Middle East as the lead story, even as the same events unfold 50 years later.
I really love the Batman-esque music beds too. It’s also entertaining to hear the struggle with inflation was going on even then…
My time in UK Radio
Ireland is quite a bit younger as a commercial radio country, we got our first commercial station in 1989, so we’re a mere 34 years old this year.
I was fortunate to work for 3 and a half years in the UK radio industry, as Content Director for Magic and Launch Director / Content Director for Virgin Radio UK.
Having responsibility for two giant UK brands is something I’m very thankful for and the experience of working in the UK market taught me a lot.
To give a bit of background, I was Group Programme Director for Communicorp Group (which is now Bauer Media Audio Ireland) back in 2013, at one point I had responsibility for 42 stations across 9 countries, including Finland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Jordan, in the Middle East, there were also national Irish stations, Today FM and Newstalk, along with Spin 1038, Spin South West and 98FM.
At this point, Communicorp had been going through some changes, as Denis O’Brien sold off some of the European assets and focussed back on the core of the business in Ireland. There were also plenty of management changes at them as Paddy Halpenny left and Gervaise Slowey came in as the new CEO.
Moving to Magic
The long and the short of it is, I was ready for a new challenge and when Steve Parkinson from Bauer made contact to discuss the Magic Content Director job, I was immediately interested.
Magic is a huge brand, bigger now maybe than it was in 2014, but it’s a huge part of the history of London radio, starting as Melody in 1990, then purchased by Emap in 1998 and rebranded as Magic.
I’d worked with Mark Story, who was part of Emap and had even visited the legendary offices on Mappin St, where Kiss and Magic shared a floor. The chance to be Content Director for such a huge London brand, in such a huge market was too good to miss.
The Task in Hand
My task at Magic was partly to refocus the station on London, and we got it back to No. 1 in the first quarter of 2015, but also to prepare and launch Magic as a National brand on DAB. That required a lot of challenging thinking about what made Magic work and how to translate that into a national brand.
Steve Parkinson, Sheena Mason and the team at Magic were amazing to work with and with the firm guiding hands of Dee Ford and Paul Keenan, the national launch was a great success and Magic has grown now, adding more sub brands and extending it’s reach.
One of my personal radio idols is Richard Park, I first met him as a mere child in 1991, when Capital radio almost bought out Century Radio in Ireland, and I’d always followed his career. So, when I found myself considering whether or not to replace the iconic Magic Jingles that he’d personally supervised, it was a big moment.
New Jingles, New Sound
The reason we needed to replace them was because the biggest challenge for Magic as a national brand was the need to continue to be successful in London. So we had to design a national framework which sat around the London brand and didn’t disrupt the London output.
But, the iconic Magic jingles, had the frequency built into them – if you know them, you’ll hear them even when I write “Magic 105.4” – I’ve found some of those on Soundcloud too… Original Magic Jingles
Building a Sonic
The issue was that if you remove the frequency, the sonic disappears. We tried various versions, but it just wouldn’t work. The idea in my head was to build a sonic that would sit underneath the frequency, so that in London, we’d have Magic 105.4 and outside London, we’d have Magic Radio.
I think for a jingle package to really work, you’ve got to have a sonic at the heart of it, that’s typically a sequence of 3, 4 or 5 notes that becomes synonymous with your brand. The world’s most famous sonic might be the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle.
I went to see Mark Goodier and his crew at Wise Buddah and we created a package that could still be running today, it’s one of my absolute favourite packages I’ve ever been involved with.
I could and maybe should start a whole other newsletter about jingle packages, but that’s probably for another day.
I was intending to write more about the difference between UK Radio and radio in Ireland but I might come back to that next week and maybe talk a bit more about launching Virgin Radio UK live from a moving train
This has been the 16th official edition of the RAudio Newsletter
Just to recap, each week I’ll be taking a look at big stories in radio, podcasting and audio.
Any feedback, questions or potential topics are welcome – you can get me on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamthompsonconsulting/ or on Twitter @Maxliam