Happy St Brigid’s Day
Start planning now for Bank Holidays 2024
It’s quite possible you’re not overly familiar with Saint Brigid.
When you mention Ireland and Saints, it’s almost inevitable that St Patrick is the first name that comes to mind, along with his one gimmick, “chasing the snakes out of Ireland”.
But this may surprise you, Ireland actually has three patron saints, we used to be pretty heavily into the whole religious thing, as you may be aware, and so in fact, Saint Patrick, Saint Colmcille and Saint Brigid are all on Team Green.
Saint Brigid has risen to greater prominence after the Irish Government introduced a new Bank Holiday in 2023, making it the first public holiday specifically dedicated to a woman.
She was quite a character too, dating from the 5th Century, she was one of Ireland’s first female leaders, managing a community of 15,000 nuns in Kildare, and having a number of miracles attributed to her, including her use of a magical “Brigid’s Cloak” which she could expand at will, and the most essential skill for an Irish saint, the ability to turn water into beer.
You may be thinking you’ve stumbled by accident into my new Theology Newsletter, (working title “For God’s Sake”) but the purpose of the recap on Brigid was actually to talk about Bank Holidays and planning for weekends and music features.
Shake things up on the Long Weekend
It’s been quite odd to have a Bank Holiday in February, and I put mine to good use by doing some station monitoring and some Zoom calls, but generally it’s been a pleasant surprise for people and a good way to break up the endless monotony of January.
It did bring to mind the opportunity that these days present in the calendar. Ireland has a good run of bank holidays in March (St Patrick’s Day), then Easter, then May, June, August and so on.
We do seem particularly blessed, as it were, but there’s a good opportunity for radio to make the most of these extra days off.
So, how do you best make use of those days to engage your audience? Anything that involves audience voting and / or countdowns seem to drive listener excitement, we’ve had some good success doing “Bracket” type contesting to find the Greatest Irish Act / English Act / US Act etc.
They see head to head contests, that gradually reduce down to a quarter final, semi final and final, and give you a great chance to play more music from your biggest acts.
Even simple formats like Request weekends, or live broadcasts from festivals across a weekend, give the station a chance to do something different, to show off hidden talents from your presenters, or up and coming talent and of course to reinforce the core strength of your music format.
What we got up to…
This weekend, on Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio, we continued our current 80’s obsession by playing the Top 100 from the 1980’s across Monday, and it made for a very entertaining and enjoyable listening experience. The voting saw Queen at No. 1 and No. 2 in the chart, which was a surprise, but we do faithfully respond to our audience’s preferences.
On Radio Nova, they were busy deciding on the weighty matter of the Greatest Artist, in a three way battle between Thin Lizzy, Bruce Springsteen and Queen.
One of the things that is important, particularly with an older format is to find ways to keep the library fresh, and feature weekends and occasional specials offer a great way to liven things up and let the audience hear something different.
Classic Hits 80’s - An Immersive Format
I spoke a little here about our Classic Hits 80’s station, but it’s another good example of finding ways to bring your format to life and get people enthused.
Ireland may not have DAB, but we do have temporary FM licences, which are intended for either charitable or social purposes, or as a chance to try out a new format. It can be a national licence, and creating something that exists for just 30 days is an interesting challenge.
This year, our Classic Hits 80s pop up was intended to give fans of 80’s music an immersive experience.
On air, we described it as “Living in the 80’s” and we created a format device, designed around the iconic “Back to the Future”, time travelling DeLorean. This let us play whole sequences of music from particular years, so you got to hear the music in context, rather than just a mix and match from various years.
We also put quite a bit of effort in doing News from the years, with great audio, and real nostalgia value. Finally, we bought Rick Dee’s Weekly Top 40 shows from the 1980s (they go back as far as 1985) and we scheduled them daily between 1pm and 4pm.
I’ve included a screen shot of a log from a mystery year…
Surprise and Delight your Audience
The reaction to the station has been genuinely amazing, between emails and texts to the station, and plenty of direct feedback to the presenters. It’s a good example of how a little bit of creative thinking can bring a library to life.
So, if you’ve got some spare time in your next programming meeting, take some time to brainstorm ideas for weekends, for Easter and maybe for some pop up stations or streams that will surprise and delight the audience.
This has been the 32nd official edition of the RAudio Newsletter.
Apart from writing newsletters, I also consult to radio stations and podcasts, so if you have a question, or a project you need help on, drop me an email – liamathompson@gmail.com
I’m also attending RadioDays in Munich, so let me know if you’re going and we can catch up.
You can also send feedback, questions or potential topics – you can also get me on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamthompsonconsulting/ or on Twitter @Maxliam