RAudio - The 5th Edition
Why I loved BBC Radio 1's latest promotion and why radio needs to do the Impossible more often
BBC Radio 1 was at it again last week, with another Greg James driven, “Stop the Station” game.
To be honest, and this may shock you, my first reaction was a sort of cynical yawn.
My internal dialogue went something like, “Oh great, another challenge thing, I wasn’t too impressed by the giant jigsaw, not sure if anything will top the visceral excitement of the Locked Room”
I have a lot of time for Radio 1, and for Greg James, he’s got such an enviable, natural and engaging style, it’s hard not to like him.
But did the world really need another Radio 1 promotion along the same lines?
The Missing Presenters
The central plot involved Greg on his own, with just a printer, called Harold… That’s enough to give most presenters a nightmare, certainly, getting a radio station printer to work is a challenge in itself.
All of the other Radio 1 DJs had disappeared and Greg had to find them… the twist being that he’d have to stay on air until he had other presenters to fill the schedule.
It’s hard to stay excited when the station is hunting for that guy who does a 1 hour show on Wednesday nights, so maybe that’s where the scepticism came from.
But, the thing that made it all work was the Radio 1 listeners
The Grand Finale
The promotion ratcheted up the tension nicely all week, spacing out the discovery’s and adding the talented Charlie Hedges into the mix as Greg’s partner in crime.
The jeopardy hit maximum when it was revealed that the station would shut down at midday on Friday, if the roster hadn’t been filled… While all of this was going on, they also relocated to the Isle of Wight, as it just so happened the Festival was on last weekend.
The final hour was actually very entertaining, with listeners phoning in, and dropping what they were doing to get involved. The final missing presenter was Mollie King, of the Saturday’s and the team made really good use of Instagram for clues and additional content
A highlight was Greg having a safety briefing before he was allowed to head out into the harbour – which delay the whole process of the hunt and basically caused a 5 minute closedown.
Nerves of Steel
I continue to be impressed by the BBC Radio 1 management and production team and they way they managed to keep such a hugely complex operation running, while also making it sound simple and entertaining.
That, plus, they had the balls to launch a promotion to search for BBC presenters, just days after the papers were consumed by the “Mystery BBC Presenter” in a Sun inspired sex scandal. I’d imagine there were some interesting senior editorial meetings!
I’ve done a few of these kind of “drop everything, we’re going to a festival” kind of OBs, with SPIN 1038, we used to take the whole station to the festival, loading it all in the back of Chris Doyle’s car and setting up in a portacabin for the weekend…
The best part, was always what happened with this Radio 1 stunt, where different presenters who don’t normally work together get to mix and chat, add in some musician interviews and the continual thump thump from the stage and it made for entertaining radio.
Do The Impossible Thing!
The other most dramatic moment like this I’ve been involved with was the launch of Virgin Radio on DAB in the UK from a moving train… That definitely involved a number of meetings at which I was politely but firmly asked, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
We had Phil Critchlow from TBI organising the technical side, and the good people at Virgin Trains kindly lent us the train, so why not?
I do remember the extreme nervousness as we counted down to launch, Edith Bowman and Matt Richardson were on the train in Manchester, Jamie East, Kate Lawler and Tim Cocker were all in studio in London.
The wise words of producer Mick Meadows are what got me through it, he said “think of it as a studio with links from a train, if the link drops, you’ve still got a show”. It made a lot of sense.
In the end, it all went very well, we only dropped once or twice and we had live music from Travis, Gavin James and more, as the Virgin Radio Express rocketed to London from Manchester.
So, I appreciate the effort that went into Radio 1’s dramatic week, and I think radio needs to make the impossible happen more often…
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments, and any amazing impossible broadcast stories…
This has been the 5th 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