There are many styles, all acceptable. The only one that isn’t is bad technique. The list below highlights some of the pit-falls people can fall into when they start presenting.

I’m not saying that any of these are automatically wrong be default; but you’ve got to understand the rules before you break them. It’s not about stifling creativity, but it’s about understanding what can make listeners turn off.

This can be technical errors:

• Not checking levels,

• dropping music when you talk over it,

• not killing faders when the song ends

• not cueing stuff up right

• not turning off your mic.

• not having a record cued up just in case

• not checking the logging tape.

This can be “integration” errors:

• dropping in V/Os at the wrong point

• playing four or five jingles back to back

• leaving the mini-disc running

• talking over vocals

• leaving gaps between records

• badly segueing

• badly mixing.

This can be timing errors:

• not playing the ads at the right time

• not backtiming your records to the hour

• not spacing things out across an hour.

This can be music errors:

• not playing enough of the different styles of music

• relying on the same records week in week out

• coming out of breaks on slow records

• playing two songs by the same artist.

This can be presentation/content errors:

• mumbling into the mic

• sounding dull and unenthusiastic

• constantly saying “erm” in the middle of speaking

• not saying the station name frequency and your name enough

• falling into the “that was, this is” pit

• not having enough to talk about

• talking about things listeners won’t be interested in (no they don’t want to know that the CD players are shagged etc etc)

• assuming the listeners knows what you are referring to

• not giving the track titles out.

Why do people listen to the radio?

Considers why people choose to listen to the radio, especially music radio, over their own CD collection.

One of the most crucial things about understanding and making radio is understanding what your customer wants. Your customer is the listener, except in commercial radio where it is the advertiser.

In commercial radio, therefore, you need to deliver to your customer (the advertisers) as many of the type of listener they want for as long as possible. So whilst a local commercial station classed as Chart-Hits will usually be aiming for non-professional 25-35 yr old predominately females, Classic FM will be aiming for a 30+ semi-professional male/female equal split. The reasoning is not that these different groups have different music tastes, but the advertising on the different station is either from different companies, or aimed differently.

This is similar to BBC radio; each station has a remit set by the BBC Governors who determine what category each station should aim for. So, the Radio 1 will be aiming for 16-25 yr old, equal male/female split. You can probably work out the other categories.

Again, if you work in student radio, your funding tends to come from the Student Union or University, which in turn is funded to benefit the students at the institution. Therefore, they will expect that your radio station aims specifically at the bulk of the audience - which is 18-23yr old, high earning-potential, intelligent, equal male/female split.

This is not to say that people outside these categories should not listen, indeed no-one is really going to mind if they do, but you shouldn't aim at those type of people. Indeed, the main reason they do listen is because they either aspire to be included in that category, or can't get what they want from the stations aimed at them. For example, Radio Five Live has a remit to aim at 25-44 yr olds but has a large teenage following because no other station offers them football coverage. It also has a large following from older listeners who want to still feel youthful.

There are also sub-categories that stations will also aim for, most notably local commercial stations that aim at 10-15yr olds. The reason is that in a family situation, most decisions about what to listen to are made by the children in that category. So, on the school run in the morning, the kids get into the car and put on Acme FM and hey presto mum gets to listen to all the adverts aimed at her.

Hospital radio is no different, except that its remit is to broadcast to as many people in the hospital as possible. The majority of patients in a general hospital will be 50+ equal male/female split and from a lower socio-economic grouping, but obviously this depends on where your hospital is. Therefore, playing banging house music for an hour is probably not going to deliver what your audience wants.

So we've determined who your listener is, now we need to work out why they listen. And the answer to that depends on the situation they listen to the radio. Most radio listening is done in the morning - and people tend to want information and entertainment in that order. They want, what's been called the "normality check" which is the news and sport - to check the world is still the same as when they went to bed. The want the "get to work check", which is the weather, travel and time information. And during this they want to be entertained. They also don't want to stop what they're doing to concentrate on the radio, so they want things in bite-size easy to digest lumps.

Once they've got to work, depending on where they're working, they'll tend to want the radio on to keep from being bored, whether it's working in a factory or warehouse, office or driving around. So they don't need so much information, more entertainment, but nothing that is going to require concentration.

So when they leave work, they'll require homebound traffic reports, extra news to tell them what's happened during the day whilst they've been away, perhaps some entertainment news such as tv or cinema guides to tell them what they could do or see tonight. And then into the evening and night-time, they require less information, and have more opportunity to concentrate on the radio so specialist shows and shows that require lots of user inter-activity can take place. If you can get people to listen to the radio as they go to bed that's the station that is on the dial when they wake up the next morning.

Look at an average station that is what happens. Obviously different stations that are targeting different groups will do things differently - BBC local radio stations tend to aim at older people who may well be at home during the day, so therefore have more time to interact and therefore they may well have phone-ins during the day. They also tend to carry more travel news than other stations, because of the RDS system that can, at the listeners discretion, cut across other stations when a traffic bulletin is broadcast.

So we can understand the bit about information giving, but why do listeners choose music-radio to be entertained? Just imagine for a moment that music-radio was only just invented, and the concept needed to be sold to the funders? Why would anyone listen to music radio over putting their own cd in the hi-fi, which gives them complete control over what they listen to and they don't have to put up with adverts?

The answer is in ease-of-use. The current buzzword is lean-back technology, which is what radio is. You press the on button, perhaps find the frequency, and then everything else is taken care of. You can listen to radio ad-infinitum and not have to do anything else. The RDS system even means that you can drive from one end of the country to the other and never have to re-tune your radio. There is no CD to change, no monthly charge to pay, and short of their being a power-cut you can listen to your radio forever more. Your one-button entertainment system.

Of course there are opportunities to participate and people do. But the first rule of radio is that just because no-one phones, it doesn't mean no-one's listening - it just means they are busy doing other things and have no incentive to call. Even the big cash give-aways will only attract an approximate 1 in 800 listeners to call in.

The other reason people listen for entertainment is the collective experience. This is, if everyone else in your peer group listens to a station you tend to, so you can discuss it in the classroom, pub or day-centre the next time you meet. "Did you hear that thing on Chris Moyles's show this morning?". Why do stations trail ahead when they are going to play a new record or interview a big star - not so you know, you're already listening, it's so that you can tell your friends about it.

The collective experience explains why people enjoy taking part in competitions, phone-ins and request shows; the knowledge that their voice is being heard across the stations broadcast area. Phone-ins, in particular, work because people want to express their opinion to the rest of the audience. Policy is never going to be changed as a result of a phone-in.

But perhaps the biggest reason that people listen to the radio, is because they always have. And the people around them always have. Radio is part and parcel of our life, and because of its ease-of-use, we switch the radio on as a matter of course when we need a quick-fix of entertainment or info. When you're washing the dishes, doing coursework, or driving to visit a relative, the radio goes on because you know it's there and you know it will provide music, talk or traffic information.

10 things I hate about you (on air)

My personal pet-hates that new presenters tend to get in to habit of doing. It leaves me shouting at my radio in agony!

Jees – you’re bored.

Hello!!!! To most folks listening to you on the radio, you’ve got one of the best roles on the planet. You get to sit and swap CDs over for a living, talking a little bit and then get to go out and be a minor celebrity. They don’t care that you’re not getting paid for this shift, or you smashed the car on the way in; or you’ve had to agree to do Saturday breakfast the morning after you were planning to hook up with a girl you met at your last PA. So stop sounding so bored. Please, if you do one thing for me, just sound like you are actually enjoying yourself. Or go and sweep the streets for a living and see how you like that.

Throw ahead, don’t throw it away.

This is my shout-at-the-radio moment – the ten-to link which goes something like “well, I’m packing my record case and planning to get out of the studio as soon as possible…” Your job is not to remind your listeners that the next show is rubbish, it is to sell it; just as much as you’d like the guy before you to do the same for you. Never mention you’re leaving; simply talk up the next jock (although you don’t necessarily need a cheesy handover) and tell people what they’ve got to look forward to on their show.

It’s 49 minutes past three...

This is another pet hate; DJ speak. We all do it, we just need to learn not to. Sometimes it’s because we’re contractually obliged to use the station positioning statement; but most of the time it’s because we grew up listening to far too much ILR and think that is how the rest of the world speaks. Unless you’re doing breakfast or a news show, time check to the nearest ten minutes (or quarters) and be sensible about how you say it: “nearly” and “just after” ten, quarter, twenty and half past, twenty, quarter, and ten to.

These phrases should be avoided: “the sound of”, “top of the hour”, “another great”.

Tell me something I care about...

Most demo tapes consist of the following: here is a list of the next three presenters after me, here is the complete factual weather forecast, here is today’s list of celebrity birthdays. Now listen to any half-decent commercial radio station and you’ll find they don’t do any of them. Answer the questions your listeners wants; they don’t care much between 21 and 24 degrees Celsius – they just need to know whether to take a coat. Personalise every link you do, and make me care about it; “weather is meant to be getting better later today – I hope so as I’m s’pposed to be off playing football at Victoria Park tonight.”

Please, be my mate...

One of my training sessions involves playing several demo tapes and getting the audience to choose which person they’d most want to go to the pub with. This is why the late John Peel could still cut it on Radio 1 – you can easily imagine that a night down the local with him would be anything but boring; even if you’re not yet old enough to legally drink. If all you are going to do is announce the chart position of every song that comes on the jukebox or read Ceefax then I’ll probably leave after the first pint.

Another crap record...

If you’re working at a station that is play-listed, or even if you’re not, never ever slag off the songs you’re playing. Your audience will think “why the hell are you playing it then?” You might have heard the new Keane single hundreds of times; but your audience probably hasn’t. And even if you think Will Young is the worst thing inflicted on the pop charts in the last decade, he is still going to be the favourite artist of some of your audience. You don’t need to sell each record; just don’t be negative about them.

You join us in the middle of...

Rule number one of radio is that you can’t control when your audience tune in and out of the station. So always think that the next link you do is the first one someone will ever hear on your station. Let me, as a new listener, instantly join in with what is going on, don’t get scared of recalling what has happened. Oh, and because I don’t have RDS, tell me the station name. Every link.

Listen to what your audience is listening to...

One of the most annoying things you’ll notice as a radio listener is when the presenter obviously isn’t paying attention to the output. The most obvious is when there is a technical glitch such as a CD skipping which goes unnoticed; but turning down the monitors during the news or travel can come across as equalling as annoying. And, just as you should be throwing ahead to the next presenter; always make sure you’re listening to as much of the show before.

Guide me through the journey...

Because radio is an audio-only medium; you, as the presenter, have to be the eyes of your listeners. So take me there; describe what you can see and what is going on. Make sure you intro and exit everyone – don’t play a song straight out of talking with someone in the studio and by the time the song finishes they have vanished without even saying goodbye on-air.

Get on with it!

Last, but by no possible means least, shut up. If you’ve got something exciting you want to tell the audience then certainly do it, but if you’ve reached a natural conclusion then pull the mic fader down and just let the music play. There is nothing more irritating that a jock who insists on filling air-time with vacuous waffle simply because they like the sound of their own voice; or can’t back-time properly.

Your show...

You’ve got two hours of airtime to fill... where do you begin?

There is general agreement that the most creative people in the media are those who make adverts. They have to deliver a message to as wide a number of people within a certain category within a very short time span and lots of rules and legalities to take into consideration. Creativity isn’t being given a blank piece of paper and told to draw something… it’s having to make a product within a number of criteria, time-limits and other restrictions. The end product is something that has to be original and enjoyed by many.

In terms of radio, this means that being given two free hours and told to fill them with whatever you like isn’t exactly creative. What is, is the ability to work round the various stipulations and time-specific items and still produce a show that is appealing, interesting and original.

Radio 1 is a good example of this. Chris Moyles, Jo Whiley, Colin and Edithand Scott Mills all have very different presentational styles, and yet they all create good radio using the same basic time-structure, playlist, promos and jingles. They all have to do a phone-in competition, they all have to talk-up various Radio 1 events or campaigns and they all have abide by the BBC guidelines. And yet, all the shows sound different to each other and yet they all fit together on the station.

If you can create a station that contains different styles of programming, but fits together into one continuous stream, and that encompasses an overall station sound, you are well on your way to creating the near perfect station.

Often the hardest part of creating a radio show is having two hours of dead-air to fill, and finding the material to keep it fresh and interesting.

Depending on the type of station you are at will determine the amount of control that you have on your own show - some hospital radio stations are very broad-minded and will allow pretty much anything to be done; others have a much tighter remit. I’ll argue that the latter are the better stations, but because of their very nature of being voluntarily managed, many good intentions are lost with the lack of time.

So let’s say you are working on a local community RSL station which is playing pretty much chart-based hits and aiming for a 16-30 year age group. You have the two hour Sunday afternoon slot from 2-4pm. Two hours of dead-air to fill, so how do you go about doing it?

The first thing to do is divide it down into bit size chunks. Most stations will probably take an hourly summary and so your first split is the 3pm news. Even two lots of sixty minutes is a long time to fill, so you can sub-divide the show still further. A general rule is that a listener will tune in for twenty minutes before deciding they are bored of the station, so dividing each hour into three 20 minute sections will now give you more manageable chunks that also allow you to keep your listeners for longer.

If we assume that each track lasts 3½ minutes, then you can fit roughly five tracks into each 20 minute segment (The average number of songs in an hours should be about fourteen, assuming you take the news and some form of commercials/promos). In each twenty minute segment, you should aim to do something that keeps the listener interested (ie a feature, competition etc) and two or three other links. Suddenly it seems much more manageable.

If you work with the rule that you only trail music and features coming up in the next slot, it ensures that your show always has a reason to keep tuned to. Don’t think that trailing the fact you’ll be running a competition in an hour and a half will keep people listening for that amount of time - it probably won’t; if they’ve got bored they’ll switch over or off. Tell them only when it’s in twenty minutes time and they’ll probably think “hmm, that’s only another couple of songs” and stayed tuned. If, in twenty minutes time you then trail another feature in twenty minutes, they’ll repeat the process, and if you’re good you’ll keep them hooked until the end of the show.

It’s the same with music. Telling people the key tracks coming up is a good way to keep them listening, but again keep it down to the next few songs. If you trail a Snow Patrol song, and then don’t play it for half an hour, your listeners will assume you’ve forgotten and switch off.

Where you place your features is obviously important too. I’d opt to do the bigger features in the second and third chunks of the hour - the first 20 minutes of a show should be establishing the presenter. However there is no hard and fast rules about where you put them.

Bear in mind the mechanics of the feature. If it’s a competition, and you’ve got to take the calls, you don’t want to run it straight before you’ve got to do a difficult ad-break or live link. Equally, if you’re doing a live interview or putting callers on-air, don’t do it two minutes before the hourly news. Think about where other competitions and features are on other shows and make sure yours is well spaced out. For example, if the previous presenter did a competition in the last twenty minutes of his or her show, but the presenter after you doesn’t do a competition at all, your competition should be in the last chunk of your show.

What you want to end up with is a show that is well-balanced and always has something in the next twenty minutes to look forward to.

Structuring a link

Understand how to easily get between one element and another without confusing your listener.

Every link you do needs to have a reason for doing it. You’ve probably heard the phrase “if you have nothing to say, say nothing” and it is true - if the only reason you are doing a link is because you think there should be a link, then it’s probably not a particularly useful link and you’d be better off not doing it. So work out what you want the listener to get out of the link. In a lot of cases that’s pretty straight forward - the name of the previous two songs, the station name and the fact in five minutes time you’ll be giving away a woolly Mammoth.

So your link could go:

• “Acme FM, where you just heard Coldplay and White Stripes... and keep listening for your chance to win a Woolly Mammoth in our Mammoth Giveaway…”

• “Coldplay and the White Stripes, two great songs on Acme FM, the only station that in five minutes time is giving away a Woolly Mammoth…”

• “White Stripes and before that Coldplay, none of whom look like a Woolly Mammoth, which is of course what you can win in the Mammoth Giveaway here in five minutes on Acme FM”

• “Woolly Mammoths ahoy, it’s your chance to win one on the Mammoth Giveaway in just five minutes, here on Acme FM where we just played you Coldplay’s latest single and then White Stripes”

Four different varieties of the same link, all with their plus points and all probably perfectly acceptable on a standard radio station. You’ll notice that they get progressively more creative, the first being just the facts whereas the last one is a lot more flowery.

What they demonstrate is that they all have a link path in them. A link path is the way in which you link the separate elements (in this case there are three, the previous songs, the station name and the competition in five minutes). Whether intentional or not, the presenter seamlessly goes through the three separate elements.

Link paths are a good idea, because they prevent you repeating yourself, getting stuck or missing vital information out. The easiest way to do a link-path is to bullet point the main points and key words in the order you were going to read them out. So, if I was going to use the fourth link I’d write :

• Woolly Mammoths Ahoy

• Chance to win

• Mammoth Competition

• Five Minutes

• Acme FM

• Colplay (latest)

• White Stripes

The words that go around these points are really incidental; you can say pretty much anything you want which makes sense and the link should sound OK. As long as your link is not stilted and sounds natural, and it contains all the points from the list, it is a good link.

Bear in mind where you put things in your link-path. The third link is pretty standard on many commercial radio stations because it ends in the name of the station, and the general consensus is that listeners will always remember the last few words they hear - so put the most important thing there. That’s probably a minor point, compared with say this link:

“And don’t forget to ring me on 01274 233-269 to win a pair of cinema tickets, if you can answer this simple question: What was the name of the chef in the hit series Fawlty Towers?”

Hopefully you’ve spotted the problem. If you can’t, think about the fact that radio is a linear medium. And unlike the web or printed media, you can’t refer to what you just heard. So what you have is a situation where a listener hears the prize and the question, but has no way of knowing what to do because you’ve already given the phone number out.

What you need to consider is the hook, or top-line, which is the way you draw listeners into actively listening. On the radio this is often done by way of a question - “So would you be interested in winning a pair of cinema tickets?”. Other methods include a strange phrase “Woolly Mammoths Ahoy!” or a sound effect, but they all get the listeners to stop what they are doing and take note.

Then you need present the content. In this case it’s a question. Finally, you need to tell them what to do with the content, which in this case is to phone the radio station, but in other examples it might be giving a helpline number out, or ingredients. Anything which the listener might need to write down or remember put after the reason they’ve got to it. And repeat that information a couple of times.

So the better link should sound like :

“Fancy getting yourself a pair of tickets to go to see any film at the Acmeshire Odeon? Well, if you know the answer to this question, in Fawlty Towers, what was the name of the chef, then give me a phone on 01274 233-269, that’s Bradford 233-269.”

Content is king

Some ideas of what to put in between the records and how often you should say them.

There are two types of new-presenter and they fall into two very distinct camps. The first is the very-timid one, who will do a voice-link once in a blue moon, perhaps between every three or four songs. The second is the over-eager, who will voice-link without fail between every single song. Neither is correct, and the balance is to get between the two extremes.

The number and length of voice-links will depend on your stations sound, but as a general rule of thumb you should probably voice link at least every two songs, and I’d suggest four voice-links for every six songs (this works out at link, two songs, link, song, link, two songs, link, song, link, two songs etc.). Your aim is to be on air as much as possible without getting in the way of the music, or becoming annoying. So short regular links are much better than lots of music, then three minutes of speech.

The content of your links is also important. Too many presenters end up doing the same link every time, and this can become incredibly dull and boring. I subscribe to the view “if you have nothing to say, say nothing”, but with the proviso that good prep should have given you something to say.

So on your typical station, this is the kind of frequency I’d expect to hear various link items. Obviously more than one can appear in a single link, indeed every link you do you should give the frequency and station name.

Those marked with an asterisk don’t necessarily have to be voiced by the presenter each time, they could be jingles/idents.

The Radio Toolbox

*Station Name (Every five minutes)

• Establish and maintain the brand.

*Station Frequency (Every five minutes)

• Ensure the listener can recall the frequency

*Station Positioning Statement (Every five-ten minutes)

• Establish and maintain the brand.

Back announcing songs (Every five-ten minutes)

• Letting listener know what song heard is called.

*Presenter Name (Every ten minutes)

• Humanise the show.

*Telephone/Text/Email (Every fifteen minutes, depending on type of show and relevance)

• Only give this information out with a reason/incentive.

About something, eg story in local paper, football, film you saw etc (Every ten to fifteen minutes)

• Give listener something to think about and discuss with friends.

Time-check (Every fifteen minutes during breakfast and drive)

• At peak times it helps the listener keep track of the time, at other times it is not necessary.

Forward announcing songs (Every twenty minutes)

• Keep listeners interested for another twenty minutes

*Feature/competition trailing (Every twenty minutes)

• Keep listeners interested for another twenty minutes

Trail the News (Never!)

• If the only thing worth listening out for is the news then you should be taken off air!

I’ll qualify that by saying that if you are plugging a specific story (“the latest on that shooting in town”) then that makes sense. However, I’m fed up hearing presenters who at twenty-five minutes to the hour say “hmm... and coming up is the news”. There are reasons why music-radio stations have news bulletins, which will be discussed later, but trailing them with twenty-five minutes to go is not the answer.

Equally, trailing the next presenter continuously for the last twenty minutes of your show is a big no-no. For a start, no-one apart from the presenters few friends will give a monkees who is the presenting the show - they are not a big enough name to justify people tuning in. Far better, trail the music of the first twenty minutes of the next persons show and round it off with “and that’s all coming up with Kelly Smith in just a couple of records time, here on Acme FM”.

The frequency and name of the station are by far the most important elements of any link, and like I said above, whenever you say or do something make sure it includes the station frequency and name. If you listen to most station promos, they’ll include the name and frequency four or five times within that thirty seconds. The frequency is important because we still have manually tuning radios, and it’s all very well your listener currently listening to the station, but they need to know how to get it if they go elsewhere. That’s elsewhere both in terms of tuning away, and using another radio. If you listen to an hour of music-radio, even something very established like Radio 1, you’ll find they give the frequency and name out probably thirty or forty times within that sixty minutes.

A station positioning statement (or slogan) is the type of “Best New Music” / “Better Music, and More of It” that helps establish exactly why people should be listening to that station. It should be a singular phrase that sits either before or straight after the station name. Most commercial stations will include a location in their positioning statement to reinforce their locality. Whilst positioning statements should be simple, try to think of something original. A Leeds student station I heard had “everyone’s a dj” which completely reinforced it’s music-led community spirited ethos.

Back announcing songs is important because it tells the listener what they heard. This is obviously useful if they want to go out and buy it (which is the reason the record company will let you play it) but also so they can tell you which songs they like and dislike - which you’ll find out more of in the music section.

Giving out your name is a very simple way of making the personal link between you and the listener. I’ve tried to avoid a lot of the theory about the listener-presenter relationship but knowing that “Gary Andrews” is playing that song is a lot more satisfying than not knowing. Equally, when you talk about things that happened to you, you need to be a human who is talking about it, and every human has a name.

The “feedback” methods, telephone, email and text need to be given out but only when there is a reason or incentive. Too many presenters will do the “requests and dedications on 07000 xxxxxx” without really given the listener a reason to do it. Even saying “hmm, maybe you need to apologise to your flatmate, or you just want to thank your girlfriend for last night - why not give me a call and request a song for them.” What that does is gets the listener thinking and gives them a reason for making that call.

Try and have one easy number for each method of contact, and part of your station sound there should be one way for everyone to say it. Is it oh-seven-triple-oh or oh-seven-thousand?

Numbers tend to work best if done in couplets, but there are exceptions such as when the first and fourth numbers are the same. For example, two-three-three, two-six-nine which is better than twenty-three, thirty-two, sixty-nine. You don’t have to give the STD code out every time, in fact its normally better to give the STD area out rather than the code; eg “Bradford two-three-three, two-six-nine”

And just a word of warning; “oh-eight-four-five-seven-six-three-six-two-thousand and one”, Is that 08457 636 2001 or 08457 636 20001? Unless it is the final numbers, or it is blatantly obvious, avoid using hundreds and thousands to describe numbers.

It’s all in the voice

Some simple advice about improving your on air sound.

Let’s turn away from the complexities of putting a show together for a moment, and concentrate on the most important aspect of a radio show - the presenter. In particular the voice. Your voice can and will change, and nine times out of ten needs too. Very few people are born with radio-friendly voices; and there is nothing wrong with working on your voice to improve it’s on-air sound. There is a industry in voice-training, and if you are looking at broadcasting as a career then I would recommend you consider professional voice-training. So what should the perfect radio voice sound like? The three qualities I suggest are:

• clear. There is nothing worse than a difficult to understand presenter to make someone switch off. Clarity of what is being said is more than vital for a good presenter.

• natural sounding. The age of “smashie and nicey deejays” is thankfully lost in the mists of times, but not according to quite a few people when they first start presenting.

• excited. Or at least mildly amused. The last thing you want to turn on to is someone sounded depressed or just plain dull. Enjoy the experience of presenting.

The voice will improve with time, experience and age - particularly if you work on it. The more confident you get at presenting, the more relaxed you’ll become, the more natural and enjoying the experience you’ll sound.

So how do you improve your voice? Well, you must make a recording of your shows. Whenever I get asked how should someone improve their on-air sound I always say “record yourself, and then critically listen back to see how it sounds”. And it annoys me that budding presenters often don’t bother.

The main reason is that you are your worst critic. Your parents will probably be far too pleased to give any criticism, your friends will probably take the rip and the people you are working at the stations probably will say nice things to keep you motivated. But you are the one who knows that you can do better, so it’s you who have got to correct your mistakes.

Most importantly, sort your breathing out. You’ve got enough to think about without having to worry about breathing whilst you are speaking. So always take a few really deep breaths before you go on air. Many a news-reader and presenter can be found lying on the floor before they go on air getting as much air into their lungs as possible. The rationale behind this is that the more air passing through your mouth, the more complete your voice will sound. Its also true that if you can breath slower, you don’t have to take as many breaths, which bettters your on-air sound. And it’s amazing what a few breathing exercises can do to improve your voice.

Secondly, sort your mouth out. Chew some gum, or at least simulate chewing gum so that your warm-up and stretch your jaw muscles for fifteen minutes before you start broadcasting. Another tip, make sure you don’t have smelly breath (for example, if you’ve just been eating garlic or drinking coffee etc) because your brain naturally tries to limit you opening your mouth, which worsens your on-air sound. My tip from my breakfast jock days was to have some cherry-tomatoes in the fridge as they are perfect for getting rid of stale morning breath.

If you don’t already, try doing one of your shows stood up and see if you can spot the difference. You have much better breathing control when you are stood up; sitting down crushes your lungs and reduces their capacity. Why else do you naturally stand up to give a speech?

Another tip that I’ve heard about - although not yet tried - is to take your shoes off whilst presenting. Your body naturally feels a lot more relaxed when it doesn’t shoes on, and that can come across on air. Obviously make sure you’ve got a decent pair of socks and you haven’t just run all the way to the studio!

One mistake of many first-time presenters is that they attempt to talk too fast. Some professional presenters will talk extremely quickly, but this is something they’ve worked on, and is probably a style of the station. It’s not a necessity, and to use an old adage, why run before you can walk?

Speaking too fast means that your words all mix into each other and it becomes very unclear. Slowing down your speech can do a lot to improve the clarity of your voice and it will certainly make you feel more confident. It also means that your brain doesn’t have to think as quickly so you become more relaxed, which again improves your voice.

There is no substitute to learning how to slow your voice down other than practising with a script of about 120 words and make it last a minute. Once you get that pace you need to conciously keep talking at that speed on the radio. Listen to stations like Radio 4 and BBC local radio and hear how slow their presenters talk (at the World Service they operate on 100-80 words a minute which is seriously slow).

Your actual on-air speech should be about 150 words a minute, but it’s better to attempt to speak slower than that until you are relaxed and confident enough to go at that speech.

Mentally think about talking when you are doing it. Consciously thinking about talking, fully opening your mouth, getting each word out is a vital skill for radio. Think about each word being an individual element, rather than merely part of a sentence. Yes, it might sound strange at first, but once you get used to talking you’ll start sounding more natural and clearer at the same time.

When people go into talking auto-pilot, they lessen the use of their mouth and start to mumble, and this is doesn’t work on radio because your listeners can not lip-read or see your body expressions.

You cannot use gesticulations on the radio, and although it’s good to be animated when behind the mic, you have to demonstrate this to the listener by using your voice. This means exaggerating your expressions, inflexions and the like. If you’re excited, be excited; if you’re angry, shout and be angry. Ensure that your voice is interesting to listen to by varying the pitch and volume of it. The last thing people want to listen to is a monotone sounding voice.

Try to make sure you’re not tired when you present, but equally you are relaxed. If you’re doing an evening show after work or college, then give yourself a long enough break to change gear. If possible, walk or cycle to the studios, it is a lot less stressful than driving or getting stuck on public transport. If you do have to drive or take the bus, try and get to the studio with plenty of time, and find time to just “chill”. There is nothing worse than presenting a show when you’re stressed or bothered about something - all these things affect your voice and therefore your performance.

One song to another

The basics of the sequeway - how to end one song and start another without it sounding like the arse end of, well, an arse.

Apart from speaking, the other main job a presenter has to do is get from the end of one song to the start of another. Not a particularly difficult task, but something that separates the men from the boys in broadcasting.

The process of getting from one record to another is called segueing (pronounced segging) , and the process is known as the segueway (segway). There are two extremes - the first being where one song has finished and there is a noticeable gap before the next song starts up. The second is when the first song still has yet to finish and the second song starts.

In both extremes there is an element of personal interpretation - the gap doesn’t necessarily have to be silence, and waiting for a song to finish isn’t the same as the end of the song. The job of the disc-jockey is to find the ultimate point between the two extremes where the segue works best. Again there is a certain amount of personal taste and station style that will go into that decision. Dance stations, or those looking for a younger clientele, will generally be less worried about waiting until songs get to the end before going into the next record. Personally I’m all in favour of starting the next track whilst the previous record still has another 20 seconds to go, but others like to wait until the third repeat of the chorus has ended before introducing the next song. Whatever style you adopt the most important element is it has to sound good.

There are generally two different ways that a song finishes - the end and the fade-out. The end is just that, the song reaches a point and stops. A fade-out is the cheat method, whether rather than having to create a purposeful end to the song, the chorus is just repeated and then faded out. In a similar manner, there are basically two intros to a song - the soft-in and the hard-in. The hard-in is the reverse of the end, where the beginning of the song starts at the very beginning. The soft-in is where the song gradually builds or fades up.

The easiest way to successfully segue is to select a song that has an end and a song that has a hard-in. You then literally stick the two next to each other and you should have a pretty decent segue. This is especially impressive with dance records that have a similar bpm, it can give the impression of beat mixing.

More difficult is where one or both the records involve fade’s. If the song you are playing ends with a fade and the next song starts quite hard then it’s worth doing a voiced link - talking out of the previous song, ending your voice link and starting the next record. If you’re doing a song that ends into one that’s quite slow to start then a sweeper or station ident is useful. Alternatively consider taking out the slow beginning and starting the track when the main song kicks in.

If both the tracks have fades, depending on the style of the track you can quite often start the second song as the first ends, making a really good segueway. Use of timings is really crucial to differentiate between a link that does it’s job and a link that quite frankly rocks. Make the vocals on the second song start as the final chorus on the first has just ended and you’re on to a real winner.

It’s also important to bear in mind tempo, or speed of the songs involved. Generally it’s best to move up and down the tempo range through your songs, so that if you start with a dance track you then play something mid-tempo before playing a ballad. Sometimes however you can jump between the extremes very effectively - the final crescendo of the ballad ends as the pumping drums of the latest dance number kick in; or reverse the guitar rift from an indie track fades as the slow piano intro starts to play.

Describing sequeing on paper is a little like trying to explain to someone how to tie a shoelace - it’s a hundred times easier to demonstrate. So I shall not persist in attempting to explain the perfect segue, other than say as long as it sounds good it probably is. And my other rule to turn an average show into something rather special - always start the next song half a second before you intended to. It works.

Your policy is at risk...

Building a music policy for your station is a fundamental requirement for any good radio station. And here’s why.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere it’s important that your station maintains a consistent sound. People will rarely have the radio on 24/7, so they need to know that when they tune back in they will get songs they enjoy. However, that consistency doesn’t necessarily mean that all the songs need to sound the same; or that all songs need to be recognisable. What they have to have is they have to fit into a pre-determined definition of a suitable song - better known as a music policy.

So how do you create a music policy? Well, there are a hundred and one ways of doing it, but a good method, and a way of demonstrating how music policies work, is like this.

Everybody can probably put together a list of their favourite songs. And it’s the same with a radio station - the first step to creating a workable music policy is to draw up a list of 50 or so songs that define the station. These are the “bankable” songs - if you ever get stuck for a record you can reach for one of these without it sounding out of place.

So I were drawing up the Radio 1 “bankables” I’d include things like Beyonce’s Crazy in Love, Coldplay’s Clocks and Red Hot Chili Pepers’ Can’t Stop. More recent inclusions would probably be things like The Killers’ Somebody Told Me and Kasier Chiefs’ Every Day I Love You Less and Less.

On your typical commercial chart station you’d expect things like Dido’s Here With Me, Keane’s Everybody’s Changing and Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Your bankable songs can change, but it is not the same as a playlist. You should only change the number of songs each year as a proportion of the years your music policy allows you to play. So if you are restricted to only playing songs in the last five years, you just alter ten songs; for ten years it should be 5, for twenty you probably only want to change a couple each year.

Once you’ve got your bankable songs you effectively have a radio station. There is nothing to stop you just putting those 50 songs on rotation and repeating indefinitely. Obviously your regular listeners would get a bit fed up with hearing the same songs, so what you is replace your bankables with other songs that sound similar - be they new or other favourite older tracks. And that is effectively how you create a station sound; simply work on the basis that you are substituting a different track for the bankable you were going to play. As long as the song you play is similar in style to something off the bankable list you should be OK.

How the bankables get chosen is debatable, but getting the presenters to do it in a committee ensures that there is a better understanding of the music policy and gets a more consistent sound.

It’s a similar way of choosing a playlist. Playlists are a notion of top-40 radio, a concept devised in America. The story behind top-40 radio is important in understanding why stations do what they do.

Top fourty radio was devised in America in the fifties. The story goes that Todd Storz and Bill Stewart in about 1955, who were at KOWH in Omaha, Nebraska, were sat in a bar discussing how to make their radio station different and successful. As lunch stretched into afternoon and afternoon into evening they noticed that the same few songs were being selected on the jukebox. Even after the bar had shut, the girl working behind the bar chose the same couple of records to hear time and time again.

What they realised was that people didn’t like to hear hundreds of different songs - but instead they wanted to hear the songs they currently loved time and time again. So came about the idea of putting the most popular songs on high rotation. And that’s effectively what happens.

It’s worth noting that this necessarily isn’t always going to be the case. The success of the iPod has led certain stations to revisit their music policy; realising that people like the idea of a far greater selection of music than perhaps stations have traditionally played. The problem for programmers is that every song on a iPod is self-selected by that individual, and the wider you cast your music policy the more likelihood that you’ll be playing a greater number of songs that your listeners’ don’t like.

Different stations have different ways of defining their playlists, but a standard format is the A, B and C lists. A-listed songs are the big chart-entries and top songs of that week which will get the most airplay. B-listed songs are either songs that have just been on the A-list or songs that are good but just don’t make the A-list. Stuff that has been around for a few weeks which is still popular and will still get lots of airplay, but more than likely they just don’t cut it that week. C-listed songs tend to be the ones that are being introduced, so more than likely yet-to-be-released songs. They’ll get fewer airplays than the A and B lists but that’s because they are being introduced to the listener.

Dependent on your rotation policy will determine how many songs are on each playlist and how many playlisted songs get aired each hour. You can’t play just two off your ‘A’ list each hour and have a list twenty long (it’d take ten hours to get through the list). Equally if you have a turnover of four hours and are playing five A list songs each hour you’ll need about twenty-five to ensure they don’t keep get rotated in the same order.

Playlisting is not an exact science. There’s a brilliant piece in the Simon Garfield book on Radio 1, called the Nation’s Favourite, which tells of the story when Pulp’s Common People arrived at the station. At the playlist meeting they agreed to put it on the C-list, before Trevor Dann (head of music at Radio 1) just said “This is ridiculous, it sums up the essence of the station” and put it to the top of the A-list. Good music, which fits in exactly with the station sound shouldn’t have to wait on the C list to get lots of airplay.

Working in a voluntary radio station you might find the playlists work differently. Student radio is very pro-new music, so the ‘A’ list might appear to be more geared towards new music rather than popular tunes. Many stations which don’t have a playout list (confusing also known as a playlist) will have a “restricted list” of songs which are perhaps getting too many airplays.

I’ve always been surprised that Hospital radio tends not to operate playlists. This probably has a lot to do with the fact it plays predominately older tracks so there is no “top 40” or newly-released records to make up the A, B and C lists. However, it’s worth looking at the example of Classic FM which uses the concept of playlists to make it’s playout list

Classical music is obviously often written several hundred years ago, and whilst different orchestras will put different interpretations on the composer’s score generally the type of listener tuned to Classic FM will not greatly concern themselves with the different version. (Unlike a listener to Radio 3)

So Classic FM uses playlists to bring particular pieces out in a particular week or month. There may be a timely connection - it’s in an advert or the anniversary of the composer, but there doesn’t have to be. What’s important is that certain pieces will go into a “current” playlist and get a higher rotation than the rest of the catalogue. Then these pieces will be replaced with other songs.

The idea behind that is that it keeps the music sounding fresh but also familiarises the listener with particular songs that are associated with the station. You’ll find that stations often have a similar policy with “oldie” records - they’ll select a few and get played several times before being rested for six months or so and then got out again.

What I hope this demonstrates is that defining the station sound is vital - AcmeFM doesn’t just play pop music - it plays a certain type of pop music. That the difference between playing a Britney record followed by a Coldplay record compared with playing a Britney followed by Celine Dion record is what seperates Radio 1 from your average ILR.

Shifting the gears

The difference between a good jock and a bad one is that with a bad one you’ll notice the gearshift. Find out why.

A successful music policy is all about removing “gearshifts”. The same as driving a car; you want your passengers to have a smooth drive and not notice when you change from 2^nd to 3^rd or whatever.

Your policy can and should change throughout the day, and arguably across the week. When Sara Cox took over the breakfast show, and although it’s not necessarily her decision to pick the music, someone placed a Robbie Williams single to come straight out of the news at 7am. There is probably not a more significant time of the day, as millions of alarm clocks switch on and the nation wakes up listening to the nations favourite. The problem was that the single they had chosen was Angels.

Now the single Angels is a fantastic song, played at parties and karaoke nights everywhere. The problem is that at three minutes past seven on a spring Tuesday morning it just does not work; it goes exactly against what the audience wants. They need rhythmic hits that motivate them to get out of bed and start the day. Look at the play-out list of any music based radio station’s breakfast show and you’ll see that the bulk of the songs are rhythmic of one description or another. What you won’t find, unless perhaps it’s very top of the charts, are ballads and the like - and then if there are any they’ll be tucked into the 7.40 type slots and sandwiched between two much more pacey songs.

Finally, bear in mind the mood of a country. Even the wackiest of presenters probably found it a little difficult to remain their zany self, the day after the recent London bombings. Every radio station in the country dropped the “pop” hits in the week after Diana died. And when news first broke of the terrorist attack in America on September 11^th programme controllers up and down the country had a flick through their play-out lists and removed unsuitable music.

All play and no time

How should you succesfully order your tracks so they work across the hour. And how to backtime up to the news.

We’ve looked at the way music is selected and then how it should be chosen and how to get from one record to another. So you’ve now got your fourteen tracks and you need to schedule them into an hour of airtime. Pretty easy, just pile them up and play them as they come.

Except that whilst that will probably do the job, it’ll be pretty mediocre. Spending a couple of minutes before your show planning exactly where each record goes will actually make your show sound more polished and ultimately better. Thus listeners are more likely spend longer tuned in.

Let’s work on the convention that most stations work too - that the news goes at the top of the hour. Quite often that’s followed with weather or adverts. It’s a bit of an info overload and the end of that three minutes get straight back into the music. You don’t need to welcome the listener or promote anything on your show straight away - let them listen to a song.

Elsewhere I explained how you can divide your show into twenty minute segments. You can do a similar thing with music, assuming you are going to get through 4 or 5 records every twenty minutes and ensure there is a similar ratio throughout each of the segments. I’ve always worked on the notion that the first three records out of the news must be “strong” songs; upbeat, those with bite and rhythm. As you get towards the bottom of the hour you can start putting a couple of ballads or slower songs in. But whenever you have something that takes your listener away from the music, whether it’s a feature, ad break or simply taking a listener call make sure you follow it with a good “strong” song.

So identify which are your strong songs and don’t use them all up in the first 40 minutes. If you find that the play-out list you have leaves you with too many ballad and slow-down tunes, you might want to consider altering it, depending on the tempo of your station. Even a hospital radio station should be restricting the number of ballads that it outputs; patients want to be inspired not depressed.

Backtiming

One of my biggest bugbears is the way that some jocks like to create an impression that the news is something that is forced on them, and that it cuts across what they are doing. So they are quite happy to cut tunes in the middle of the second chorus to go straight to the hourly news. This is not only incredibly pathetic, it also smacks of a lazy presenter who can’t even do a couple of sums.

You should be thinking about your news service at about 12 minutes to. Work out what the last song will be (try and find one with a nice end to it) and work out the start-time. To get an extact start time you need the following equation:

S = 60:00 - n - (t - e)

Where:

S is the Start Time

n is the length of the news jingle

t is the total track length

e is the difference between the total track length and the point where the songs ends.

Once you know the Start Time, you can then roughly work out how you are going to fit the songs into the previous 8 minutes or so. You might have two four minute songs which you can segue, or you might have three three-minute songs which you can play and just mix over the last 20 seconds of each.

Devil in the detail

Be careful about what you choose to play - to much specialism and you might lose your audience.

Most people who listen to the radio aren’t bothered about the details of the song. Even with a very specialist show or station people aren’t that bothered about the details of the music. John Peel gets away with giving record labels or mix titles out because he always has - but from the listeners tuned in, probably less than 1% will be bothered what particular company made the band to go into studio.

More generally, people don’t concern themselves with titles and artists names, they just know they like the song. The public is interested in Britney not because she sings songs, but because she has a pretty impressive cleavage and has got closer than most to shagging Prince William. If your street survey asked the average radio listeners to name more than three Britney records they’d struggle.

And this leads onto another important point with music - and particularly back catalogues. Just like every other profession, radio presenters are learned in their profession. They can probably remember than Ten Sharp top ten hit in 1992 was “You”, and could probably sing you the chorus. They get excited when they recall that almighty introduction to “Get Ready for This” by dutch duo 2Unlimited. And they could probably tell you which Bradfordian female artist took twelve weeks to get up the chart to number 1 the following year. (It was Tasmin Archer with Sleeping Satelite if you didn’t know). But your listener won’t. And more than likely they wouldn’t even recognise the names of those three artists. It’s a sad fact, but then how many former Home Office ministers can you actually name? If you’re a policeman, then probably quite a few.

With radio you have some choice - people are prepared to be taken a little further into the unknown, but not by far. If you’ve ever wondered why Simon Mayo’s mystery years always played the same records - it’s for the simple reason that playing too abstract a selection would see people reach for their dials and go elsewhere. They want to remember, not think “What the f***?”

Again, it’s for this reason that Radio 1 plays so much pop music - were it to concentrate solely on new or alternative music types its listener figure would barely make the thousands, let along millions. Play an unsigned or unheard-of band on daytime Radio 1 and people will probably sit through it - knowing that next up it’s going to be something they will recognise. If you want to take new music to the masses you have to bundle it up in pop music - which despite all it’s detractors is by far the most popular music genre in the country. Hence the name.

Basic radio schedule

Here’s a very basic radio guide to give you a start when you’re considering how to schedule your station.

Schedule into blocks of programming; people will rarely make appointment-to-listen on the radio, and if they do they’ll need more than the four weeks of an RSL to understand your schedule if you make it complicated.

So, roughly the standard schedule I’d start from is:

0700 - Breakfast. Put loads of resources into this, even if not everyone is there at broadcast (eg people setting stuff up, doing pre-rec’s etc etc). This is where you should concentrate your stunts/talkability so that listeners are spending the rest of the day selling your station on your behalf. Link across to drive.

0900/1000 - General daytime stuff. V much depending on your target demographic / type of station your plan to be. But don’t specalise here - this is when the bulk of people will tune in for the first time, and they’ll tune in whenever, so you need to have things that are going to appreciate. Sell the rest of your output here.

1600 - Drivetime. This is your second biggest slot after breakfast, so put the appropriate resource here.

1800 - “Infotainment” shows - put your high information shows between 6pm - 8pm.

2000 - Specialist music/talk shows - This is where you can put all your “specialist” content; so specific-community/music programming etc. People are far more likely to make appointments-to-listen in the evening than during the day. But don’t mix and match too dramatically - perhaps create evening strands which are easy to remember - Tuesday is unsigned and guitar bands, Wednesday is Asian sub-continent programming, Thursday is South American programming etc. Within these you’ll have different individual programmes, which can be different, and you don’t necessarily have to make a big thing publicly of the strands.

Then you could tie it all up with a late night general chat show about 2300 for an hour. If you can get people listening last thing at night, that’s what they’ll be tuned into in the morning. Don’t underestimate the value of your late night slot.

Weekends - Generally, I’d say general stuff on Sat/Sun morning, Sport on Sat afternoon (if you decide to do sport), specialist on Sat evening and Sun afternoon + evening. Remember that Sun morning audiences can be bigger than weekday breakfast; and that Sat/Sun are the times people are most likely to be tuning around (because their routine is less fixed, they don’t rely on a particular radio station). So don’t “dump” your less able presenters to weekends.

Obviously this all depends the availability of your volunteers, and I’d never suggest that this is the only way of doing a radio schedule. And of course, a lot depends on who you think your audience is.

The winner takes it all...

How to successfully set up a competition - what to consider in order to get the best out of it for your station.

One of the most popular features on any radio station is the competition or give-away (the difference is the competition there needs to be an element of skill to get the prize). From a simple “answer the following question and the first to phone winners the CD” to more adventurous challenges where prizes can be holidays, cars and even large amounts of cash.

The first thing to remember is the on-air element of any competition is that it must be run for the benefit of the listeners, not the participants. There is no point in having one listener who walks away with a new widescreen TV if in the process you lose the rest of your listeners who were bored with the programme. So devising a competition means that you have to come up with a mechanic that either can be played along or where there is an emotional attachment with the participant.

All competitions need to be devised properly, considering everything from where the questions will come from to how the prize will be delivered to the participant. This is called the competition mechanic, and it’s often easiest to draw it out as a flowchart.

There are in essence just three variations of competition:

• The Knowledge Recall: The simplest form of competion, as a straight question “Here is the question, now give me the answer”

• The Logical: A variation on the Knowledge Recall, where the contestant is given some clues, for example: “Here is the question and here are some answers, which one is correct?” Called logical, because you can normally answer it using logic.

• The Memory Recall: This one does not rely on knowledge, but skill at recall. Answers are given previously in the show, and the participant needs to be able to remember them.

For television examples of the above see The Weakest Link, Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire and Generation Game respectively.

There are other variations in the conditions of the competition

• Time: Are the participants playing against time? Do they need to get a certain number of points in a set time?

• Number of Contestents: Is there just one contestant, or are there two or more competing for a prize?

• Subject: Is the competition general knowledge, or is it subject defined? Do you tell the contestants the subject matter when they phone?

• Prize: Does the contestant win the prize automatically or do they go into a draw? Can they gamble the prize for a better one?

The first and most obvious rule of competitions is “KISS” - keep it simple, stupid (or keep it stupidly simple). You mechanic needs to be logical - and if you have to take anything more than one sentence to explain it then forget it and try something else. This is particularly true at breakfast, when people don’t have time to hear you explain the rules, so it needs to be something they can pick up instantly. At weekends or nights you can make it a bit more complex given that you are more likely to have a dedicated audience who tune in regularly.

Questions

How hard do you pitch your question? It of course depends on who you are trying to aim your station at, and what the subject is, but the answer is easier rather than harder. Unless you have a massive or very specialised prize, you’ll find most of the contestants aren’t really bothered about what they are going to win. What they are looking for is the experience of appearing on the air. However, don’t make your question too easy - asking, for example, what day it is will confuse your listeners into believing it is a trick question or you are desperate for calls. Make your question something that someone would have to actively have learnt.

Your question of course depends on your audience, and it’s very important you consider who you are trying to get to play as to what you ask. For example, if you are targeting 45+ there is no point in asking them to name the five members of Girls Aloud. Asking “who plays at Anfield?” will provoke different reactions in football fans and non-football fans (it’s Liverpool), where the non-football fans will see it as a challenge whereas the football fans will see it as too easy.

Be extremely careful with your questions - you have to be dead certain that the answer you give is the correct one. A classic example of this is the question what are Mozart’s first names? The standard answer is “Wolfgang Amadeus” but these are names he took on, and his given names are actually “Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgang Gotlieb”. Which one is the correct answer and do you allow other answers? Equally, asking for capital cities can be a nightmare, when several countries have their parliament, judiciary and administrative headquarters all in different cities.

If you get callers with wrong answers, then put them on air and tell them that way to get the emotion from the reaction. However too many wrong answers can be very negative and listeners who want to know the correct answer will be put off by constantly wrong answers.

You can give away absolutely anything as a prize - people are entering the competition for the chance to be on air and not to gain a prize (unless of course it’s very big). Again, make sure the prize fits in with your station brand values. And, a word of warning - make sure you clearly state what the prize is - “a stack of CDs” could mean two or twenty. RSL group Radio Buxton ended up having to fork out £8,000 for a new car after a competition winner who thought she has won a Renualt Clio turned up to collect it and was presented with a toy vehicle. She sued, and won.

Be aware of falling into the “we feel sorry for you” scenario - that of the contestant losing the competition but receiving the prize anyway. If you set a precedent, you loose the emotional element of the competition when the contestant believes they are going to get a prize regardless. You have to be harsh - it makes good radio.

Keep tabs on who has played competitions previously, and make sure they don’t start appearing regularly. It can be very disheartening for callers who don’t get through and then listen to the competition to hear that the person playing is the same one who won two weeks ago.

Station content values

What should your station be outputting in terms of content, and how does it affect your audience?

Why do music radio stations have speech content? With the exception of news, which is discussed in that section, surely a station could simply play the music and then announce what it had just played.

There are stations which, not surprisingly, do that. But they tend to do it during the day period. There is normally increased speech content at breakfast and after 4pm into the late evening.

There is only one real reason why stations do it. How many times are you with your friends and say “I heard this thing on the radio today..”? How many times are you talking about the music? The answers are probably quite often and not at all. The distinction probably is greater when you ask “I heard this thing on AnytownFM today...”.

The crucial reason is that word-of-mouth recommendation is still the most cost-effective method of promoting your station, and non-music content is the best way of generating discussion about it.

So when you next hear your local commercial station talking about the latest movies, or telling you the latest celeb goss, they are not doing that just to entertain you. They are doing it because in one form or another you will associate it with the station and then mention it to your friends, or failing that, recall it and tune back.

Content that causes controversy will do no-end of good to getting a stations message out. The most obvious way of doing this is through a promotion. When Virgin Cola launched in Australia, one station was given the task of promoting it, it ran a competition that was going to give the first 105 Virgins to line up on the beach at a given time a free holiday. I don’t know how many virgins did enter the competition (or indeed, how you actually test!) but it was the talk of the town.

Closer to home, BRMB in Birmingham caused a national outcry when it ran a blind-wedding competition. Not to be beaten, a student station in Leeds gained nationwide coverage when it announced that it was running a Blind-Date style competition, the only difference was that the winning couple had to have sex. Of course, they never did the competition, but they had lots of people tuning in to find out how to enter. And for the first week of their RSL licence they became the “talk of the town” which included items on rival stations. How much would you have to pay for that kind of coverage?

These are all high profile examples of how content works. At the height of it’s popularity, you would regularly hear people repeating phrases they’d heard on Mark’n’Lard’s show on Radio 1.

So every piece of content you deliver has to have the “pub-door” factor to it. Would it be something your listeners would take to the pub and mention?

Listen to any commercial or BBC radio and you’ll find that features are geared to not only being noticed, but being talked about.

I remember once listening to a community radio station where a presenter read out the entire cinema listings for all the county’s cinemas. Apparently he did this everyday. Apart from being absolutely incredibly dull to listen to, it served no purpose. Would you listen to five minutes worth of listings read out or what you do what most conventional people do and consult the local free-sheet or the web? The radio is a linear medium, once the information is gone you can’t retrieve it again; whereas text allows you to see the information time and time again, so for giving out information such as cinema listings papers win hands down.

Having five minutes to spend on film, I’d use it to talk about the various films on offer. Why? Because that night when you are with your boy/girlfriend and deciding what to do, he or she says “there was a bloke on the radio that said that Film X was fantastic…lets go and see it.” Consider for a minute how you make your choice of what film to go and see, and part of that is personal recommendation. As I’ve said earlier, I’m trying to avoid the theories of presenter/listener relationship but a presenter giving an opinion on something can often sway people certain ways - it’s a lot more personal than printed film reviews.

Obviously it’s really important to ensure that you talk about things your listeners are likely to talk about. Talking about a performance of the English National Opera on your average commercial hit station isn’t going to be particularly effective. It’s for the opposite reason that Radio 4 doesn’t contain lots of sport. Cricket is the exception that proves the rule.

If you want to do a talk-link, and don’t have anything like a promotion or review to talk about, what do you talk about then? Well, the second best thing to say is something your listeners don’t know already, but the best thing to mention is something they do know but haven’t really thought about. It doesn’t actually have to be a particularly big issue, in fact quite often the reverse is true.

Some examples to think about:

• Where they’re building that extension on the prison, there’s one of those Building board things and it says “Building for You”. Well I hope not.

• Why is it that they print really stupid things on medicines, like the sleeping tablets that say ‘may cause drowsiness’ or Snickers bars that say ‘may contain nuts’.

• You know those 0800 customer-care lines, does anyone actually phone them and what do they ask… like the shampoo care-line. What do you ask? How to use the product…

Yes they are not particularly inspiring and no they are probably not going to win awards, but they demonstrate that these are the kind of things people will be sat in front of the telly, in the pub, in the common room at school or canteen at work and mention. And yes, they are not always going to mention the station, but in their heads they’ll be reminded of it and it may well be the case that someone else says “Yer, they were talking about that on the radio this afternoon.”

One element of a voiced link that is always in dispute is that of comedy. Many first-time DJ’s have a tendency to think that they have to be funny, but that’s not the case. You need to be entertaining, which is different.

Worse than not being funny is trying to be funny, but not succeeding. And rather than being able to throw tomatoes at an unfunny radio presenter, most listeners will hit the off switch. So unless you are actually funny in real life, and can keep an audience with a succession of skits and jokes, then it’s probably not a great idea to base your show purely on your comic abilities.

Contacting famous people

Some tips and tricks to convince celebrities from music, sport, TV, film and politics to join you on the radio.

Getting interviews with famous people is often actually not as difficult as you might think - but you’ve got to go about it in the right way.

Firstly, stop dreaming about interviewing the likes of Elton John, Tom Cruise or Tony Blair. They are extremely unlikely to ever do an interview with you - they’ll often only do network stations and then syndicate interviews for smaller stations (that means they answer some questions and you can edit in you asking them).

But people who are much more likely to do regional and local press are those who aren’t constantly in the media and those who the record company is “breaking”. Don’t just look for the really big names; support acts and first-role actors can often make much more interesting interviews than seasoned celebs who treat it as “just another”. And remember, Oasis had to start somewhere.

Be flexible when you request interviews and remember that people are much more likely to agree when you go to them than expect them to come to you. A portable minidisc or MP3 recorder and decent mic is the best investment you can make - it’ll open a lot more opportunities than wanting to get people in a studio. Or alternatively, you can do the interview on the phone.

Bands and solo artists

Music acts will tend to do promotion only when a new single or album is released. Try and get the release dates of their new single and put your bid in a few weeks before hand.

Try the relevant promoter or plugger; you can normally find this out by contacting the record company and then ask for regional media (or for student radio, sometime they’ll have a dedicated student radio rep).

Normally you can interview a band when they play locally to you. Again contact the appropriate plugger. It’s especially good to try and get the support acts at that time; interviewing them will normally give your more credibility when you go for bigger names.

Actors

Actors are usually willing to do most interview requests, but again depending on their other commitments and how in-demand they are, they may be not be available. It’s best to go in with a specific reason for doing the interview - either they are doing something new or involved in some project or have some local connection.

All actors will have an agent who handles their interview requests. To contact a actor’s agent try Spotlight and click on Artists Records. If they are registered with Equity they should be in there along with details of who their agent is. You’ll normally be asked to fax or email in your request, so before you phone have your request written down with some idea of what you want to ask (ie is it just a lifestyle piece or is there a specific subject you want to talk about) so you can send it straight away.

There are certain times when you wouldn’t contact an agent, such as when they are in either a soap or a major TV programme / film or appearing on stage. The individual TV / film distribution company will organise all the press. Phone the relevant TV channel, who’ll tell you the best person to contact.

If the actor is appearing locally, the relevant theatre will usually handle all interview requests. Bear in mind that they are doing this to promote their show, so you need to get in early and sometimes might be asked to do the interview before the show arrives to help publicise it.

TV / Radio Presenters

Contact the relevant TV channel press office who will either have direct contact with the person or be able to pass your request on to their agent. Again, have a hook for the interview and have your request already written so you can quickly email / fax it.

Politicians

Major politicians, such as those in the cabinet or opposition are unlikely to give you interviews, but your local MP and junior ministers may be very willing to talk to you. In the first instance telephone the House of Commons or the local constituency office and ask for their office or agent respectively. Again you’ll often be asked to put your request in writing.

Sports people

Depending on how big they are, local football or rugby teams will often be willing to allow you to interview a manager, player or chairman. They’ll often hold press briefings for new signings and before matches, make sure you know about these and get the accreditation to attend them. Put your request in to the media officer at the club.

For other sports it’s often best to go through the official governing body such as UK Athletics. They’ll normally be able to provide details of the agent who works for a particular athlete.

Especially for you...

How to get the most out of doing on-air dedications and requests on your radio station.

Do members of the public make good radio? Phone-in shows are another matter, but for now we’ll concentrate on the request/dedication call. And whether it has any use.

Just like competitions, the most important thing when you put a call to air is that it entertains the audience listening. You might have made the caller’s day, but if as a result five people have switched off you’ve done more harm than good.

Nowadays, the majority of request-calls that go to air are pre-recorded. There are several reason for this, the first obvious one being that it means you are protected from the punter saying any profanities or libellous statements. But, surely that’s why profanity-delay was invented?

The reason that calls are now pre-recorded is that the majority of people who phone stations are entirely dull and sound like that on air. Ask them what they got up today, and rather than a presenter, who would tell some funny story; the punter will usually reply “not much” and leave it at that. Who wants to hear that Joe from Bigtown did not much today?

You’ll find that they often are nervous, or deaf, or don’t understand the questions asked. So you end up with a conversation that sounds like a bad mobile phone call “Where abouts in Bigtown are you?”, “Sorry - I didn’t catch that”, “I said where in Bigtown do you live?”, “Oh... 42 Primrose Hill”. And ten times out of nine, they won’t know the name of the song they want.

So, on an otherwise slick station, a punter can really put a spanner in the works. Thanks to the advances of computer editing, pre-recording the conversation can mean that you can edit out all the mistakes and boring bits, and end up with a link that sounds as interesting as the others in your show. And start the song so the conversation ends just when the vocals start (although this does sound strange when the caller has yet to request the song!).

But this doesn’t mean you don’t need to prime your caller. As they ring up, see if they sound like the kind of person who is “well-up-for-it” or simply calling you in the same way that they’d call to query their gas bill. And once you’ve selected them, remind them to sound excited on the phone. This is less important if you are presenting in the late evening or overnight, but even then don’t get a punter who “is just going to bed” because your listeners may well follow.

Chat to the caller before you put them on air, even if it is pre-recorded, so that you are not asking the questions for the first time when you are “on-air”. This avoids any embarrassing “did you go out clubbing last night?” “no I’m in a wheelchair” (this is not to suggest that people in wheelchairs can’t go clubbing, but I’ve heard a response similar to this).

It also means that you can give them closed questions, which tends to sound better because you will no doubt sound more interesting to the listener than the caller. So rather than “why have you chosen Celine Dion?” you can ask “now as I understand it, you’re a bit of a Celine Dion fan and you went to see her when she last played at Wembley”.

Always remember to thank the caller on air, it might appear to be really petty but it’s something that listeners pick up. It also means that you can end the conversation with the station name, good practice that we’ve mentioned elsewhere.

When you go to play the conversation out, cut your first question and do the first question live - it sounds more natural than your voice changing mid-sentence.

I’ve never worked out why saying line numbers has become common place on-air - do we as listeners care that Fred is on line 1 and not line 2? Personally I’d avoid using those kind of phrases, and the other phrase “stay on the line and we’ll get your details” which serves no purpose as most people know to do that anyway, and failing that you should already have their contact number from when you called them.

Your station policy will dictate how far you can deviate from the playout list to accommodate the callers’ request. But, if you are playing a typical 80s-90s-current mix, and someone asks for the Beatles, are you serving your audience by playing it or just that one caller (who arguably isn’t target)? Thank them for their request, and ask if there is something more suitable you could play (throw a couple of suggestions of what is coming up on your playout list).

Never admit on air that you’ve chosen a different record to the one they requested, or that you haven’t got a particular song. And never bow to pressure of a persistent caller who wants a particular song played and keeps phoning you demanding you play it now.

Some stations use callers as an adhoc measure of how well their playlist is doing - and will get presenters to ask “which is your favourite song we’re playing at the moment?” and “which song do you think we are playing too much?”. Obviously don’t do this on air, but keep a note and you’ll start to gauge whether your music programmer is in touch with the audience.

Are you supportive?

If a member of the public phoned your radio station to ask about the helpline you gave out a fortnight ago, would you be able to give them it?

Certain radio stations have the belief that they’d be a better place if it wasn’t for those pesky listeners. Listeners are, after all, what we are all here for, but sometimes they do seem to get in the way. When they are not stalking your offices or requesting completely inappropriate tracks to be played, they are phoning up as asking for the recipe you gave out four weeks ago.

And yet, radio stations are giving out more information than ever before. Every organisation we talk to tends to have a helpline and website that they want to plug, we give out lots of consumer advice and reviews through news bulletins and programme features; and that’s not mentioning when we play new or selectively-available music.

Listeners don’t see the station as individual programme blocks made by individual teams – it is a single product like a newspaper or magazine. So they are often surprised to discover they listen to the station more than you do, and that you don’t recall the information or feature that they heard mentioned.

There are a variety of reasons why listeners will get back in touch long after a programme has finished. More often than not, they are simply too busy at the time of broadcast to note down the appropriate information – radio is seldom listened to without doing something else; so people don’t have the time (or ability) to find a pen and paper whilst driving, cooking, changing the baby’s nappy or painting the stairs. And like many things, it is one of those things “you’ll get around too” at a later date, so that finally when you have some free time to phone up the station it could be days or weeks after the broadcast.

But there is also a case that at the time of listening you weren’t aware you needed that information – the grandmother who hears about a health charity only to discover several weeks after that her grandchild has been diagnosed with something similar.

So, the question is, how good is your programme support? For the big television and national BBC radio networks, there are teams dedicated simply to answering listener’s queries. But how would your station manage to provide the helpline number for a charity who your station spoke to several weeks ago.

Unfortunately, at many places, the support is definitely inadequate, if present at all. People who phone and ask for a number and are told too phone back at a particular time or passed around a number of people simply because no-one quite knows what they were talking about. Listeners can rarely remember exactly what show the subject was discussed, let alone the time of day or even the day itself. But then you don’t start conversations with your friends “remember three Tuesday’s ago at about 14:30 when you said…” (or if you do, you have some strange friends!).

The most obvious place to put your programme support is on a website. This not only means that information is available without people having to contact your station by telephone, but if they do you can quickly find the information yourself.

Put details by day, rather than programme – people are far more likely to remember when it was than what show they heard it on. And keep that information available for at least six weeks – longer if you can – as you’ll be surprised how far back people will research.

If you don’t have the facility to give everyone easy access to updating a website, then make sure there is a diary or folder somewhere near the phone that everyone puts details of the numbers and details they have given out. (One station I worked at had a paper programme log for each programme, which as well as ticking to say you’d played the correct trails and adverts also required you to put in subjects discussed and any helplines etc).

Then make it a station responsibility that the person who answers the call is the person who finds the information; if it isn’t there, it is the fault of the person who put the programme out. That way the station presents a united approach, in that everyone knows everything about what everyone else is doing.

Finally, remember that a log of information is a fantastic resource for programme ideas – have you returned to that story for two months ago to see whether the new law is working, whether the helpline is being overrun with calls etc. The worst thing you can do as a researcher is spend time trying to track down a guest who was on your station a few weeks prior but no-body seems to have any details about.

So Sue Me!

A very basic introduction to UK libel and contempt of court laws. Not just for journalists - every presenter should take note!

It’s always seemed fairly strange to me, the notion that only broadcast journalists need to be aware of the legalities of broadcasting content. It probably has origins in printed media, where journalists were trained in law but features writers tended not to be. The reason being that everything was passed through a sub-editor, who’d normally come through the ranks of being a journalist, and would be aware of any material that could fall foul of the law. But broadcasting is very different. There are no sub-editors to prevent what is said from being broadcast, and short of scripting every link there is little a radio station could do keep tabs on a presenter, even accidentally, making a defamatory remark.

So what exactly are we talking about? Broadcasting law, and everything it encompasses, is a huge topic and covers everything from technical specifications through to copyright, defamation and contempt of court. The UK has some pretty tight defamation laws and similarly strict rules when it comes talking about criminal court cases. These have led to the journalist’s motto of “if in doubt, leave it out.” Broadcast law can become a potential mind-field and it is easy to see why it is not just journalists who are affected.

Libel

The UK has some of the most comprehensive defamation laws in the world - but also the most misunderstood. A basic knowledge of libel not only could keep you out of court, but will also allow you to prevent people using libel laws to stop you broadcasting something. There are many people who think they know libel litigation, but a quick “And what section of the ‘96 Act is that in?” will normally prove they don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

The basic gist of the law is that it is there to protect people or organisations from being thought of badly by the ‘right thinking members of society’. A defamatory statement being defined as “if it damages reputation by exposing a person to hatred, contempt, shame or ridicule or makes a person likely to be avoided or shunned”.

The defence a broadcaster can use are justification, fair comment, privilege and when working in live situations unintentional defamation. However, it is common claim by journalists and those working in the media that defamation laws are weighted against them.

So how might a presenter on a student radio station land themselves with a libel writ? The most obvious way is when discussing products and services. It is house-hunting season at your University and two of your afternoon jocks are locked in discussion reminiscing when they were first years looking for a house. “I went to ACME housing first” says one, “the service was appalling, the house we viewed was in a disgusting state and then they tried charging us when we hadn’t even signed anything.” That statement in itself could be seen as defamatory, however it could be argued that it was fair comment - and providing the presenter could prove the allegation was true it would probably never get to court. How else would consumer programmes get away with it? However, four words could completely change the allegation. If the other presenter replies “They’re always doing that” he’s making a far more substantial allegation - suggesting that this company is maliciously mistreating their customers rather than just an account of a bad experience by one person.

And that is how tight the law of libel can get - and how close the difference between good broadcasting and a court case can be.

What perhaps is more worrying for radio stations is not the lack of knowledge that presenters have, but the misconstrued ideas that they have picked up. Among the most common is the idea that saying “allegedly” after making a defamatory comment will prevent you from receiving a libel writ. Unfortunately, and mainly due to programmes like Have I Got News For You, using the “allegedly” word is actually more likely to see you in court - as it is perceived as admittance that you’re not sure whether what you are saying is true.

Not using someone’s name is often believed to be a way of avoiding libel suits. The law in fact says that reference to a person, or the inference of that person, is grounds to sue. So if you said “a former Student Union President, who was successfully no-confidenced, was actually taking bribes from the university” and you’d only had one who had been ousted, they are within their rights to take action, even if you didn’t say their name. Moreover, if you had two presidents who had successfully been no-confidended then they both could successfully sue providing they could prove that they had both been identified.

Important too is the context in which the allegations are made. If they are presented in a light-hearted way on a comedy sketch show, there is far less chance of being successfully sued than if they were lead story on your campus news bulletin. But the crunch here is that the listener must be aware of type of programme and the only reason that shows such as Have I Got News For You can get away with what they do is because of the reputation that they have built up, and they have a team of laywers who sit through the recording and editing process.

Bear in mind that everything broadcast on your station is your responsibility. A claiment (the person bringing the action to court) can take action against the station even if the substance of the claim is regarding comments made by a third party. There is a defence added to the 1996 Defamation Act which allows for a broadcaster when they had no effective control over the maker of the defamatory statement. However you have to prove that you took reasonable care, so watch out if you plan to broadcast your sabbatical election hustings.

Contempt of Court

The other major area that broadcasters can get into trouble with is the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Unlike libel, Contempt of Court is a criminal case and therefore the sentences can include periods in jail and not just fines.

The Contempt of Court act is designed to ensure that everyone gets a fair trial; and the main way of falling foul of the law is by doing something which could jeopardise this. It’s a Thursday morning and your breakfast show is doing a round-up of campus events. The presenter says that there is a Union Disco on tomorrow night, and lets hope that nothing bad happens like last week. Last week a bouncer was seriously injured after an attack by a second year student from the Geography Department.

It is Contempt because at the subsequent trial, jurors could be prejudiced because they have already heard the description of the person accused of commiting the offence. It doesn’t matter whether they have or not, nor does it matter whether you intended to cause prejudice, Contempt is proved only if it happens.

Contempt is also about ensuring that justice is seen to be done. Court reporting has to be fair to both sides, so that the public can see why a decision was reached and not simply think that a jury has gone against a body of evidence presented by only one side. It is also contempt to suggest someone is guilty (or not) before the jury has reached its decision.

There are a couple of examples of where this has happened in real situations. Mark Peters and Lisa Freame, the breakfast presenters on Shropshire-based Beacon FM were taken off-air, and subsequently left the station, after they made prejudicial comments about the Soham murder case whilst it was still taking place. The pair hosted a phone-in asking whether Ian Huntley’s evidence could be believed; with Mark Peters saying that “It’s almost like the most unbelievably made-up story in the world ever, really, isn’t it?”. In December 2004, a year after the broadcast was made, the Attorney General decided that no action would be taken against the presenters.

A similar thing happened in the trial of Dr. Harold Shipman. Preston’s Rock FM jocks DJ Mark Kaye and travel girl Judith Vause suggested that Dr. Shipman was “guilty as sin” and that he should “admit to it” whilst the case was being held at the city’s court. The presenters, and their bosses, were hauled up in front of the judge who told them it was only the prompt action of their management that prevented a prison sentence.

Covering court cases is a nightmare for journalists, and even more so for non-journalists. There are many complex rules which apply, you have to be fair to all sides and also only report what was said in front of the jury (and then to obey any instructions issued by the judge; for example a restriction on identifying a witness).

How can you protect yourself?

Because both libel and contempt of court cases can be against the individuals who made the broadcast (sometimes even if they weren’t directly invovled) as well as the organisations responsible for broadcasting, it’s important that everyone understand the law.

Without a doubt, every radio station, and come to that matter every individual, particularly the news-team, should have a copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. It is usually described as the journalists’ bible, and is used in pretty much everywhere journalist are trained. What makes it doubly good is that it is only £15 and very easy to read.

You might also find the law sections on NewsDesk-UK useful. There is a also a good explanation of contempt on the BBC’s website.

It is also definitely worth reading the Ofcom guidelines, both on Programming and the specific ones on News and Current Affairs. Your station should have a copy, and if they don’t Ofcom can supply copies to licenced stations; but you can also get the information on the Ofcom’s website at www.ofcom.org.uk. It’s also worth reading the quaterly complaint bulletins which give you examples of where problems can lie.

Finally a disclaimer. The above article was written to give a taste of the laws of broadcasting and the cases and scenario’s suggested should not be taken at face value. The only way to understand the law is by reading up on it, and then if you want additional information to seek legal advice.

Choosing what is important

The news agenda is a constant source of discussion; how do you choose what the lead story is and how do you reflect your station in what you think is important.

Choosing what is a good news story is often difficult for any journalist; and it’s no different with a student radio station. There are few rules to do with choosing what makes it to the bulletin and what gets left out…

• The Pub Door Test… ever found something out that you’ve been bursting to tell someone? The Pub Door Test is that, would you be able to walk into your student bar and announce the story without being heckled off for being dull?

• News is something some-one wants to hide. If it’s a press release then more than likely no-one actually would prefer it being suppressed, then it’s classed as information. Information stories are valid, but news stories should get a higher priority.

• How many listeners does it affect? If it affects everyone on campus then it’s a lead story.

If only two students are going to be concerned, then dump it. Having said that, consider secondary effects of a story; if the Maths Department is getting shut but there are only 20 people doing the subject, its not the fact that the department is being axed, it’s the lack of consultation that’s important.

Different voices; same message

Sourcing audio for news bulletins brings authenticity to the story - what kind of people can you use and how can you use them.

Actuality is all the audio used in a news bulletin which isn’t the bulletin reader or another reporter, and can come in various forms:

• Eye-Witnesses Interviews: someone describing what happened

• Experts Interviews: Police officers, authors of reports etc

• Indirect Audio: Material that wasn’t primarily intended for broadcast, such as speeches.

• Vox-Pops: What the man in the street says.

Auctuality in a bulletin is vital, it gives your story credibility and it breaks up the bulletin. But use it wisely, and don’t fall into the following trap:

READER: President of the Union John Smith said he was unhappy with the University’s decision

JOHN SMITH: I’m unhappy with the University’s decision.

Taking the example of the mugging story on campus, you can get audio for all the above. You could have the victim, or a friend of the victim giving an eye-witness account; you could interview the police about what they are doing to catch the attacker; your Welfare Officer might be giving advice to first year students about the dangers of walking alone which you can record; and finally find out what other students think of whats happened. Again these are all valid news stories.

If you are really struggling with actuality, then you can use another member of your station to do a voice-piece. This helps to keep the listener interested by using a different voice, but as with all audio, make sure the voice-piece doesn’t simply repeat what the news reader has said.

Let’s talk about it

You’ve got fifteen minutes before you’ll be stood in front of the chief of police asking him some difficult questions. How do you get the best from the person you’re shoving the microphone in front of?

Doing interviews can be one of the most exciting elements of making radio, and can really bring a radio station alive and a show buzz. Whether it’s a pop-star in town to promote a concert, a politician who wants to get re-elected or an expert who’s obvious enthusiasm about their subject is difficult to contain, interviews can cover all topics and all emotions.

The best interviews tend to be when you are face to face with your interviewee in their “environment”; that’s to say not in a studio. They’ll feel more comfortable with their surroundings, and dependent on where it is can often mean that you can use the setting as part of the interview; getting them to describe their stall or talk through what they are doing.

The downside of this is, unless you have outside broadcast facilities, you’ll have to pre-record these interviews. You also need to be particularly careful about background noise (it’s great as atmosphere but anything particularly loud can make the interview difficult to listen to), and also to try and get them out of their office. For example, make sure you interview museum staff in one of the display rooms rather than a back-office.

If you can’t interview them at their place; they’ll either need to come to you or you’ll have to conduct the interview remotely (usually on the telephone). Experienced interviewers won’t have a problem with doing the interview remotely, but people nervous about talking on the radio can be more reluctant to open up when they can’t see who they are speaking to, and you won’t be able to judge their reaction. Also, extended sequences over the telephone can be quite difficult to listen to.

Whoever you are interviewing, you should always do a little bit of background research. Dependent on who they are, then there might be a personal profile available from a press officer; or you might be able to find some information about them on the web. Bear in mind that a police officer will be talking on behalf of the service, and therefore won’t really want to answer personal questions (unless you’ve agreed these in advance), whereas a TV or film personality will usually be more happy to discuss themselves.

Big-name interviews can always sound impressive; but they can be really difficult because the person is often fed-up of doing interviews and has pre-prepared answers for anything you throw at them. It’s important to be original in your questioning, but there are plenty of examples where the interview tried too hard and the interviewee simply cut the interview short. It’s much better to find up-coming or less-well known people who will generally make more interesting interviews.

If you’re doing a face-to-face interview, it’s important that you are on-time and courteous. Unless you are planning a particularly tricky interview, it’s best to talk with the interviewee for a few minutes, just to pull out some interesting stories they might have and to explain what the interview is about and where it will be used (is it a standalone feature or part of a package?). You don’t have to agree the questions in advance; but give them an idea of the likely topics you want to cover. And make some brief notes of things that they say that interest you.

Always write down their name, correct job title and organisation name before you begin; you’ll be amazed how quickly you forget in the middle of an interview. If they are going to be giving numbers, timings or web addresses etc out then make sure you make sure they have them in front of them (or at least are confident they can remember them).

When you’re ready to record get them into an environment you are happy with. If it’s too noisy then ask to move somewhere else: look out for things like phones and other disruptions. If they are happy sitting down then let them stay that way, but people generally sound better if they stand up; and it’s easier for you. Try and position yourself as close as you possibly can be to them - closer than you’d probably feel comfortable in most situations – generally at right-angles with them so you are not confronting them face on.

Rest your elbow on your chest and hold the microphone up, preferably equally between both your mouths. Don’t stick it straight in front of them thou, as you’ll get a lot of popping. Try not to move the microphone during the interview – if you find yourself too far away from them to gently move it between you then simply leave it recording them – you can be edited in later!

Open with a nice gentle question “describe what your organisation is about” is a standard one; and then take it from there. Listen to their answers, and pick up on interesting points that they happen to mention. It can be utterly frustrating for a listener who hears a speaker mention something interesting which is ignored by the interviewer because they have a set list of questions to get through.

Use what you learnt in the pre-interview chat to help your questions - “you were involved in the event since 1993, how much do you think it has changed since then?” is much better than simply asking them what has changed since they were first involved.

Let the interviewee speak for as long as they feel comfortable with – you shouldn’t hurry them on or butt in unless they have are really dragging on. People are more listenable to when they are talking at their usual speed. Nod and encourage them during the interview, but don’t do it audibly – random ‘yes’s’ can sound very strange in an interview. Use your own experience as part of the questioning, but don’t talk-over them because you want to tell them something – you are interviewing them and you have the rest of the show to tell your own stories. And try to avoid saying things like “that sounds very interesting” – they sound quite patronising when you listen back.

Try and get through the interview in one take – don’t worry about mistakes. If they really fumble then take it from the top of that question after they’ve had time to think about what they want to say. And make sure you note it down; because it can ruin your career if you put an unedited version out (it does happen).

Make sure your interview has a natural conclusion; don’t simply stop – and make sure that you thank them on tape. Then leave at least three seconds of silence before switching off the recording; otherwise you have to make a very sharp edit.

You may be required to interview someone that you have done no research on. Like we have a presenter toolbox of standard things to say; an interviewer can have a toolbox of a few standard questions that they can ask in most situations. Even the most badly prepared interview with an interviewer with not much to say should be able to last two or three minutes.

• What does your organisation/you do?

• How long have you been doing it? Where do you do it?

• Is this your first time at this event?

• What was your influence/reason/inspiration for doing this?

• What exactly are you going to be doing at this event/now?

• Is there anything special that you will be doing this time?

• What has been your most interesting/exciting/funny thing that you have done in the course of this?

• What else are you up to?

• How can people see what you are doing / take part / get hold of your work?

• Talk me through what you do / can you perform / demonstrate etc?

Ultimately you need to be asking the interviewee questions which answer the “why should I care about what you say or do”.

When you get back to do the studio, or even before it, you should simply be able to top and tail the interview. It’s perfectly possible to do this straight on minidisk; although you may want to copy it to computer to edit.

If you are going to be introducing an interview you conducted, it’s better to cut your initial question out and introduce it by saying something along the lines of “I started by asking him what his organisation did.” It sounds better than you trying to introduce yourself, or suddenly being somewhere else. Equally if you are going to be going into a speech item straight off the back of the interview, then cut the end niceties and finish on their final answer.

Make sure you maximise your interview: you might be able to clip the best bits for an earlier programme (for example if you’ve interviewed a footballer for your evening sports programme then offer your breakfast and drive shows clips they can use to promote the interview).

If you’ve got a website, then it can be good to put the best interviews available to listen on demand or download. Make sure you agree this with the person you have interviewed – it’s one thing going out on a local station once, but if they can be found from anywhere in the world at any time they might object. If you are going to add it to your website, then try and get a photo of them (preferably talking or with you) and make sure you get a correct spelling of their name, and their job title.

Gone in 60 seconds

So, you’ve got your stories, chosen the order and collected your audio - how do you put it all together?

Don’t think your news bulletins have to be a particular length - and definitely don’t stretch them to fit a predetermined time. The worst thing you can have is a bulletin which the last minute or so is filled up with vacuous stories just to fill the time. If it’s a busy news day then stretch your bulletin to two minutes - otherwise 60” or 90” should be sufficient. Remember the bulletin is an “update” rather than there to give the complete story.

Work with your station programming team to get the news to sound integrated into the station. Get it wrong, and it can sound like news is something that has been imposed onto your station - get it right and it sounds entirely natural. Wherever possible get the presenter to name-check the newsreader at the top of the bulletin and if they are doing the bullie live then some interaction at the end of the read can sound really good.

Writing the bulletin

How you write a news bulletin is very important and the style should be decided by the station management. Because most of us have grown up with them, we assume bulletins should sound like BBC Radio Four, but you don’t have to.

• Kipling’s Six Honest Serving Men: WHAT happened, WHERE, involving WHO, WHEN and HOW did it happen and WHY? But you don’t always have to use all six.

• Keep your stories short - you should be able to tell the story in 15-20 seconds. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!

• Use words that you’d use in real life; don’t say “University” when you can say “Uni”. Use contractions wherever you’d use them in real life.

• Are you answering the question the listener wants answered? (Cash machine issuing £20 notes instead of £10 notes. Listeners will want to know whether it is still happening and whether the people who took the free cash out will have to pay it back?)

• Use language that can be understood easily and can be visualised - “four football pitches” instead of “4 hectares”.

• Keep your sentences short and make sure they still make sense when you read them out loud. Sentences should only deal with one element, and these should be sequential. Avoid subclauses.

• Don’t all need to be straight reports. (eg you can start with a question or a statement. Radio 1 Newsbeat do this all the time. Not usually for leads (as they tend to be reports) but follow-up stories can sound more interesting with a different approach).

• Make sure it is clear when one story ends and another begins - use link phrases such as “meanwhile” and “also happening in AcmeTown”

• Use lots of placenames and specific references to reinforce the locality.

• Remain impartial but not aloof. Depending on your style you can say “We’re being reminded not to walk alone at night following another attack” but not “Remember not to talk alone at night”

Voicing the News

Put emphasis in your voice is really important. Stories can be lost within seconds if the reader sounds uninterested. Keep your style pacy - think Newsbeat and FiveLive rather than Radio 4 or local radio. But don’t rush - make sure all your words are individually pronounced and don’t merge into each other.

I always suggest people stand up to read bulletins because they it’s a lot easier to speak stood up (you crush your lungs sat down).

Ear to the ground...

If localnnes is your edge over your competitors, then you’ve got to get stories that they haven’t. So where do you get the exclusives from?

Getting news stories is obviously crucial to having a decent news programme. The worst form of journalism is when you sit in your studio and wait for press releases to turn up or people to ring in with possible stories. The best idea is to get out and go around the local area, walking with your eyes open. There is enough going on in any neighbourhood to provide at least three or four stories a day, as long as you think laterally.

Many of my stories came from sitting in the pub chatting with people. Surprisingly, telling people you are a journalist is more of a help than a hindrance, and people, especially those in some form of authority, may well tell you stories that they’d like to see exposed but dare not do it themselves.

Part of your job as a journalist is to filter the interesting and relevant stories from the piles of dross that get generated each day. So it does mean going to boring council meetings, shifting through health authority minutes and press releases. Think laterally and read between the lines, and you’ll often find some decent stories come of the page.

Remember one fact makes a whole new story (the Guardian v. Aitken libel case is the most obvious example of this). Don’t just consider the story, but the consequences of it. The four R’s of every news story are Report (what happened), React (what others are doing as a result of whats happened), Relate (where does this fit into a bigger picture?) and Resolve (whats action has been taken as a result of whats happened). So a street mugging might be; the report of the mugging (“A student today…”), what the Police say (“Police are appealing for witnesses…”), the fact this is the third mugging in as many weeks, and finally a man has been arrested. All those four are valid news stories.

See no station; hear no station

How to best use visual publicity to increase your audience awareness and figures!

The most effective form of marketing is word-of-mouth. If you can get your existing listeners to tell their mates about the station it will have a much bigger impact than simply sticking up posters and handing out some stickers.

However, that can often be difficult to organise and can take time - and especially if you’ve only got a 28 day RSL then getting people to listen will involve some more pro-active marketing. Most commercial stations reckon it takes 18 months to establish themselves in a market; you’ve got less than a week (there is simply no point in reaching your potential number of listeners on the last day of broadcasting).

What amazes me is the paltry sums stations will often dedicate to marketing. Many times I’ve seen a station with a pro-spec broadcast studio moan that it has no money for marketing. That is a station with the wrong priorities; marketing is a key ingredient to every station and should be prioritised over everything other than the most basic of studio equipment.

Unfortunately unless you are incredibly wealthy you are not going to be able to buy ad-spots in your local newspaper or run billboard or bus-back campaigns. But posters are pretty much a necessity for any radio station; they establish a physical presence within your TSA and reinforce other marketing you do. Take them round local shops and pubs, schools and colleges, gyms and cinemas, and dependent on your target libraries or nightclubs. Ask people to put them up in homes and offices, and even do some guerrilla tactics by fixing them to lamp-posts and at traffic signs.

Like all marketing the most important element has to be the station frequency - that needs to be easy to spot and big enough to read from far away. But equally your poster can’t just simply say the station name and frequency, there has to be a reason given as to why people should tune in to your radio station. Positioning statements can help - but you’ll often need more specific reasons.

I’d always avoid negative marketing; that is belittling your competitors. If your radio station is to be thought of as a friend, then people don’t want to hang around with friends who go “you should play with me because Fred smells”. Yep you can get away with “more great music” or “more local”. People react a lot better to positive publicity about how good you are rather that a campaign that suggests you should be listened to only because you are less bad than the competitors.

I’d avoid things like car-stickers, bugs and pens ... how many times do you actually see people driving around with station car stickers in their windows? Bugs and pens are good but they often end up being left at home and so only the person who got hold of them will see them. With a marketing budget you are much better to spend it on getting more of the cheaper stuff; for every one pen you get produced you can probably get close on 50 leaflets.

Leaflets are great to hand out, but bear in mind they’ve only got two seconds to sell the station and most people will throw them away by the time they hit the nearest bin (and often before). So make sure your frequency is the first thing they see - and the branding which will interest them. Don’t put complicated schedules, simply list things as mornings, afternoons, evenings and weekends. Don’t use them as an ego-trip for your presenters; I’d always avoid pictures - both mugshots and groupshots and only a sentence about each presenter.

Then go and work places where your target market are likely to be - coming out of the cinema or a concert, shopping on a Saturday morning (go around the car-parks and streets near the town centre and stick a leaflet under all the windscreens), the bus or train station. You can’t usually give out stuff on private property without prior permission, but if you haven’t got it it’s much better simply to turn up and then leave when requested than not bother at all.

Don’t put up posters or hand out leaflets until a couple of days before you go on air - and then limit it until you are actually broadcasting. There is nothing worse than seeing a poster, trying the frequency and getting white noise.

And finally - have a decent website. A website allows you to put all the things that none of your other marketing literature can hold; detailed presenter profiles and station pictures; audio and possibly some video. But whilst your website will normally only attract people who have already discovered the station, it still needs to have the core station values and if it looks badly designed and half of it doesn’t work it will make people think twice about how good the station really is.

Brand new or new brand?

How to turn your radio station into a brand; the vitals of creating a brand.

There are two rules I say everyone who works at a radio station must work to. Firstly, to produce the best radio possible and then to get as many people as possible to listen to it. Marketing your station is not just something that is the responsibility of one person, or one team; it is something that is central to every station and therefore everybody needs to be involved. There is simply no point in doing radio if no-one is listening to it.

No station has the right to be listened to, and listeners do not automatically attach themselves to a new station. New commercial stations estimate it can take 18 months to 2 years to establish themselves in a market, and a new presenter on that station even longer; up to 4 years. And that is with multi-million pound marketing budgets.

There are two elements of the station you need to market; the identity and the brand. The identity is the factual elements of the station - its name and frequency being the vital ones. The brand is far more subtle; it is the characteristics of the station that make it appealing to the demographic it is trying to attract - think sexy, upfront, traditional, alternative, classic. The brand is reflected by the colour scheme, the imagery, the logo, the campaign style; and where the campaign takes places and which other products it associates with.

People make decisions every day based on brand values, and are then judged by what brands they have picked. Two men in at a bring-your-own party; one drinking Stella and the other drinking Special Brew. You’ve probably already made a judgement about what kind of people they are, what they do and how much they earn - simply on the basis of the can of lager they are holding.

Before launching a station, and indeed right at the early stages of development, you must draw up a notion of what the brand is. That then needs to be reflected across everything you do - both on- and off-air. The worst thing you can do is have a strong off-air brand which doesn’t match up to what is going out on the radio; think LiveSexy Kiss branding matched with a station that plays Daniel O’Donnell songs.

Branding is important for all products but it has a special place with radio. People have a different relationship with radio than they do with most other products; they treat it much like a friend and thus they want to choose a station that they’d be happy being a friend with.

So the easiest way to devise a brand is to imagine the station as a person. What do they like, dislike, value or ignore? Go as far as nailing down the specifics of the individual - what job would they do, would they own or rent, what car would they drive, how much would they spend on their telephone bill each month?

This kind of brand-design doesn’t mean that only people who fit into those categories will like the station; just that they will have a clear idea of what the station is all about. You probably have a collection of friends who you actually have little in common - but you like them because they are who they are.

Remember that branding is often based on aspirations. Gold Blend, the coffee made famous by those adverts during the 80’s and early 90’s, played entirely on aspirational branding. The coffee itself wasn’t anything special; it’s just the branding made you feel you were some-one sophisticated. It’s exactly the same for Ferrero Rocher chocolates and Just Seventeen magazine, which aims at the 11-13 year old market despite its name. Therefore I’d avoid devising a brand based on someone who is a cleaner or factory-worker; people like feeling they are more sophisticated and wealthier than they actually are.

The stronger your brand, the more likely you are going to get a loyal following; but the greater the problem you have if something jars against the brand values. If your station is a happy-go-lucky chart station for 18-30 year olds don’t put a great series of debates on about local politics.

Community stations are often the worse offenders when it comes to creating a brand; indeed I think it’s often something that people ignore - believing that the strong diversity across their output means a brand is not possible. I’ll disagree; I think you can come up with a fantastic brand that links all the various elements together. I’m sure we’ve all got a friend who has such an eclectic mix of songs; someone who can be one moment joining the next big cause before going on a shopping spree in the big name stores.

Just spend a couple of days looking at every product you see around you - from tins of beans, supermarkets, newspapers, tea-bags, banks and radio stations and try to understand their brand values. Then nick the best ideas!!

Cheap marketing tactics

How do you raise your profile without emptying your bank balance? Some tips and tricks to improve your brand awareness.

Marketing can be costly, but it is perfectly possible to exploit lots of cost-free, or very low cost, opportunities to sell your station.

If you are tied to a Students’ Union then make sure you get involved in everything they do. Get your station logo and frequency printed on all the event tickets, offer a station cocktail in the Union bar, and host events from quiz nights to the Friday night disco. Even if you have nothing to do with a Union - organise the karoke night in a local pub, get your name on promotion for a club and concerts.

Do contra-deals with local shops, takeaways and taxi firms. Get them to put your station on their premises and vehicles, give them posters to put up, and give them plenty of plugs on air. With takeaways, get them to add a leaflet to every delivery they make.

If you have a non-league local football team then become their official radio station and either provide match commentary, or at the very least pre and post match interviews in return for some publicity at the ground.

Village and school fetes are excellent opportunities to sell your station, as are doing public appearances in the town centre. However, don’t let your guard down on your brand; you’ve got to look as professional as ever; even if that means something as simple as everyone wearing the same colour t-shirts. And always, always, do something more than simply play records and say hello on the microphone.

If you have a tall or prominently placed building, see if you can have access to either the windows or a windowless side. Stick your frequency in massive letters across the windows, or lower a banner down the windowless side. If it’s only for a short time you’ll be surprised how many companies will probably say yes.

All publicity is free publicity

How do you have the most impact with your press release? How do you ensure that your local papers give you the most exposure?

Getting free publicity is far easier than you may actually think. Start off by getting a good contact at your local newspaper - it’s often better to deal with one named person than send press releases to the paper’s editor.

Newspapers like stories and they like pictures. So rather than just send a bland “we go on air on Sunday” type affair, give them a particular interesting hook - “three generations of the same family on air”, “former Radio 1 DJ to host special show”, “poll reveals the favourite songs chosen by people in Acmetown”. And every story you do - think about a picture… small children with face-paint on always make great front-page images; old bloke sat in studio doesn’t.

If you are building up to an RSL then use a drip-drip approach; send a story each week with another nugget of information about the broadcast. Make sure it is newsworthy; an exclusive interview with David Seaman will probably make the grade, an exclusive interview with your local non-league football club goalkeeper won’t.

Use problems as well as positive things to create stories - if you can’t find a suitable location for your studio, or your equipment has been nicked, make sure these get some column inches.

Stunts are great - and often fairly easy to organise. A simple one that we did was to find out how many people you could fit in a Mini (we got fifteen), we borrowed a mini from a local dealer and got a great picture in that week’s paper. But, bear in mind that a picture is nothing without some branding on it - so make sure everyone is wearing branded t-shirts, there are plenty of branded balloons and there are branding stickers all over the car.

Bear in mind the more quirky the stunt, the more likely it is to get picked up by other media. A page-lead in the Sun is worth two thousand times a page-lead of the local paper, but even a small write-up can work. Make sure you send your press release (and pictures) to places like Ananova.com and your local TV company and BBC website. Time these so that they hit the mass media after you have started broadcasting - if you do it beforehand you are going to lose people who try to tune in but can’t.

Exploit the resources of the people you work with - make sure you use someone who is half-decent at photography so you don’t just send in a snapshot; make sure you have a crisp copywriter who can create your news release.

Recruit and retain

Need to get volunteers to help out? Here’s our top tips; and then the best ways to stop them walking out on you...

How do you attract people? My advice would be....

• Look the bee’s knees at freshers’ fair. Have a professional-looking stand (rather than a couple of A4 logos stuck to the pin-board behind) with enthusastic volunteers (rather than a couple of mates suffering from a hangover) wearing either branded t-shirts, or failing that colour co-ordinated (ie red t-shirt and black jeans). Make sure your stand says “we take what we do seriously”

• Get details of everyone who comes and visits the stall. Get them to fill in a membership form, have a chat with them about what interests them and once they have gone write down what they said on the back. If you can get a digital camera and get a photo of them.

• Why? Personal touch. Next time you meet or phone them, mention stuff they’ve said to you (ie “You’re interested in news, I’d really like you to meet our Head of News...”). Make them feel that you know them...

• At your intro-meeting or whatever, do a stunt. Make the room go dark and play them 30” of the best bits of your station. Don’t run an event, create an experience. Have some-one enthusiastic doing the MC’ing.

• Give all your exec big signs to hold up. You can’t expect people to remember exactly who they had to see. Avoid using acronyms and “industry terms” - say “presenting” when you mean “head of programming”. This applies as well when you get them to fill out a form (what does “production” mean to someone outside radio? does advertising mean sales or marketing?).

• Get them in the studio. I respect that people have organised training schedules but the worse thing you can do is say “cheers for bothering to put your name down, we’ll be contacting you in six weeks to do your first training session”. Let them sit in on shows, shadow producers or the head of music.

• What one persons sees as “friendly” another ones sees as a “clique”. You can’t get rid of cliques (you’d have no friends if you did), what you can do is manage them. Get new members into the conversation, avoid telling “in-jokes” and if you do explain it to the new members, buy them a beer.

How do you keep them?...

• You don’t restrict them trying to getting a career ... you encourage it. This is how many volunteer organisations work - people who do well from a volunteer organisation are more likely to support it rather than think “great ... they told me I’d never be a presenter and look I’m doing traffic’n’travel at Acme FM”

• Get people from outside to come in and do a talk / demo workshop. It doesn’t have to be anyone big or impressive (I’m cheap!), exploit your alumni. One problem with student radio is you will get a lot of ex-hospital radio 18 yr olds thinking “what does this 21 yr old who never did radio until 18 months ago know over me”. Again, it’s a problem across all the voluntary sector. So people are much more likely to respect and listen to people who have been there and are now working in the industry.

• Special projects are a fantastic way of keeping people motivated. If you’ve got a full exec then give other people things they can go off and do - from research how much would it cost to get branded lollipops to writing the new record library database for SQL (here my computer terminology stops). People are much more likely to do things if (a) they can see the point of it (b) they are not going to be held back because Fred disagrees / didn’t pull his weight.

• Write to your local commercial station when you next have an RSL. Tell them, they will listen. Tell your presenters you are doing that. RamAir in Bradford used to have a really good relationship with the Pulse, and they used to take our graduates and some of our students. Now they’ve got a similar relationship with Galaxy, and presenters who want to get ahead know that doing well at RamAir means Galaxy will take note.

• Get them to a Student Radio Association conference and definitely the Student Radio Awards. If you ever need to pull a presenter down a peg or two it’s when they are at the Awards and they realise that there are hundreds of “next big thing” and they are not the ones on stage. It is a humbling experience...

Keeping the standard...

You will probably be required to train people in your station - but have you ever thought about how you do it successfully?

Coming from a background that is more Youth-work focused than media one of the things that has been blatantly obvious within the media sector is the distinctive lack of training for trainers.

Training volunteers and “junior staff” is great, but a lot of the training which is given is substandard because those people who are giving the training are NOT trainers. Training is a skill in the same way that operating a desk or creating adverts is; and you can’t pick it up simply by guesswork.

However, like driving a desk, training is not a particularly difficult skill to obtain and you don’t need to worry about spending thousands of pounds on consultants. Instead, an awful lot of it is taking a step back and arranging the training needed into clear, consise and relevant modules.

This doesn’t just include formal training sessions, but informal induction sessions with work experience or volunteer placements. Are you info-overloading them, are you telling them irrelevant information, are you aiming at the wrong level? Moreoever, have you told them why you do what you do?

We’re very good at running sessions on how to be a good DJ, how to write news stories, how to music-programme and how to market ourselves; we’re not so hot on obtaining skills such as how to motivate people, how to train and how to work as a team.

Look around your station (be it student, hospital, community or commercial) and ask yourself how many people who have people-management positions (of any sort) have any form of training to do that? Look at other industries and you’ll find themselves falling over each other to provide that kind of training.

Training is certainly not the be-all and end-all solution but it’s a very valid and important aspect. Too often people assume that the best DJ or the best reporter will be capable of providing the best training. Maybe it’s time we admitted this isn’t always the case.

Volunteers often can gve the organisation as much as they gain; it’s just that stations are generally far too set in their ways to take time out to listen. One of the best policies I’ve seen (it was actually in a brick company) was a news-sheet devoted entirely to ideas to make the place run better. Everything was suggested, in confidence, by the workers and it often the case that the newest people to join are the one’s who can normally spot the problems.

Now, I’m not saying you are rubbish...

How do you give people criticism without it coming across too negative and upsetting them?

One of the problems with volunteer management is how you effectively give criticism. People see other volunteers as on the same level and don’t understand what right these people have to tell them what to do.

This is particularly true in student radio - you get an 18-year-old fresher who’s been doing hospital radio for a few years and can’t stand some second-year student telling them what do to despite the fact they’ve been doing radio less than 12 months.

Make sure you always sound really positive when you give feedback. “You’ve obviously got loads of enthusiasm and that’s fantastic, but let’s look at a couple of things we could change to make you sound better on air...”

Always start with a positive. “I really like your music mix / your production skills / your content”. And end it on a high. “You’re a real asset to the station / if you work at it you’ll go far.”

Make sure you give practical tips to improve. Don’t say “your delivery is rubbish.” but “here’s how to slow your voice down”

One way in is to take it outside the station. Say something along the lines of “I know this programme controller who I reckon could give you some good feedback on your tape” and give it to someone at work. The point is that there is not a connection between the critic and the volunteer manager.

I once had to email a volunteer who was (a) very enthusiast but (b) rubbish on air. I sent it to him just before the summer vacation and he obviously worked on what I’d said and I’m glad to say he’s one of the station’s brightest hopes and I would happily put money on him being professional on-air talent in the not too distant future.

And don’t take it all so seriously. A few jokes, at your expense, tend to break the ice and make whoever you are giving criticism to realise that you are actually quite a decent person.