[cma-l] Tempo FM & All FM: radio that listens to its audience (GuardianBlogs, 4 Aug 2008)
Salvatore Scifo
salvatore.scifo at communitymedia.eu
Mon Aug 4 15:07:13 BST 2008
Source:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/08/it_is_not_quite_oprah.html
Tempo FM & All FM: radio that listens to its audience
Can Wetherby's Tempo FM and Manchester's All FM show us the way ahead
for local radio?
August 4, 2008 9:22 AM
It is not quite Oprah Winfrey's book club, but if you happen to live in
the small Yorkshire town of Wetherby and you want advice on the latest
hot books, the local librarian has a 20-minute slot on Tempo FM, the
town's community radio station, telling you what is new on the shelves,
and what the week's most borrowed books are.
This is local radio writ very local. The station is called Tempo FM not
for reasons of raciness, says Bob Preedy, the former Yorkshire TV
continuity announcer who runs the station - but because car radio
displays will only take eight characters, not enough for Wetherby FM.
"Also, we didn't want to exclude Boston Spa, Collingham and Little
Ribston, which are in our area too."
I think there are more people living on my street than in Little Ribston
- the whole Wetherby district has a population of only 26,000 - but that
is the joy of community radio: when your potential audience is so small
there has to be something for every pair of ears.
"We do all the things local radio used to do," says Preedy. "We give out
details of lost pets, we publicise coffee mornings and the police come
in once a week and talk about crimes in the area." The annual budget for
all this is around £5,000, says Preedy, which for their BBC rivals would
barely cover focus groups.
Tempo FM's research is less scientific, he admits. "I get stopped in the
street by people and end up pumping them for their opinions." There are
no Rajar figures for the station, but Bob says it is on in all the cafes
and shops in Wetherby, which justifies the £2 for a 20-second commercial
slot that local butchers and bakers pay.
Apart from the parish pump stuff, the station's unique selling point is
its music. Preedy, who has been a disc jockey for more than 20 years,
does the breakfast show himself, and then programmes the tunes for the
rest of the day. After every two songs, there is a pre-recorded piece of
local news or information, "concise and snappily delivered", he says.
The music policy is simple: songs Preedy likes and thinks will sound
good on the radio. "I stay away from the old chestnuts. I might play a
Four Tops song, but not Reach Out I'll Be There. We rarely play anything
that has been in the top 20, and we play more 60s and 70s than the
commercial stations. We are deliberately different from them."
Manchester's All FM, a community station catering for roughly eight
times as many listeners as Tempo, also makes a virtue of its musical
differences, but if it were to play the tracks on Bob's easy-listening
playlist, its listeners would besiege the Victorian house in south
Manchester where the studios are based.
Broadcasting to a younger, more racially diverse audience than Tempo,
All FM concentrates on indie pop at breakfast time, with specialist
music in other slots and local bands playing live on Caroline Rennie's
drivetime show, and Mog's Saturday show.
Mog, alias Ian Morris, the former bass guitarist of Manchester music
legends the Smirks, also does a weekly evening stint, usually alongside
Paul Heaton of the Beautiful South. But last week he invited me in - "If
you want headphones, you'll have to bring your own" - to play some of my
favourite tracks. While Mog played a variety of stuff from new bands and
mates on the Manchester music scene, I played some old Motown and
Marlene Dietrich.
It was essentially two old guys chuntering on and playing tunes from a
student flat in Levenshulme, and the contrast with Bob Preedy's Beach
Boys album tracks and local librarian could not have been more stark.
But both stations seem about right for their particular crowd, and each
grew out of its own community, which is the important thing. Neither is
in thrall to emails arriving from hundreds of miles away. If local radio
has a future, this may be where it lies.
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