Legal Research

Kiss goodbye to a unique sound

By scott

I have become a big fan this past year of Grant Goddard’s blog on radio matters, the radio blog. He is a radio analyst/consultant who has a long history of involvement in the industry which makes his blog a must read to anyone with an interest in the radio business.

His latest post is a fine example of why I read him. It is a post about KissFM - a station that he was involved in transforming from “a weekend London pirate station into Europe’s first commercial youth radio station” ? and their apparent decision to re-scheduled its specialist music shows to slots after midnight. It seems those in control of the station (Bauer) believe that they need to get rid of any sense of individually the station may have to allow it to better compete with the likes of Capital and Galaxy FM.

According to Ofcom their agreed licence format is:

A DANCE MUSIC STATION AIMED AT YOUNG LONDONERS, PRIMARILY UNDER 30s. IDENTIFIABLE SPECIALIST MUSIC PROGRAMMES FEATURE FOR AT LEAST 36 HOURS A WEEK.

Handily it can still comply with this licence format by shifting all this specialist music output to the midnight hour and beyond. It can shoehorn its minimum 36 hours worth there with a bit of time to spare. Needless to say this certainly isn’t in the spirit of the format or in how it would have been expected to operate.

But, this will allow it to ‘ better compete with the likes of Capital and Galaxy FM’. Translated this means, we want to be playing all the same records that they are playing because that’s what the masses obviously want. I agree with Grant when he says that this kind of homoginisation of London commercial day and night-time radio accomplishes nothing other than increasing the popularity and growth of pirate stations offering the types of specialist programming and music that stations such as KissFM are supposed to be offering ? at a time when people can listen - under their licence formats. He quotes American economist Peter Steiner who identified back in the 1950s how competition could be a bad thing for the audience/consumer in just these types of situation because radio station owners in search of advertising money and audience numbers will tend to copy each others? formats and programming, rather than offering their audiences something different or unique.

Sadly, this is the way commercial radio is going. A handful of owners making all their output the same, or as close as it makes no difference. No doubt commercial radio will blame the BBC for this as it is always the BBC’s fault, such as Radio 2’s alleged targeting of a younger audience - According to the BBC more than eight out of 10 Radio 2 listeners are over 35 and the average age of the audience is 50 (as a member of a household with a 41 and 42 yr old listener, and with a parent at 70 whose a listener, this seems to be about right).

KissFM (Bauer) should reconsider this move. It used to be a station with a distinctive voice, abandoning that just to chase a mainstream audience, would be yet another sad day for commercial radio in London and in this country as a whole.

Full post as published by Information Overload on January 05, 2010 (boomark / email).