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Talk107 Ofcom Radio

Talk radio: not so happy talk

By The Drum, Administrator

January 14, 2009 | 8 min read

When OFCOM announced its decision to award The Wireless Group’s Dunedin FM bid the new FM licence for Edinburgh in December 2004 there was perhaps nobody more surprised than TWG boss Kelvin Mackenzie. His shock at beating the 12 other bids was perhaps best illustrated by the fact that nothing happened with the licence until around six months later when in July 2005 Peter Gillespie was appointed as MD of what soon became Talk 107 to bring the station to air. Sadly, Talk 107 broadcast its final programme on 23 December 2008 after the valiant efforts of some of Scotland’s finest broadcasters to attract listeners on any credible level ultimately failed.

The RAJAR’s make for painful reading. In the lead up to launch in February 2006 the station was aiming to pull in 100,000 weekly listeners. RAJARs in August 2006 showed that from April to June 2006 the station had only attracted 16,000 listeners per week, a market share of just 0.2 percent - a record low debut figure for any station on RAJAR. A small increase was achieved in the station’s second RAJAR in October 2006, with 23,000 listeners tuning in for 3.8 hours per week. Over the next year, the station increased listeners to 43,000, but August 2007 saw figures begin to slide with just 26,000 tuning in. The station’s demise at this point seemed unavoidable.

So, why did a talk-based radio station fail to succeed in a modern, cosmopolitan city with, you would think, a lot to talk about. Was it simply that the TSA was not big enough to sustain the huge amount of investment required to establish a credible talk radio station on a regional basis? Was it a lack of investment by UTV, which took over TWG’s stations in May 2005? Or was it simply badly managed?

Gillespie, who left Talk 107 in December 2007, still believes that regional talk radio can work in the UK: “Talk radio can definitely work on a regional basis,” he says, “but what you need is critical mass of audience. Even if you do a very good job of talk radio it is always very difficult to break what I see as that critical five percent reach mark. Take LBC in London, it has never broken 5-6 percent. Look at talkSPORT, it has never got over five percent.”

The gamble

He adds: “The gamble we took with Talk 107 was whether we could do something different and break that five percent. I suppose now what we do know is that it is not possible to crack that five percent reach when you are up against the BBC stations, such as BBC Scotland, and you cannot crack five percent reach if your TAS is not big enough to make the business viable. If Talk 107 could have transmitted across the Central Belt of Scotland to a TSA of 2.8m people then five per cent reach would have made it a viable business.”

So, was it ultimately a bad decision by OFCOM to give the licence to a talk-based station?

Billy Anderson, regional director for GMG Radio, said: “The initial Wireless Group application was successful as it ultimately looked to broaden listener choice in the TSA, but it was never going to be certain in a market of less than one million potential listeners that the talk format would or could be successful. There is no evidence at a UK regional level that the talk format can really work. Talk radio works in the United States at a regional level, but in the UK commercial radio industry we are challenged because we have the BBC stations to contend with.”

Anderson makes a valid point. For any talk-based station to succeed it has to be able to attract top quality presenters that people want to tune in to listen to. No station can survive on phone-in shows alone. This is really where the BBC stations and programmes succeed because the public broadcaster has the licence fee payers money to fund the huge salaries of popular presenters.

Also, as Gillespie points out: “The overheads of running a talk station are much higher than a music station. For instance you will have to pay a presenter more to do talk radio than music, and also you need more production assistance because you need more contributors, interviews and so on. A single presenter can do a three hour music-based programme, but to do a three or four hour speech programme you’ll probably need two presenters, which doubles your salary cost straightaway. You also need more news content. Talk 107 had a news team of nine when I was there, whereas music stations can get away with having just two people on news.”

One Scottish radio industry insider, who did not wish to be identified, had a problem with the station’s initial programming policy: “This format was never going to work in such a small area. I think the problem was that the people of Edinburgh didn’t only want to hear about what is going on in Sighthill. The people who live in Edinburgh and who would be inclined to tune into a talk radio station want to get a much broader range of content. They want to know what is going on in the Middle East, they want to know what is happening in the financial markets in the United States. They also want to be entertained. I just don’t see how anyone can compete with the BBC and I think that was ultimately why Talk 107 failed to get enough listeners to make it viable.”

Stinging attack

One of the station’s line-up when it launched was respected journalist Alex Bell, who offered a stinging attack on why the station failed on media website allmediascotland.com. He suggested that it was a fundamental lack of investment by the owners in the product which led to the station’s demise. He suggested that the owners simply were not prepared to pay adequate salaries to attract and retain the best broadcasters. He said: “At the start, it was claimed Talk 107 would be a sort of Radio Four. That was the brief for the sales team. It was nothing like the BBC. The product didn’t match the pitch.

“The launch team were hampered by another factor – we were only allowed to talk about things which were happening in Edinburgh. Talk 107 could have been good. Not Radio Four, but quirky, funny and informative. Of course, there is the talent – indeed the pressure of the station forced some great performances, which given time, could have won awards. However, to be good, you need a bit more money, a proper idea, and staff too.”

It is understood that advertising sales were initially going well at Talk 107, with around £3-4 per listener hour being generated, which considering the accepted industry standard is more like £1 per listener hour, would have been promising news for Talk 107 early on, but as Gillespie points out, with such a low reach in a relatively small TSA, even bringing in that sort of money would still not have made the station viable in the long term.

So, would Talk 107 have survived had OFCOM allowed Q96 to alter its format to become Talk 107 in the West and boost the Central Belt station’s potential audience to 2.8m? Apparently the question was asked of OFCOM by The Wireless Group, but they refused to allow Q96 to alter its licence, so sadly, we will never know if the station could have succeeded across Scotland’s Central Belt.

It ultimately seems that there was a lack of understanding of what an Edinburgh audience wanted from a talk station. According to one insider, programming for the first year was based on absolutely no audience research. Late in 2007 research was commissioned and, as a result, the station’s output was tweaked to give it a more “GMTV” entertainment feel in line with what Edinburgh listeners wanted, but it appears that it was too little too late.

Liverpool-based talk radio station City Talk hit the airwaves in January 2008 and is awaiting its first RAJARS at the end of this month. To read what station director Richard Maddock had to say about the station’s first year in business visit www.thedrum.com.

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