What a great day the Radio Production In The North Conference was!
Vision+Media were really pleased to be the main sponsor again and to have helped shape the day. Conference organiser, Ashley Byrne of Made In Manchester, helped by Jo Meek of All Out Productions and Paul Smith of Reactive Audio, did a fantastic job of putting together a programme that went to the heart of the real issues facing the independent production sector as well providing many positive messages to the industry. It was great to see the three main political parties represented, all of whom clearly appreciate the value of the Digital and Creative industry to the UK’s economy.
Some of the key messages from the day included:
Peter Salmon announced a £40,000 production fund for Northern Indies to produce content for 5live, it will be available from the summer.
5live are really keen to work in new ways with indies and will have a much more open door policy to ideas on top of the usual commissioning rounds. They’ll also stagger the rounds, this has always been a bit of problem as historically radio indies can only put in proposals at certain times of the year and many of the BBC networks do it at the same time! In return 5live would like distinctive, stand out stories, different voices and contributors, brilliant creative ideas, powerful documentaries and storytelling, a topical live Sunday morning comedy show. They want to see interesting collaborations between indies, students, interactive companies – 5live have recently commissioned content from TV companies as a radio spin offs of TV programmes. Jonathan Wall, commissioning editor for 5live, will be working from Manchester two days a week from the summer onwards
GMG Radio have made space on their network for independent production and will work with Vision+Media and the indies to find funding for the programmes. During the Beyond The BBC session we learned that indies need to understand the commercial sector’s audience, needs and business, their needs and requirements for content are quite different to those of the BBC. Simon Cole of UBC Media Group demonstrated how an indie can quickly turn around a 90 second piece of content that goes out on commercial networks with sponsorship. Indies need to get to know the programme directors in the commercial stations in their area and build up a relationship with them. So the potential for collaboration is really there.
The Radio In The Digital Age panel demonstrated how the Ken Bruce Popmaster game is using social media to gain new audiences by having a wide variety of touch points for it, including facebook. Social media means that radio stations and presenters can have a continued conversations with their audience outside the hours of the live show.
Compliance Ruined My Life was the heading of Paul Smith’s presentation. His entertaining presentation on a subject that causes much anxiety amongst both suppliers and staff in the BBC warned that this level of scrutiny, post Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, is not going to go away. However, he ended up on a brighter note saying that audiences still want risks and will accept challenging material but only if the quality is good.
