While working in radio is not a vocation, like being an NHS nurse for instance, most programme makers didn’t get into it for the money.
Instead we started out working for nothing just to be involved in a programme or station. But all those endless days and nights spent pulling together RSL’s and licence bids, preparing, presenting, and producing little heard programmes were ultimately worth it. Now, you’re the successful ones, the ones who made it, the people who secured the commissions, made the programmes, won the awards and got into an industry that over 90% of the UK population participates in. Radio.
So why doesn’t it feel like we’re on top of the world?
Surely we should be up there, celebrated and rich like Premier League footballers or the stars of the small screen?
Well, yeah, but no.
Instead, right now radio is heading the way of the High Street. Big players, like Global and others, are homogenising the UK’s airwaves, buying and closing small, medium and large commercial stations to create beasts like the Capital Network and Heart brands, networking shows and closing local studios and offices as they go. Unsurprisingly the number of staff required to run these one-size-fits-all outlets is far fewer than before, and this figure will only reduce in the future. Of course the pound shops... sorry, community radio and internet stations, are making a brave fist of it but they’re never going to replace the lost jobs and opportunities in the commercial radio sector. Simultaneously the BBC, sporting the latest hairshirt slung at them by the Murdoch Empire or the Daily Mail, is on the back foot, cutting costs, closing posts, and chucking redundancies out like confetti.
So far, so bleak.
Away from the bigger picture, there are the independent radio producers and production companies, and it’s a confusing time for us. On the one hand the biggest buyer of radio programmes, the BBC, is working under ever tightening budgets. However, in contrast, 2011 will see that same BBC introduce the radio WOCC (window of creative competition), where indies will get the opportunity to compete for twice as many hours of programming. Of course whether an indie can compete for 10%, 20% or even 100% of broadcasting hours is only part of the story – what really counts is how much you actually get commissioned to make.
Many indie producers and businesses have often made programmes on a part time basis – when there are commissions you make them, when there’s none you fall back on another job. But what if there were other revenue streams?
Enter Radio Revisited.
Radio Revisited has discovered that many of the digital and commercial businesses in the North West need your talents but don’t even know it. Some have spent thousands on cutting edge digital and visual equipment, only to leave the audio elements of their work unproduced and pulled together by a system little better than two tin cans and a piece of string. Agencies, communications businesses, games designers and many more industries are oblivious to what you have to offer. Worse still, those that do realise they need an audio producer often head for the south east, which just makes me want to scream!
Digital media is new, exciting, confusing and unpredictable. Whether it’s online advertisements, particularly animations, soundtracks to games, audio books, audio tours, podcasting, in store radio or announcements, or even telephone on hold systems, there’s plenty to explore. Of course some of you have dabbled in one or two of these areas but Radio Revisited wants to turn these one-off bonuses into viable regular income streams.
If that’s not enough Radio Revisited has uncovered people like you and me, people who’ve shaken off any snobbery about being ‘programme makers’ and now see themselves as audio producers, making and delivering material to unexplored markets and securing revenue from new, untapped, sources.
As the promotional material says Radio Revisited will prepare and inform audio producers, broadening their scope, introducing them to potential new customers while detailing how high quality audio can be turned into profits. What you choose to do with all that is up to you.
Russell Crewe