The Original Sims

NI People - yes, trendy and cool and all that. But when a friend asks for help, let’s do what can be done.

On Tuesday morning at 6am, Maurice Jay from U105 (who I have known since literally he was in short trousers) will be going into the window of Debenhams at CastleCourt to live for 105 hours in aid of the Northern Ireland Hospice. Eating, sleeping, broadcasting etc until Saturday afternoon.

Louis Walsh and Westlife visited a similar event at our sister station FM104 in Dublin, so we too have lined up a number of visually recognisable “celebs” and luminaries to visit me in the window, but in order to keep the money flowing into the buckets, we are keen to have as many visitors as possible.”

So what can the underground music, artistic and creative community in Belfast and NI do to support MJ? I’m of an age where the Hospice has a meaning beyond just a name (OK?).

 

I won’Also I have challenged U105 to be more imaginative and use social media properly.  So I guess this is part of the challenge.t be there at 6 am on Tuesday - but I will be there from time to time over the 105 hours.

Here’s the deal. If you feel local media does not give you the support you think you deserve (or in my mind the support you DO deserve) then start by supporting them when they do good.

I leave it to you. Unconferences and so on are wonderful - but sometimes you need to look to the wider community.

Yesterday my old (or should that be ancient?) friend Padraig Coyle and I quietly launched the gaelgames.com podcast. It struck me that in such a fan driven range of sports there were quite a few blogs, but no podcasts.  So I suggested to Padraig (like me started in Downtown Radio a long time ago) who recently left BBC NI Sport that we should play around with a Gaelic Games podcast.

It is a quiet almost restrained start; but I hope before too long it becomes irreverent, edgy and driven by the passion that supporters of gaelic football and hurling have for their sports.  So the first is the "Test Transmission".  If sport is your thing, please check it out and let us know what’s on your mind.

Paul Smyth from Public Achievement introduced me to Bush Radio. This South African radio station operates in Cape Town and is known as “The Mother of Community Radio in Africa”.

The founder Zane Ibrahim was in Belfast today to discuss what community radio means to him and how he has developed Bush Radio. It’s mission statement says “Bush Radio’s mission is to ensure that communities who have been denied access to resources, take part in producing ethical, creative and responsible radio that encourages them to communicate with each other, to take part in decisions that affect their lives, and to celebrate their own cultures. Through such radio, communities will affirm their own dignity and identity, and promote social responsibility and critical thinking.”

It’s unlike any community radio station I’ve encountered before; the emphasis is “community” not “radio” and while it is known worldwide, it is completely rooted in its own community (within a population of 2.5 million people). “Everyone is a trainee” even if they have been working alongside Zane for 15 years. Everyone multi-tasks and the youngest volunteer is 6 years old.

Zane had been on the run as a refugee in Canada during the Apartheid years in South Africa. He returned from exile in Canada in March 1996 to assist in the reconstruction and development of the country after Apartheid. And he chose radio as the forum to build that reconstruction. It was only an hour of conversation but it was a fascinating insight into how a radio station can mobilise a community for good and how it has been imitated in many other countries.

This is not the sort of radio station that you work for your own ego – you can’t work there unless you are undertaking an educational course at the same time. I’ll be looking more deeply into the work of Bush Radio over the next few months and hoping to learn how some of their experiences can be applied to Northern Ireland.

Channel 4 has abandoned plans for its proposed radio project. Having won the franchise in July 2007, Channel 4 set out an ambitious plan for a range of music and speech stations on DAB including a direct competitor to Radio 4.  The first station E4 Radio was due to air next spring.  The plan will save around £10m in 2009.

Channel 4 Radio is the majority shareholder in 4 Digital. Its other shareholders are UTV Radio, Bauer Radio (owners of Cool FM and Downtown), BSkyB, the Carphone Warehouse Group, and UBC Media.

Back in August The Observer reported:

The problems is that negotiations with Global, and C4’s own joint venture partners, are not proceeding smoothly. 4 Digital is majority owned by Channel 4, but some of the minority partners, who include UTV Radio and Magic FM owner Bauer Radio, have reservations about the cost of funding new digital channels at a time when the economic outlook is gloomy. Digital licences run for 12 years, and it costs £1.5m a year to air a single station, says the source close to the talks. ‘That’s just the transmission: never mind the cost of running the station and paying the presenters. You could run a national FM or AM station for the same cost if the frequency was available.’

On Friday the decision was widely reported.  The Stage said:

Responding to the news, Ofcom said: “Ofcom recognises that the economic environment is very challenging and that all organisations need to make decisions in light of the circumstances they face.”
It said it would meet with the other members of 4 Digital Group over the next few days to discuss how they propose to take matters forward.
Ofcom also revealed it is in discussions with other multiplex operators and the BBC to consider how best to “secure a viable outcome which is in the interests of radio listeners and the industry”.
Channel 4’s withdrawal from the radio market will come as a blow to independent drama producers, who had hoped the broadcaster’s offerings would increase opportunity for production outside of BBC stations.

No promises; this will my first live programme in several years and it’s a strange studio, but I’m thinking about Live Blogging tonight when I’m presenter on Belfast radio station U105.  Maurice Jay has been doing the induction, showing me how to work the desk and the Selector.  I’ve been sitting in with Ivan Martin and John Rosborough.  The running order for tonight is done - and trashed.  Do it again before going on air.

So - I’ll attempt to Blog here - or Twitter here - or Flickr from here.

So if join me from 9.00 pm on 105.8FM, or http://www2.u105.com/ (you’ll be asked for a UK Post Code.  (If you don’t have on try BT7 1EB.)

And email me - studio@u105.com from 9.00pm

EB

This is going to be fun.  I’m going to be a DJ on the radio once again.  It’s a guest spot, one week only (well four nights) and I’m really looking forward to it.  Radio is where I started out 29 years and eight months ago at Downtown Radio. This time I’m going to be on U105.  But it’s little like going back to an old mates reunion. Almost all the presenters are old friends and colleagues from Downtown, BBC and UTV.  Maurice Jay - the head of programmes used to live 100 yards from me.

So I don’t feel like a stranger, and that makes a big difference.  But studios have changed.  The old desk I used to drive in Downtown has been offered to a museum.  Vinyl out - CDs pretty rare and there are three or four screens instead of turn-tables.

Naturally, you can listen online - but you need to use a Northern Ireland post code - something like BT28HQ.

This week’s interview on Learning Tea-Break was about Digital Photography.

To the Radio Academy in Belfast last night. Host, UTV’s John Rosborough, introduced the man, once described by a UK tabloid as "Dann, Dann, the Hatchet man".  Trevor Dann is possibly the man who saved Radio 1 to become what it is today, cutting back the "old guard" (who I once worked with) and starting anew as a radio station for people younger than 25.

Radio 1 had become an institution (parts of which the inmates had assumed control) and like an institution it had it’s own set of mores and traditions, it’s own passwords and secret handshakes.  And it was very, very old.  In what was seen in very negitive terms at the time, Dann and his colleague Matthew Bannister made the significant changes which probably stopped Radio 1 becoming privatised and rejuvenated the station to develop into a creative force that it is now.

Digital radio stations try broadcasting sound with pictures in a bid to make radio a visual experience.

Taken from Paul Robinson’s Media Guardian feature 29 October 2007

The continuing build-up of listeners to DAB digital radio services - both commercial and BBC - is also impressive, with the weekly reach (proportion of the population) who now listen to digital radio up to a new record high of 28.4%. The largest growth is coming from DAB digital radio which has shown a 15% increase in the past 12 months.
The total number of hours of listening each week by UK radio listeners is now 153m, which represents nearly one sixth of all weekly listening. We are a long way from approaching analogue switch-off, and unlike with television there is no date or timetable for the transition to digital. There is also, in an analogous way to TV, the challenge of multiple radio sets - the average UK household has five each - and there is no converter "set-top box" that will make an analogue radio capable of receiving DAB digital radio.
But the audience growth of many of the digital networks is a cause for optimism. BBC 6Music and BBC7 have achieved record audiences this quarter (of 485,000 and 795,000 respectively), and more than half the commercial national digital networks have also hit new record Rajar audience numbers.
The biggest gains year-on-year are by the Magic Network, up 395,000, The Hits 312,000, Kiss UK 207, 000, Choice UK 186,000, and Planet Rock 126,000.
Other smaller gains and new all-time records have been notched up by Sunrise, Virgin Radio Classic Rock, Real Radio UK, Galaxy and Heat.

The quarterly radio listening results were revealed yeaterday - and I’m more than happy to note, we all love radio more and more.  This from media Guardian:

But the latest audience figures published yesterday reveal that we are more in love with the radio than ever before. It is just that we are not listening to it in quite the same way as we used to.

Having seen off the rise of television music channels such as MTV in the 1980s, radio is now piggy backing on the digital revolution, with nearly 12 million people - 26% of the adult population - tuning in via digital radio, digital TV and the internet.

Around 4.4 million listen on their mobile phone, up more than 25% on last year, with 1.8 million of them aged between 15 and 24. "In this multiplatform environment it’s absolutely vital for radio stations to make content as accessible on as many platforms as possible," said Paul Jackson, chief executive of Virgin Radio, which became the first to launch on 3G mobile phones in 2005.