Behind the scenes for radio visualisation at BBC Radio 5 Live

An audio version of my newsletter, at https://james.crid.land/update/5-live-nicky-visual

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist, and every week or so, or couple of weeks,

(00:05):
I write a little newsletter about the future of radio and all of that, and this is it.
For June 16th, 2023, Behind the Scenes at Five Live.
And this is all about visual radio, and I should remind myself that people do actually
read my newsletter and listen to this podcast.
And sometimes if I'm criticising something, I'm criticising someone's hard work.

(00:29):
So I got an email from the BBC.
They spotted that I would be in Media City, UK in Salford, and would I like to have a
look at the visual radio set up for Nicky Campbell?
Yes, yes I would.
And so I did.
Everyone was very kind to me.
Nobody mentioned that I'd been quite rude.
Writing about a big microphone partially obscuring Nicky's face, big chunky headphones on, and

(00:52):
a computer monitor also in view.
Well it turns out that the brief from the TV people was that they wanted Nicky Campbell's
show to look like a radio programme.
Now I'm not sure I agree with that decision, but that was the brief that the team were
given, and the implementation of that brief is actually quite thoughtful.

(01:13):
A few pieces of their implementation struck me as being quite nice.
For example, when Nicky opens the talk back to his producers, the camera will automatically
change to a wide shot that's carefully positioned behind Nicky so you don't see his mouth moving.
The big microphone both communicates that it's a radio programme as per the brief, but also

(01:34):
affords the opportunity for Nicky to hide his face.
And if you're on air and in vision for two hours, you're likely to want to hide your
face at least some of the time, which I think is probably fair enough.
Nicky's normally in London in fact, but in an identical studio.
The camera is connected to the Salford Gallery, so it appears just the same as any other,

(01:55):
which is quite nice.
Now I learned that the project took nine months from the initial brief to on air, which is
light speed for the BBC.
And as someone who's done my share of big projects at the BBC, what I found most impressive
was how non-gold-plated it all was.
Everything from the cameras and lighting to the reuse of an existing radio studio was

(02:17):
done in what seems to be an economical, sensible way with minimal extra staff.
Yet it does drive two hours of national TV every weekday.
Broadcast Bionics have made much of the vision technology, automated vision mixing so good
that they rarely have to touch it.
And it does appear to be working too.

(02:37):
The programme gets many more callers than it used to.
And also the callers are more female than they used to be.
And Five Life has lots of sports output, which means it skews male in audience.
So I looked forward to watching it a little more.
Now I understood how it worked, but that wasn't to be because big news events overtook the
phone in on the rare times I was able to watch.

(02:58):
But I'm grateful to the team for their kindness shown to me in Salford.
Elsewhere, Radio Days North America was a great event, a significant change from the feeling
at Canadian Music Week the previous year.
I was lucky enough to speak twice this year, a session about tools that podcasting users
that would be great for radio, which I got some good feedback from.

(03:20):
And the five ideas in 35 minutes traditional end to the conference hosted by Nick Goodman.
It's the first time I've done that and I rather enjoyed it.
Towercast, the French transmitter infrastructure company, has purchased Radio King, which is
an online streaming radio company.
And I tell you why I always liked how Futuri called their streaming product an online transmitter.

(03:41):
It makes perfect sense for a tower operator to buy an online transmitter company, don't
you think?
Here's a fun fact.
Someone said at Radio Days North America, and quite a scary fact as well, the latest
sample size for radio measurement in Vancouver, which is a market of 2.6 million people for
15 to 24 females, was just 16 people, 16 people.

(04:06):
It's a whole business that runs off 16 people, it's astonishing.
A fascinating survey from Radio Centre Ireland, which looked at how radio ads drive website
traffic, it turns out that possibly because radio is a multitasking medium and is listened
to while doing something else, people don't instantly visit websites that they've heard

(04:27):
advertised, duh.
The data shows good response in a three day period, but not the 30 minutes after the ad
plays, which kind of makes sense.
And the BBC have turned off, well, I said in my newsletter that HLS radio streams, it
sounds as if they've turned off their shoutcast radio streams for their services, for all services

(04:49):
except BBC World Service Radio.
You can listen using an ADTS stream, whatever that is, which works in many players, including
VLC.
Thank you to Clyde Broadcast, Richard Hilton, James Masterton, Brunn Audio Consulting,
SOMA FM and Media Realms radio websites.
If you'd like to support my work in any way, you can buy me a coffee, become a member to

(05:12):
give regularly, or just give a one off coffee or five if you want to do that, buy me acoffee.com
slash James Cridland is where to go.
You can follow me on MasterDone.
I'm James at Crid.Land there, just search for that and you'll find me.
You can also search for that on Nostra as well, but you know, you know, it'll be there,
are you?
My professional website has more details about where I am, what I do and whether I can help

(05:34):
you further.
You'll find that at James.Cridland.net.
And until next time, keep listening.