Events

There are many events run throughout the year by radio stations from simple charity events to concerts and meet and greets. Depending on the size of the radio station usually depends on the size of the event. Hospital stations and local stations for example have a lot smaller events than the likes of radio 1 and Capital.

The recent Capital FM Jingle Bell Ball (2011) was advertised right across the country on all of the local Capital FM stations. It was sponsored by Windows 7 and was on the 3^rd and 4^th of December. Originally the event only occurred on one night but due to high demand they decided to extend it over 2 nights. The tickets for the two dates were released separately and the first night was sold out in less than 3 hours and the second night sold out in less than an hour. A proportion of the ticket sales profit went to the Capital FM charity that they support commonly known as Help a Capital Child.

Radio 1 has had the honour of being the first festival of the year since 2003 but originally there was a day devoted to dance music and a day devoted to bands. In 2005 they changed this setup so both days had bands and artists playing to the 40,000 people over the weekend. It has been a great event every year travelling to many town and cities across the country with thousands of people not getting the exclusive tickets to the largest free ticketed event in Europe. The tickets are randomly assigned to people across the UK with the area the event is in being in favour. This brings in a lot of business opportunities to the town involved and it’s also a great thing to go down in its history because they get some amazing worldwide stars to headline the shows as well as UK artists and many amazing DJs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/03/jessie-j-ed-sheeran-bbc-olympic?INTCMP=SRCH

BBC Radio 1xtra also run a similar event called 1xtra Live where they travel to a new place for a night of live music. Due to the raising success of it though 2011’s event got bigger and they ended up travelling to four different places in four nights presenting different genres of music to each new place.

Radio 1 also has their very own teen awards which is a special event for teenagers in the UK and they get to award artists and young people for everything they do. It is only open for people between the ages of 14 and 17b so no parents are allowed and it also allows them to appreciate and involve their younger listeners which is often difficult to do.

As radio stations, Radio 1 and Capital also sponsor awards such as the Brit Awards and allow their listeners to vote for the artists they want to see win.

http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Radio-1-s-Hull-takeover-kicks-Pulled-Apart-Horses/story-15051070-detail/story.html

In the past few years Hull City Council along with Viking FM have hosted Hull Freedom Festival. In 2010 it was very popular and brought an estimated 150,000 people into the city.
http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/news/unique-freedom-festival-in-hull-drew-thousands/

Alternative ways of accessing music

Radio stations are not listened to as much now as they used to be because there are now more ways to listen to music. When driving home from work radio used to be the only thing to listen to in the car but nowadays there are ways to link up MP3 player and iPods to the car system to listen to your own music. YouTube is a major site used for listening to music. In the recent years a lot of new artists such as Ed Sheeran have hit the big time because of videos they’ve posted onto YouTube being watched. It’s a way of discovering new and old artists that you want to listen to and not in the hands of the DJs.

Gigs and tours are other great ways of seeing artists first hand a finding new music. Radio used to be one of the only ways to do this but gigging is now becoming more popular and people are more likely to pay for tickets. This also helps because a lot of people are now on better paid jobs and have the cars to travel around in to get to them. Gigs can be advertised by a radio though and this can be a way of people going to them.

Podcasts are now available online so if you miss your favourite radio show you can listen back to it. Podcasts aren’t copies of the whole show though, just the best bits so people aren’t listening to whole shows anymore. Another effect of this is people are now not as regularly available to listen to the radio because of work and other commitments.

iTunes is the new way of downloading music apart from illegal downloading. A lot of Apple users use this site to buy their music which means a lot of hard copy sales aren’t happening anymore. Radio can be the link to let people hear the music originally and they go out and buy it but not always nowadays because of all the alternative ways. Illegal downloading is becoming a major issue which is putting record shops out of business as well as the artists and record labels. Sites such as LimeWire and YouTube converter are becoming very popular within young age groups which is very concerning for the future. At the beginning of 2011 a new instant downloading scheme was put into place so as soon as you heard a song on the radio you were able to download it but this wasn’t very successful in the end as there were people downloading the song at different times and the artists that tried this didn’t do very well with sales figures. They also didn’t do very well in the charts.

Music channels also affect radio listening because of how easy they are to access. If you were doing housework or just sitting in the radio could often be relied on to break the silence but nowadays television music channels such as MTV, STARZ and 4MUSIC are becoming easier to listen to and more interesting. Radio lose a lot of listeners to these channels.

Social networking

Social networking is now becoming a worldwide system which is a way of advertising, socialising and a way of broadcasting information. In the past few years sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Flickr and Tumblr have become very popular ways of sharing information and broadcasting to the public. Because of the latest hype with social networking sites, radio stations are now using them to present themselves to the public as a way of advertising certain radio shows, events that are going on and what is going to be broadcast during shows. Individual DJs have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as the radio stations themselves. BBC Introducing and their DJs use social networking sites to get new music out into the public eye and create a fan base for new artists. They can also be used as a way to gain popularity for shows and DJs and it’s a way of starting conversation and getting the listeners involved in the shows. They can also contact artists through the social networking sites to get them onto shows and also help them promote and interact with fans.

BBC Radio

BBC – British Broadcast Corporation

The BBC have been operating in the UK since 1927 and BBC Audio and Music oversees all online audio content. BBC Radio 1-6 are based in London apart from BBC Radio 5 Live which is broadcast from MediaCityUK in Manchester. All BBC channels are available on DAB radio along with the internet Windows Media Audio (WMA) and BBC iPlayer. There are 11 national BBC radio stations but 6 of these can only be accessed via DAB. There are also 8 stations for the nations along with many local BBC radio stations such as BBC Radio Humberside. BBC radio is broadcast on AM, FM and DAB and it can also be accessed in many ways online and digitally on the television. The BBC also have ways of allowing us to downloads MP3 files and podcasts.

Radio 1 was launched Saturday 30th September 1967 at 7am 

National radio

Global Radio

Global Radio is a UK based radio company that run national radio stations such as Capital, Heart, Choice FM, Gold, Classic FM, Xfm and LBC. Global Radio is based in Leicester Square in London but it has stations and hubs in 33 different locations nationwide.  

Capital FM is the UK’s first national, commercial hit music radio station broadcasting across London, Birmingham, East Midlands, Manchester, the North East, Yorkshire, Scotland, the South Coast and South Wales which allows it to reach around 7 million listeners every week. It’s broadcast on 95-106 Capital FM depending on where you are in the country and everyday it plays the best new music and allows chances to win big prizes. Some shows are broadcast from your local Capital FM such as the break fast shows and some shows during the day and late at night but some shows such as Roberto, Bassman and Rich Clarke on the showbiz show broadcast nationally to all the Capital stations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/02/capital-fm-johnny-vaughan?INTCMP=SRCH

Choice FM is ‘London’s choice for current and future urban hits’ on 107.1 and 96.9 FM and reaches over 765,000 listeners every week but it acan also be accessed on DAB radio across the country and also online and on the television. This station is focussed on new urban music and all of the DJs portray this. It’s mainly aimed at young people but there are also some older listeners too.

Gold is aimed at an older generation of people as it plays a lot of older music, anything from the 60’s to the 80’s. The Gold Network broadcasts in 25 local areas, 24 of which are analogue and 19 have digital licenses. There are over 1.5 million listeners every week across the UK. The station provides local news, weather, travel and sport as well as great music. In 2010 Gold released CD’s containing the greatest hits being played in an exclusive deal with HMV.


 

Bauer Media

There are a lot of radio stations across the UK who are owned by Bauer Media who are a division of Bauer Media Group. They are the largest privately owned publishing group in Europe and is a ‘worldwide media empire’ that offer over 300 magazines to 15 different countries as well as online, television channels and radio stations. In 2008 Bauer media and Bauer Media Group joined forces and together they now employ around 6,400 people. Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK based media group which have two main productions in magazines and radio. With the links they have across the world and the number of successful brands they have, their radio stations are very popular and the public trust them with the decisions they make. The company began their radio business in 1990 when they invested in a London based dance station called Kiss FM which is now known as Kiss 100. This was followed up by Liverpool’s Radio City and later by TWC and the Metro Group. They then acquired Melody FM which was re-vamped and turned into the now very popular Magic 105.4. In 1996 they acquired the digital music TV channel The Box which they’ve turned into Box Television with the help of Channel 4 and it now contains 7 channels. Today Bauer Media now owns 80 different recognised and influential brand names that everybody sees as a part of their everyday life.

The list of radio stations owned by Bauer Media in the UK:

CFM

City Talk

Cool FM

Downtown Radio

Hallam FM

Key 103

Metro Radio

MFR

Northsound Radio

Radio Aire

Radio Borders

Radio City

Radio Clyde

Radio Forth

Rock FM

South West Sound

Tay FM

TFM

Viking FM

West Sound

Kerrang! 105.2

Kiss

Magic

Wave 105

National Broadcasting:

4Music

Smash Hits

Heat

Magic

Kiss

Kerrang!

Q

The Hits Radio

The Box

Local radio stations

The Local Radio Company owns and operates 10 local radio stations across the UK which reaches around 524,000 listeners every week. The Local Radio Company was formed to take over Radio Investments Ltd in May 2004 which was one of the first investors in commercial radio and they originally invested in Capital Radio (London) in 1973. In September 2009 Local Radio Company got into some trouble and wasn’t able to run any longer but on the 14^th July 2010 it was re-registered as Local Radio Company Ltd. The Local Radio Company Ltd jointly owns the national sales house in London too. A few of the radio stations the company runs are: Yorkshire Coast Radio, Wessex FM and Minster FM.

Charity radio stations

Charity radio stations are usually set up by experienced or interested radio DJs who usually want to run a small scale radio station as their hobby. Many people can get involved is charity radio in their own time and many stations take pride in teaching new people who either want to pursue it as a career or just have an interest.

West Hull Community radio station (WHCRFM) is an example of a local charity run radio station in Hull. This station began broadcasting on the 26^th March 2007 and it broadcasts things such as news, sport, weather, travel information as well as broadcasting a range of different music and interviews to West Hull and the surrounding villages which is an adult population of around 90,000 people. It’s also a way for local events and companies to be advertised in a professional and listen to way. There’s an executive committee which are paid to make sure the radio station is running correctly and efficiently but everything else is run by funding and donations from the public and advertisement agreements.

Hospital radio

In 1921 an Englishman named Thomas Handstock wrote to the general post office to ask for permission to conduct experiments with portable wireless telegraph apparatus. He did this because he’d had the genius idea to create radio stations in hospitals for the patients to listen to and enjoy while they were being treated in hospital. He came up with this idea in during 1925 and during the same year the first ever hospital radio was opened at York County hospital. 200 sets of headphones and 70 loud speakers fed from a wireless receiving set housed in a small alcove in the hospital. The idea was for volunteers from the general public to run the radio stations from the hospital or an area nearby. Most radio stations were set up AM but there were some, the more popular ones in the larger hospitals that were set up on FM. Most of them are tuned into the systems next to the patient’s beds and they can also contact the station too through this system. After York County hospital’s station was set up, many soon followed the trend and before long there were many hospital radios across the country. During World War 2 a lot of broadcasting stopped from the stations but during the 1950’s popularity soon grew again. In the 1960’s there were around 100 hospital radio stations across the UK and this grew by the 1980’s too around 700 stations. Nowadays 90% of the UK’s hospital population have access to the stations. This means around 18 million people have access a year in 800 different hospitals. There is now a Hospital Radio Association which oversees everything that goes on at the stations.

Does the radio still have a future in the digital age?

For my EPQ I am going to be researching radio and trying to find out if radio still has a future in the digital age? By doing this I am going to be researching the history of radio, finding out about current stations and pirate radio stations; how social networking effects the radio; hospital and charity radio; the influences DJs have on radio shows and ratings etc; how events run by radio stations effect popularity; alternative ways of accessing music and the development of DAB.