Auntie’s hard of hearing.

Much has been posted about the changes to BBC Local Radio- and there are a few very detailed and articulate posts on the subject. David Lloyd has crafted a few posts that I recommend reading.

Not wishing to simply add to the noise, I’ve resisted adding much to the debate, save one post a while ago now. In truth, I’ve never worked for the BBC, although come close a couple of times. I was once approached about a possible position, but then after a few initial discussions my emails went unanswered, and one other time I didn’t make the short list at all. I’m not complaining and they were quite lucky to swerve me!

I posted a comment on a social post from David after the recent start of programme sharing, which got a bit of traction. However, the limitations of a social post didn’t allow some nuance, explanation and context- so I thought I would expand here.

Here is the full(ish) story- saving some blushes and with the limitations of memory. When GCap was purchased by Global, the plan was fairly well known about the roll-out of the Heart brand across a lot of the former “One Network” stations. There were a few sites which didn’t fit because there was already a Heart in the area, or they overlapped significantly with an intended soon-to-be-Heart. Sitting in Nottingham at the time, I was at one of those sites, (as Heart 106- currently GEM and about to be GHR, covered the East Midlands), so Ram and Leicester Sound also fell into this camp. Paul Jackson was the Programme Director of Capital in London and he and I had been having a fair few discussions after he had moved into the post, meetings and calls regarding music, formats and talent for a a while and we got along very well.

Shortly after the initial news broke about the Heart rollout, Paul called and we discussed the intention to start moving the music on those sites towards a Heart sound and what to do with the other sites that were not moving to Heart. Obviously, they couldn’t take the same playlist, so we discussed all the options.

Could they remain on their existing playlist maybe? The problem would be that it would need refreshing and we would create a new weekly playlist to manage- not an elegant solution. We ended up deciding that they would take the Capital playlist. One problem solved.

The next question was networking- all the sites joined together at 7pm so what happens then? For about a milli-second we considered (and quickly discounted) the option of running a hybrid playlist for those evening or just overnight hours. It would have been totally unworkable, and wrong for both sets of stations of course which is why we discounted it very quickly.

It was at that point I think that the solution came to light and Paul said, “Could you run a network out of Nottingham 24-7 for those sites?”. I think I clarified exactly what he was asking a couple of times before it was clear: to create a network encompassing (at that time), Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Crawley, Harlow, and Watford. All of them had their own station names of course but would all follow the Capital log and originate network output from studio 2 in Nottingham and so become separate from the soon-to-be Heart stations, leaving them to move as they wished.

I remember my next question well. When do you want to start this? The reply was something like, “Well, the Heart sites need to start moving music pretty quickly, so, erm, two weeks?”. At that time the sites had local daytimes, but there was a plan to network a bit more and of course, there was a full output from 7pm onwards and weekend to consider- and about 14 days to do it.

I was fortunate to have a few things going in my favour. I had worked across a few of the sites already, and knew most of the teams on all the sites. I had a great team in Nottingham and they were immensely talented and I knew they would be able to pull this off. I also had the benefit of the local engineer being a playout system expert- with a brain the size of a planet when it came to making things work. It’s true that he was also immersed into the Heart rollout too, so I had a share of his time and brain at least. All the sites were on the same system- Genesys which was used across the former GWR sites and for networking from Bristol already. Configuring it though would still be a headache given the short time constraints and there were some legacy network commands which would be needed for all the sites right up to the switch point- therefore we had to build everything from the ground up. We also had to leave room for Heart to do the same.

Then there were presenters. I had daytimes in place already but not enough to fill a 24-7 schedule- we were used to being able to plug into a network and now WE were the network! Aided by a few people becoming “available” in lieu of the impending Heart plans and a few other contacts and backup options I had, I managed to fill an initial schedule at least to get us up and running. I fully admit that I got lucky. I got lucky A LOT with the skillset of the talent available. All the stations were used to taking networking already, but given the opportunity we wanted to leverage the smaller grouping, and make it work a little harder. More splits, more station credits and localisations. Presenters did some “Link starts”- not a new concept at all and involved them saying the station name (played locally at each site from the playout machine, before then picking up live with the rest of the link). Timing and intonation are critical in making it work and not sound obviously pre-recorded or fake. I’ll name a couple of people who took this to another level in their time- Julian Jones and Justin Walker. They both were able to get the timing and intonation of the elements absolutely right, so much so that I took a couple of calls from other radio people asking what we were doing and how were we doing it. They didn’t believe it was just a link start- Julian and Justin (and others), were that skilled at it. I don’t have examples of the very best bits, but a few bits that give a sample.

I should say at this point that here in 2023, I know that this is not uncommon or in any way new. For example, I hear it across Bauer’s Hits Radio Network expertly executed around the hour, using Zetta as their playout system. However, remember that this was FIFTEEN YEARS ago, and using Genesys where you had to load the clip manually on each site remotely and set the aux marks one by one! Julian and others included more than one split mid-link quite often too. Pioneers!

Of course, a few things went wrong, when so much is dependent on timing, technology and people it is bound to happen. It usually boiled down to a balancing issue (things not being the same length on all sites), some random missing audio on a site, or a finger problem (a mis-pressed button or a missed button press where there should have been one).

The Hit Music Network ride lasted just over 2 years before the eventual rollout of Capital. By that time the network was smaller too, a few of the original group had fallen off after group ownership changes, or second thoughts about including them into Heart. All in all, it created some amazing moments, gave a platform to some amazing talent and a training ground to some of the established names of today.

My social post the other week needs also some additional context. The people at the front end are all doing their very best with what they have got- of that I have no doubt. The BBC Local Radio presenters you can hear on-air are trying really hard to make it work and they care about it. As I said in a later reply post, my thoughts are with them and they have my support.

I got lucky as I have explained with the Hit Music Network and the BBC Local network isn’t without similarly talented, experienced and well-resourced people in front and behind the mic. I wasn’t under the same intense spotlight when I created the network out of thin air as they are now. That adds a lot of pressure into an already pressured situation.