You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about expressing an opinion, it’s what the new gaffers say they’ve set this ‘blog up for, and that (unless they’re hoodwinking us, and it’s really a giant Stasi trap to weed out dissenters) has to be a good thing.

It’s very common in commercial radio workplaces to feel like your opinion doesn’t matter. If you offer your opinion on the output, you’re dismissed out of hand and told that you’re not like a “real listener”. Yes, you might be listening to the radio station in question for your entire working week, but your comments are worthless because (this old chestnut) you’re too close to it. The prevailing wisdom in the industry is that if you care enough about radio to actually devote your working life to it, then your thoughts and feelings on the medium are null and void.

If you pass on anecdotal comments from friends, acquaintances etc, these are also disregarded, once again, because they’re supposedly not representative of the real audience either. Never mind that they are real people who listen to the radio, in an age and social demographic that programmers and advertisers covet. We’re told they’re not like the fabled “real listeners”.

As for real feedback, on the website, or through texts/email/calls to the studio, this is often ignored too. And why? Because those people aren’t “real listeners”. That’s right. The people who are actually listening. We’re told they’re the weirdos, the obsessives, the anoraks. Any opinions they have are written off, glibly rejected as a self-selecting sample.

So who are these “real listeners”, whose insight is so invaluable? The focus group members who’ll go and sit in front of a frosted mirror for a whole evening for £30 and a slice of pizza? The people at an auditorium test, listening to a small selection of music and ticking boxes for a baseball cap and some HMV vouchers? These people aren’t representative of the wider general public, they’re just representative of the kind of person who’ll take part in market research. Which, as anyone who’s ever stood in a shopping precinct with a clipboard will tell you, is a small and often peculiar subsection of people in general. Are these people’s thoughts really that much more valuable than those of passionate radio professionals, or anecdotal comments, or the opinions of our own, engaged, listeners?

It’s a good sign that TIML/Absolute are encouraging an open dialogue. There are a huge amount of talented, bright people working within commercial radio who have been transformed into robotic drones, weathered down and browbeaten into repeating the same old mantras and formulae on music and programming, even though these are so obviously outdated and failing. The division between the BBC and commercial radio is getting to the stage where the former stands almost exclusively for quality and content, and the latter for low-rent background noise. Pumping out lowest common denominator s**t to the masses may have been a good business model ten years ago, but not any more. The proliferation of media has put paid to that. It is broadcasting unique and compelling content that will now make the difference.

We in commercial radio need to stop boo-hooing about the BBC and look at the real reason they are doing so well. It’s simply because they offer really good radio stations. Yes, part of the reason they are able do this is money, and the thought of us adjusting profit margins to compete is probably too horrific to even contemplate. But the other, far more important thing that the BBC fill their radio stations with is imagination. Original and creative programming across their schedules. We can do this, too. There are armies of brilliant, imaginative people working throughout commercial radio, but they’re frustrated, withering away, crunching numbers and following obsolete dogma. Commercial radio needs to stop suppressing, and start listening to and encouraging the talents of its own people.

I’m in my tenth year here at One Golden Square, but I’m not a great one for heydays. There’s as much talent, creativity and potential here as there ever was; from Llia who’s in her first week proper, to Fiona who was here before they opened the doors. Will TIML/Absolute carry on as they’ve begun, and encourage an open environment where this bunch of brilliant oddballs can speak freely and passionately, and share fresh thinking.

Geoff