“Usually when things has gone this far, People tend to disappear, No one will surprise me unless you do. I can tell there’s something goin’ on, Hours seems to disappear. Everyone is leaving I’m still with you… And we don’t care about the young folks…” Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
There have been countless [...]

It’s almost six years since I first crossed under the brass ‘No.1′, making me a veteran amongst some but still a new boy compared to others (Russ and Fiona to name the obvious).
What remains fresh in my mind however, is the warmest of welcomes I received, one that I have seen given to so many [...]

For about 2 years we geeks in Digital Media have had a big LCD television mounted on the wall showing statistics about the website. Whenever a client or colleague wandered down to the Digital Media end of the 1st floor they would be transfixed by the live river of items that would flow onto the [...]

As we get older we tend to dream less and less. I was forever being told off at school for either talking too much or daydreaming. Now I am paid to do both. So f**k you Mr Barnes the chemistry teacher!
Anyway. Mr Parigi last week spoke of the intellectual fatigue in commercial radio, I think [...]

What a week it’s been. The F1 boss was awarded £60,000 damages after a judge rejected claims he took part in Nazi-themed orgy. Facebook paid out £22,000 after false details about a businessman appeared on it’s site. The Canoe Man and his wife were jailed for 13 years. It’s claimed email scams are up 180%. [...]

It’s an interesting branding challenge this one.
A name change usually signifies wanting to leave a product behind. Here we want to keep the spirit of the product the same, but have to change the name anyway. Tricky.
What it means is we really have to understand what it is that makes the radio station broadcast from [...]

When was the last time you stepped into Studio A? Last week? Last month? What did you think of it?
Well, when the new owners of Virgin Radio / (insert new brand name here) first stepped in there, they probably had exactly the same thoughts as you. It’s a bit smelly, generally [...]

At 5.30pm last night, radio stations across the country were feverish with anticipation as they awaited their RAJAR audience results.
RAJAR is the industry system for measuring radio listening in the UK, and it provides us with results on a quarterly basis. 135,000 paper diaries are handed out each year for a random sample of respondents [...]

On Friday my daughter left primary school. As part of the leaving process they staged a special performance where many of the kids ‘performed’, reciting poetry or memories of their time at the school. This was opened by four of my daughter’s peers on guitar, drums, bass and vocals doing a version of The Cure’s [...]

A recent conversation with Clive about the enormous task that lies ahead of the Digital Media team got us thinking. A round of beers later and we have “Spot The Virgin” (it’s funny how some of the best ideas come out of an evening down the pub).
One of the things that have been bugging us [...]

In recent years, many programmers have come to believe that music radio will maintain its place in listeners’ lives as a curator of their music collection. The logic suggests that if radio is no longer the only place to discover music, and can’t compete for the deepest offerings, it will still have the role of [...]

Our web site is brilliant and commercial radio’s most popular with 15-44 year olds. Indeed, the new owners have cited it (along with other progressive activities in digital) as one of the reasons for acquiring Virgin Radio.
And its the busiest time of the year for us as we roll out the ’80s Mega Quiz, our [...]

Remember when they first put TV cameras in the Houses of Parliament? Remember when DVD’s started coming with all the behind the scenes footage? Remember seeing how your favourite magic trick was done? All things that happened and we, the public, were never used to seeing or being part of it.
But being part of something [...]

RadioCentre (never “the radiocentre”) has just published Action Stations: The Output and Impact of Commercial Radio. It’s a 64 page report that highlights what it is that commercial radio actually does - it’s not simply playing recorded music with advertising interruptions.
The report is liberally sprinkled throughout with various research statistics like the fact that commercial [...]

So, the Olympics is just about doped-up dudes like Dwayne Chambers flexing their guns in front of a world audience in order to secure more cereal commercials to fuel their creatine craving? It’s therefore not worth covering, right?
Well, maybe at its most cynical, at its lowest moments, that’s what the gaudy athletic amphitheatre has become. [...]