It’s always a case of sharp intake of breath when inviting comments from listeners and users. Particularly when you’ve said you’ll actually bother to consider them – and, with this being radio, people would soon notice if I merrily ignored them all.
So. I sent out a note to all our thousands of VIPs last week, and wondered how many responses I might get. There are so many distractions in life, why would someone bother to write and give me free advice? So, I was really pleased to arrive to a mailbox of hundreds of responses: great honest notes saying ‘I love this’, ‘don’t touch that’, ‘why not think about more of this’ or just saying ‘so and so is just truly naff’. Clearly, it would be crazy to suggest we can meet everyone’s expectations, otherwise we’d have to assemble probably five million different radio stations (an idea?), but it is clear that there are some recurring themes. Luckily many of these were things were already on our minds at One Golden Square.
We had already decided that some things simply must remain part of what we do, and we’re identifying those one by one and mentioning them on air too, just to offer reassurance. See the blog entry below on our ‘pillars’.
As for changes, and new stuff? Well, just like Geoff’s long blogs below, that’s an area for strong views, beautifully expressed in these emails too:
“We are begining to think you rent the records off someone else for a period of time!”;
“The bands you play are good – but I’d love to see you play less of the obvious stuff”;
“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE INCREASE THE PLAY LIST FROM THE 8 RECORDS YOU SEEM TO PLAY OVER AND OVER AGAIN” (I left that listener’s capital letters in);
“Try and make your music a little less predictable”
“Virgin Radio needs a good revamp, or else loyal listeners from day one will disappear”.
Clearly there was individual criticism and praise for individual presenters, and you would not expect me to print that all here, but we’ve certainly taken it on board, alongside all our other thinking.
Quite a few listeners asked about the rationale behind our name change. Some listeners told me it will not really matter, they see it as just a label (which is the way we see it really). Others were more suspicious of the circumstances where organisations do this:
“It usually means that they have perpetrated an embarrassing cock-up,and literally want to hide their faces.”
That’s certainly not the case here, we are hugely proud of our achievements, and you’ll notice we’ll be welding together our old and new identities in a period called ‘crossfade’ (internal word). That’s a lot different from running away from our old name. In short what the name change will do, will free us to express ourselves in a whole host of different ways just as contemporary brands do. We could not do that with our old name as quite simply it belonged to somebody else.
And – to make it absolutely clear because a cab driver asked me about this yesterday – you won’t have to do anything different to hear us on the radio. You’ll find us exactly where you currently do and we’ve no plans to shut down any of the ways in which we are distributed. Obviously our web address will change, and we’ll keep you in touch on that score. I know you probably realised all that, if you have got this far into our blog, but I thought I’d mention it!
If you wrote to me – thank you.
Clive
