Following a review of the Programming strategy across the summer we are saying farewell to Programme Manager, Mark Bingham.

Mark joined Golden Square from the Capital Radio Group on the day Chris Evans left the station, what a baptism by fire! During his time at the company he has made a massive contribution to the UK’s number 1 commercial radio station. Mark has always applied himself with the utmost professionalism and integrity.

We wish him well and all the best with his future career.

Clive

It’s been a momentous week for the World. History has been made and a monumental barrier has been crossed. All around the globe, people have been chanting together in unison ‘A change is coming‘.

Indeed the change has come. Jo Russell has become the first female Breakfast Presenter on Absolute Radio. Admirably assisted by her Vice Presi-enter (see what I did there) Ben Jones, she took the air on Monday like a seal launching itself off an ice flow. Graceful, purposeful and slick. No quiet slots for her at 2am to let her get quietly settled in. She was thrown right into the deep end doing the full Breakfast Show.

I’d like to be the first person to congratulate her. Whether it be strongarming her 10 year old niece to appear on the show for a lyrics based, cheesy competition or purposely inviting the wrath of the listeners for declaring that cats are stupid, she has put a hell of a lot of effort in and has done a brilliant job. She has, might I add been a joy to work with. Mind you, I work with Christian usually, so barring Absolute Radio signing up Robert Mugabe for holiday cover, anyone’s going to seem nice.

There have been some bumps though. For instance when I suggested a Q&A session with the listeners on Wednesday’s show I thought it would be a good way for all of the Absolute Radio extended family to get to know our newest DJ. It was going well until we opened it up to phones and texts. I must say a big thank to all those budding Oscar Wilde’s out there who all got in touch with the hilarious ‘How big are your Knockers?’ lines or variations on the theme. Still though, she managed what numerous people have tried and failed at. Getting Ben Jones to take his hat off. I don’t know how she did it. It was with a mixture of charm, flattery and outright bullying that she managed to get him to unveil his bonce on Tuesday. I would like to go on record as saying ‘Ben… it suits you’. There’ll be more to come from her as she’ll be warming the crowd up for us on early Breakfast from Wednesday to Friday and more importantly will be doing Breakfast at the weekends.

Enjoy the fireworks this weekend everybody and remember when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament 408 years ago he was trying to kill King James to bring about a Catholic monarchy NOT fighting for the right to give you freedom to muck about with cheap imported fireworks from Shanghai.

So kids be careful and remember, fireworks were designed to be used in conjunction with milk bottles not milky botties…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KgMTmXcMS1E (NSFW).

Brian

It was back in January in studio A when David Lloyd first introduced myself and Tony Moorey to JK and Joel.

“This is Tony and Guy” he announced. (The new presenters were amused that their show was being produced by hairdressers).

After moving to The Midas for a swift half - which became a few pints in Joel’s case - we decided between the four of us that we had enough celebrity contacts to get some interviews booked.

So the likes of Timmy Mallett, Carol Vorderman, Ryan Giggs, Anne Robinson, Katie Price, David Seaman, an Irish comedian with an unpronouncable name, and that bird off Holby City all graced the JK & Joel Show. Not what you might call mega A listers, but nonetheless fantastic show guests.

Memories ? Dozens. Too many to write in one blog, but they include JK having his teeth brace fitted a couple of weeks before the show started and not being able to speak properly (or ’shpeek’ as he would say)… our made up celebrity ‘Spotted’ feature… Joel spitting coffee all over me at the IOW festival (don’t ask, you had to be there)… almost jepordising JK’s relationship after playing Mr & Mrs live on air with Suzanne Shaw and her Dancing On Ice partner… and most of the time Joel seemed to spend taking his clothes off. Remember our 15th birthday party ? Then there was Richard Huntingford’s leaving video. Enough said about that the better I think…

And poor Andrew Bailey. Will he ever get over his Isle of Wight 2008 experience of ‘Naked Joel’. Maybe not. I for one will have that mental image of Joel in his birthday suit - except for a pair of green wellies - permanently etched in my brain. To make matters worse, they are my green wellies. I can never wear them again.

JK and Joel are indeed a rare breed. They compliment each other. JK with his family home, love of cars and ‘24′ and Joel with his fantasy women, knowledge of C2 buses and love of Prisoner Cell Block H. They say opposites attract, and this is the proof.

Having been in this industry for 25 years, I can honestly say it’s been a real pleasure to work with two of the nicest guys around. They do their last shows this weekend, and I’d like to wish them all the best for the future.

Finally I’d like to end on a serious note.

To their next producer: don’t tangle up JK’s headphone lead, and Joel: you owe me a pair of green wellies.

It’s an historic day for America and here at Absolute Radio we marked the occasion by making Jo and Ben get up incredibly early to host the breakfast show from 4am (they’ve actually done a full day for once).

How do you celebrate such an occasion?

With a very special audio and visual Kettle Classic (of course!).

Enjoy…

Our new playlist is available to view here.

If you haven’t already heard, Dianne Thompson’s taking over as non-executive chairman at the RadioCentre.

Who is she, what’s she going to be doing and why’s she so important for us?

Dianne runs the National Lottery operator, Camelot - she is actually inside every machine deciding on the lucky dips. More importantly, she is one of the most respected executives in the UK, a huge fan of commercial radio and one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet.

In the current financial climate, the RadioCentre’s role has never been more important. It’s there to work with advertisers, Ofcom, the Government and unite all of the different commercial radio stations. There’s no better person to do this than Dianne. Since Di took over at Camelot they got their new license and saw growth in ticket sales. Camelot has also been one of the biggest spenders in radio (in the top 20 spenders each year between ‘97-’06) because of the flexibility in booking ads and the power of being able to talk to millions of people across the country. If we can harness her skills, the future’s bright.

Dianne’s also had a go behind the mic. Last year, I produced a special show she hosted on LBC about the lottery. We talked to winners, good causes, ‘the voice of the balls’ and we also took questions from listeners. The aim was to dispell some of the myths about the lottery and the way it’s run. Dianne was a fab speech radio host - a first class communicator, great at putting people at ease and most importantly very open and honest. The other thing I love about Di is that she’s not averse to the odd glass of bubbles and a good old chinwag (you can take the people out of the north…).

She never gave me the winning numbers though… but if we lock her in Studio A with Russ, who knows?

Paul

Below is a presentation from the RadioCentre showing how commercial radio is doing currently following the most recent RAJAR figures released for Q3 2008. Amongst other things, the slides show that commercial radio is very good at reaching a younger audience, and how in places such as London, Glasgow and Birmingham, there is more listening to commercial services than there is to the BBC.

So today saw the start of a new Era for Absolute Radio with the marvellous Jo Russell (another Russell) helming Christian O’Connell’s Breakfast Show while he jets off for yet another pina colada with one of those little umbrellas in the top.

It’s Jo’s first show for Absolute Radio so naturally there will be some nerves. Jo joins us from radio partnership steeped in greatness and showered with praise. After 10 years of working in an award winning double header we thought long and hard about having someone to sit in with her and make her feel at home.

It would have to be someone special.

1 - Someone with charisma.

2 - Someone with charm.

3 - Someone oozing pure sex appeal.

We searched high and low for that elusive talent but to no avail.

But hark what light from yonder window breaks?

Little did we realise that the answer would be staring us in the face, well, maybe a couple of inches below, wearing a little cap and beaming away.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen - It’s with immense pleasure that we announce that Ben Jones will be co-hosting the Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio all this week

In the words of Meatloaf - Two out of three ain’t bad

Sadly we couldn’t do anything about Brian.

He will still be on the show.

It’s a legal requirement.

Roque

Tim Shaw debates with Nigel Evans MP, Shadow Culture Minister on Sky News about the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross affair.

This week in London saw The Digital Radio Show 2008, an industry conference discussing the various aspects of digital radio around Europe and the world.

It’s fair to say that DAB has been through the mill a bit recently with Channel Four pulling out of a consortium to launch additional national digital radio services. At the same time, there is still lots of space on Digital One, the national commercial multiplex.

We heard about the latest state of play of digital radio in the UK, where as you may know, the Digital Radio Working Group is due to report very shortly with some conclusions about how to procede with digital radio.

There were also presentations about satellite radio, new ideas from the BBC including their Olinda prototype DAB receiver, and Radio Pop, their social radio listening prototype.

RadioDNS is an interesting idea, and other presenters told us about the state of play of digital radio in Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and South Korea. It’s clear that so far there’s not a single global digital radio standard and because different countries have different radio models, with public and commercial services operating locally, regionally and nationally working in very different ways depending where you go. Many countries, like the UK, are on course to move from analogue TV to digital TV. Radio is next in everyone’s sights. James Cridland also talks about the conference on his blog.

I presented a brief piece which really talked about the importance of digital radio to Absolute Radio, and why we’re firmly supportive of it. See the slideshow below for a look at what I presented.

As I don’t have an accompanying audio file, I should briefly say that slide 2 does not show a picture of me, but Andy Grumbridge who was originally going to present at the conference.

Possibly the most important slide is slide 9 which shows just to what extent our listeners hear us in a digital format. In London, you can hear us on FM which we sadly can’t offer the rest of the UK, so that final bar which for the most part represents listening outside London is really important to us. It shows that nearly 40% of all listening outside London is digital. As the chart shows, this is far above the radio average. And we continue to see it grow.

Slide 10 shows that the majority of that listening is via DAB which is still obviously currently the most convenient way to hear radio digitally. We really want you to hear us on DAB, and we always encourage you to buy a DAB set. And if you can’t buy one, you can win one. Over the years, this station has given away thousands of DAB radios. And we’ve got a lot more to give away very soon - but more about that closer to the time!

Some naysayers paint DAB as solely a BBC success story with stations like 1Xtra, 6Music and BBC Radio 7 taking all the plaudits. But although the BBC has the lion’s share of DAB listening - well over a third of DAB listening is to commercial stations like Absolute Radio (and Absolute Classic Rock and Absolute Xtreme in London).

Much of the rest of the presentation referred to things that regular readers of this blog will already know, like details of marketing and advertising, the playlist meetings that are now open to listeners to attend and make decisions about, our podcasts, our website, our VIPs, and of course this blog.

Adam

Good news this week in that our podcasts are being promoted on iTunes - on their podcast front page.

I hear you all crying but why’s this important?

The latest industry research shows that 73% of all podcasts are found and delivered via iTunes and so more people will see our podcasts and hopefully sample them. This is particularly good because the image they’re using is one of Iain, Geoff and Christian - currently our three biggest podcast draws.

We can’t buy or ask for this kind of promotion but it comes from being a good supplier, a developing relationship with a lovely man who helps us in many ways and sees that we’re providing lots of good content that people like. It’s also come at a time when people will have started to hear about Absolute Radio thanks to the ads and this could be their first chance to take a listen.

I’ve asked him some questions on how the popularity of our podcasts relate to other radio stations and providers and so we might get some more answers on the health of the podcasting market.

Taking a look at other radio station podcasts - we certainly podcast more than most apart from Radio 1, 4 and 5. It seems people are listening to more and more of our podcasts and we’re working on different ways to increase that even further….

We’ve had record downloads for the Rock n Roll Sports podcast this week and on Tuesday we’ll be trying something new by doing a competition to win England rugby tickets in the podcast.

The excitement around Bond has helped the Movies Extra podcast grow - we’ve also done our first vodcast for that with Adrian’s red carpet reports from the coldest film premiere of the year.

Absolute Uncut is now encompassing interviews across the station and Tim Shaw’s podcast stats are rocketing. Long may it continue!

Paul

Every week we randomly select 120 listeners in London from our database to rate a handful of songs and give us some feedback on various parts of the station. Five weeks ago we started asking whether they had seen any advertising for radio stations either on TV, on posters, billboards and busses or online. This study is only one in a series of projects that we are using to evaluate the effectiveness of our activity and the results need to be treated with a little caution as we’re only surveying listeners and they are far more likely to remember what we are up to. Also, the sample size is quite small so look for trends, not swings.

This week’s summary:

48% of respondents recall seeing a TV ad for a radio station recently, up seven percentage points from last week
47% of those recall seeing an ad for Absolute most recently
Our TV ads are recalled most by women, 40-44s and P1s
Outdoor ad recall is also up with 45% of respondents remembering seeing a radio ad recently (up 20 points)
39% of them recall seeing an ad for Absolute most recently
Our outdoor ads are also recalled most by women, 40-44s and P1s
35% of respondents recall seeing a radio ad online recently (up eight points)
71% of those recall seeing an ad for Absolute most recently
Our online ads are recalled most by men, 40-44s and P1s

The bit of industry jargon that may need explaining are P1s and P2s. P1s listen to us most, we are their first preference, while we’re the second choice station for P2s. Our average P1 listens to us for around 14 of the 22 hours they spend listening to the radio each week. Our average P2 listens to us for around five of their 22 hours.

Here’s a link to this week’s new playlist.

Following the success of a new-look Studio A and various Outside Broadcasts (and I could go on) over the past few weeks, the Technology Services department are now full steam ahead into their next project.

As part of our split from SMG and various shared services, we are replacing the entire core networking infrastructure and office phone systems at One Golden Square.

When I write the words ‘entire’, ‘core’, ‘networking’ and ‘infrastructure’, it sends shivers up my spine……for two reasons, because I am a real geek at heart AND because this is a huge job to complete!

Here’s a sneak preview of the servers that have been purchased for this project…(really interesting photo below!) - In the not so distant future, these guys will play their part in everything we all do at One Golden Square, from saving a word document, booking a meeting room, sending an email and making a phone call to paying salaries!

So, if we seem a little more wide-eyed and crazy over the next few weeks than usual, (I’ve never been allowed so close to such a beautiful coffee machine before) please bear with us and understand that this is a huge investment and we have to get it right first time!

Here’s to a successful migration!

Paul

Snow Patrol on Ben Jones’ Monday Night Live
Monday 27th October, 22:00 – midnight

It’s no easy feat to follow up on an album that sold nearly 5million copies worldwide and produced one of the most popular songs of the decade with Chasing Cars but Snow Patrol might just have pulled it off. Judge for yourselves as Ben Jones plays the new album, A Hundred Million Songs, in it’s entirety with commentary from lead singer Gary Lightbody.

Razorlight on Ben Jones’ Monday Night Live
Monday 3rd November, from 11pm

Indie rockers Razorlight are following their four-times platinum 2006 album with the highly anticipated Slipway Fires which Absolute Radio listeners can hear in full from 11pm tonight. The first single release Wire to Wire has already been a massive hit with Absolute Radio listeners and we’re sure the new album is destined to be an Absolute Classic too.

Vampire Weekend on Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show
Wednesday 5th November, 19:00 – 20:00

The New Yorkers join Geoff Lloyd to talk about their self-titled debut album. The 4-piece mix indie rock with the kind of African rhythms found on Paul Simon’s Graceland, as well as other ‘80s acts like Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. ‘Vampire Weekend’ is likely to feature highly in many end-of-year polls. The band already landed ‘Best Video’ at the Q Awards for their single ‘A-Punk’, where they were also nominated for Best New Act and Best Album.

Classic Artist Hour on Ben Jones Wednesday Night Live
Wednesday 5th November, from 11pm

Its all about Liverpool this week as the European capital of Culture hosts the MTV awards. So it would be rude not to give you a full hour of the best ever bands from this most musical of cities, from 11pm to midnight.

Stereophonics on Ben Jones’ Monday Night Live
Monday 10th November, 22:00 – midnight

Since their debut album, Word Gets Around, hit the Top 10, Stereophonics have had 5 consecutive albums reach number 1 in the UK charts. Their first compilation, Decade in the Sun: The Best of Stereophonics, celebrates some of their greatest songs and on its day of release, Ben Jones chats to man behind the music, Kelly Jones, as we look back on their classic album Performance and Cocktails. Expect a lively trip down memory lane with songs like ‘Bartender And The Thief’, ‘Just Looking’ and ‘Pick A Part That’s New’.

Simple Minds on Ben Jones’ Wednesday Night Live
Wednesday 12th November, 22:00 – midnight

Ben Jones chats to Jim Kerr as we play back 1 hour of classic Simple Minds. It’s 30 years since the band first started out and Ben will be finding out more about the eagerly awaited 16th album which is due for release early next year. Absolute Radio listeners can also win tickets to see the band perform live on their UK Tour.

Nickelback on Ben Jones’ Monday Night Live
Monday 17th November, from 11pm

Chris Martin declared himself a huge fan of Nickelback at the launch of Absolute Radio and 12 years after they released their first album Curb, Nickelback’s popularity shows no sign of waning. Tonight we celebrate the release of their sixth album, Dark Horse, by playing it in full on Ben Jones Monday Night Live from 11pm.

The Fireman: Paul McCartney and Producer Youth.
Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show, Tuesday 18th November, 19:00 – 20:00

To mark the release of Sir Paul’s new project Geoff Lloyd will be dedicating this Tuesday’s show to all things Macca.

The Killers on Ben Jones’ Wednesday Night Live
Wednesday 19th November, from 11pm

In celebration of their new album, Day and Age, Absolute Radio will be asking its listeners to vote for the top ten Killers tracks so far. Hear the results – and a few that got away – from 11pm tonight and don’t forget to tune in to the show on Monday when Ben will be playing the new album in full for the first time.

Queen weekend
From 6am Saturday 22nd to 7pm Sunday 23rd of November

They’re one of the biggest rock bands of all time it’s only right that Absolute Radio should dedicate an entire weekend to the musical gods that are Queen. Monday marks the 17th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death so we’ll be paying tribute with anthems, album tracks and live performances throughout the weekend. Listeners will also be able to hear Queen’s classic album A Night at the Opera in full plus there’s the chance to win a very special guitar too.

The Killers on Ben Jones’ Monday Night Live
Monday 24th November, from 11pm

Hear the new Killers album, Day and Age in all its glory from 11pm on Ben Jones Monday Night Live.