I read this morning that the Tories would privatise Radio 1.
Sometimes the Sunday Times just make things up but if it is true, here’s the short answer why they shouldn’t do it:
Radio One provides unique high quality content to a young audience. It engages them in important social action campaigns and provides a first class news service, second to none on any other BBC network. That’s before you begin to look at its broad repertoire of underground and new music. The commercial sector cannot begin to emulate it.
Here’s the longer answer:
Other than Radio 1, you cannot find a broadcast radio station in Britain that engages with young adults at scale and on their terms. The station does this because it has the luxury of having a wider remit than a good balance sheet at the end of the month.
Ever heard of snatch land rovers? Of course you have. That’s because when listeners talked to their loved ones on tour in Afghanistan, they were terrified that a new killer technology – the Improvised Explosive Device was not being taken seriously by the top brass at the MoD.
They talked to the people they trusted – the Radio One Newsbeat team. At a time when the mainstream press were either ignoring, or didn’t know the concerns of soldiers in the field, Radio One pushed the story that Snatch Land Rovers were no match for the crude roadside killer technology.
It caused me much distress and great political difficulty at the time – I was a Defence Minister at the MoD. Yet believe me when I tell you that Radio One gave their listeners a voice. No commercial radio station would have bothered to run the IED story, let alone dared to break it. For the avoidance of doubt – I strongly maintain that the top brass at the MoD do take IEDs seriously.
In retort to this argument, some would say that it is not the preserve of Radio One to break news stories and campaign on social issues. They argue that the station is there to provide light music entertainment and that alone. And they get irritated if the station spends license payer money to do these things. In reply to a post I made on Twitter about this story, MartinLeJeune responded that “[the] idea that I should pay a tax for R1 and its alleged social content is really too bizarre”.
Yet when angry young motorists find that a very powerful financial institution like Norwich Union is not, in fact, “quoting me happy” as their marketing campaign suggested, who else would take up their concerns?
I’ve not looked at the latest data but I would hazard a guess that somewhere near the top of the list of concerns for the country’s Generation Y cohort (the digitally enabled under-30’s) would be: alcohol, drugs, body image, debt and anti-social behaviour.
When Chris Moyles had the courage to talk about his sense of himself in relation to his weight, it gripped Radio One listeners. Nearly 8 million people clicked on the part of the Radio One web site that displayed the before and after shots of Mr Moyles. The before picture was of a pudgy unshaven bloke in jeans. And the photo-shopped after-shot of Chris with four stones of beer belly airbrushed out of history. Likewise, Kelly Clarkson Osbourne looking like an emaciated size zero model sent out a clear message. It was a unique way of engaging with a younger audience.
A quick Google search tells me that 1.1 million people in the UK suffer from some form of eating disorder. Millions more like me worry about their weight.
Being a fat bloke I think to myself, good on you Chris Moyles. And good on the social action unit of Radio One who, with great creativity and a gentle touch help our nation’s angst ridden youngsters to understand the world that they live in. The work they do has little commercial value but is a quintessential element of the BBCs public service broadcasting obligation.
There is a reason why Great Western Radio is crap. It’s because it costs money to create high quality, interesting content. And Great Western Radio does not produce high quality, interesting content. It’s muzac piped out of a digital play list that a graduate first jobber has bashed together on a computer keyboard. It’s not radio, it’s yawnio.
These kinds of radio stations took a commercial decision not to pay performers, presenters and content creators by cutting back every budget in order to maximize profit. And they were very successful at it for a time. They’re in trouble now because nobody is interested in listening to the radio equivalent of somebody else’s iTunes play list. Those kinds of Radio stations sound the same in Stockport of Swindon. And when they’re not distinctive, why should their listeners bother to keep listening?
Yet it is those very same commercial broadcasters who are trying to convince us that Radio One is now damaging their commercial interests. They have only themselves to blame and I’m disappointed that Ed Vaizey has bought their argument.
The truth is that if Ed – whom I regard as a thoroughly decent man and one of the most informed of Conservative MPs – wishes to sell-off Radio One, a large amount of money can be generated for the Exchequer. The Sunday Times estimates £100 million. Why is this? If Radio 1 were just another bank of servers and an antenna it wouldn’t be worth dime.
The reason Radio One is worth so much money is the brand. And a brand is like a birds nest. You build it twig by twig. Radio One’s strength is great performers like Chris Moyles, a passion for music and musicians from the likes of Jo Whiley and the ability to be a little out there – try DJ Edu on One Extra.
People think they know what to expect with Radio One; politicians in particular. I’m not sure if we do though. It’s a station that has to recreate itself every generation. It’s almost impossible for us to understand the presenters and their audience.
Ed’s interview in the Sunday Times did raise an important issue of concern though – the age profile of Radio One listeners. I know that the BBC top brass worry about this a lot. The recent Trust report flagged it up. And there is a kind of institutionalised BBC response to this. When average age starts to go up, first their executives look to median age as a better determinant of youth profile. Then they blame external factors – the current vogue being the diverse nature of the Internet (with some justification). And when it gets too much of a worry they sack the presenters and get in new voices of a younger generation. It’s brutal. But then again, isn’t that what Radio 2 is for?
So my argument is that Radio 1 is much more that a music station. Ed’s analysis fails to understand this. It would be a tragedy if the station were to be sold off.
16 comments ↓
Tom
I liked this even though I disagree with it almost completely. I don’t want R1 to be sold off because the government needs money: but I believe there is more fundamental reason for slimming down the BBC. We live in an age of choice. we should do everything we can to ensure that people have their own money to spend consuming the media they want. While there are arguments in favour of state-supported public service content, they surely do not extend to the maintenance of a national radio station, the vast majority of whose content is currently or would be duplicated by the commercial sector. And ask yourself this. Why are the commercial stations unable to invest in news? Why do they fail to explore new music? Surely the answer is obvious. They have a #3.6bn BBC gorilla to face and they cannot compete. Let’s get the state out of pop music and allow new services, many of them internet-based, to flourish on the basis of people choosing them rather than being forced to pay for them. It’s called freedom and we should have more of it.
Cheers
Martin
Great post! Stupid Tories!
Size zero model was Kelly osborne, not clarkson btw
Great Western Radio doesn’t even exist now – they’re all called Heart. Commercial Radio has completely and utterly given up – but I think Radio 2 is more to blame than Radio 1 for this. I don’t see social action or a broad cultural representation on R2; just GWR from 1992 but with higher-paid presenters.
Utterly sensible stuff Tom. I disagree with Martin when he writes that “the vast majority of… content is currently or would be duplicated by the commercial sector.”. If Radio 1 didn’t exist, then I do not believe that commercial radio would be in any hurry to fill that void.
With the vast majority of commercial enterprises (Apple being an example that proves the rule), money, hand in hand with mediocrity, is the bottom line.
Commercial radio has, by and large, morphed into a number of differently named but indistinct stations playing the same bland muzak, and with no eye or ear for anything remotely diverse or thought provoking. The news is simply a distraction which gets in the way of a track by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.
Stations which dont cater for the mainstream, such as Planet Rock (old metallist here!), struggle because they’re not seen as commercial or profit generating.
Commercial radio is merely following in the footsteps of shopping ‘malls’ (yuk), television (thank goodness for the BBC again), and even football stadiums. Wherever you are, it all just looks and sounds the same.
There’s an excellent, and much better written article than anything I could pen, in this months issue of music magazine ‘Q’. It extols the virtue of BBC 4 against a background of deadhead stations showing wall-to-wall Jeremy Kyle.
BBC radio and television is currently the last remaining defender of consistent, quality ‘content’ (yuk again!).
Rant over.
There is one group of young people which Radio One (the Beeb in general) fails and that’s LGBT.
It’s not just keeping Myles on but that they would run an anti-HIV campaign aimed solely at heterosexual kids at a time when HIV rates for gays are shooting up.
Stonewall has the research on why the BBC fails gays.
NB: no, I don’t want it privatised.
The consensus at a debate at the last Tory conference which had Ed on the panel is that there is no possible public interest argument for ploughing public money into Radio 1. These are the sort of difficult decisions your government can never take.
Fantastic piece here. You’ve hit the nail right on the head. Unfortunately the BBC is getting hammered by everyone these days. People should note the commercial sector were not so worried about the BBC when they were making their ultra millions on fat advertising (but still producing radio very few sub-30 want to listen to.)
Radio One gets the audience figures it does because it keeps itself fresh and on the ball, and it takes risks. I dread a commercial only media that plays it safe.
“Other than Radio 1, you cannot find a broadcast radio station in Britain that engages with young adults at scale and on their terms.”
But, you can find literally 1,000s on the Internet. From all over the world. And that’s precisely what ‘yoof’ does. Tunes in online. “Broadcast” radio is over. We don’t need DJs to filter our music anymore. We can choose.
I had the misfortune to listen to Chris Moyles the other day. He didn’t play 1 record for over 25 minutes. He just wittered on with his ‘crew’ talking inane, putrid crap. And for that you pay a licence fee? DJ = Disc Jockey, so play some fucking discs you fat twat. Or mp3s. Or something. But STOP FUCKING TALKING, SHIT HEAD.
Here in Madrid we have no exact equivalent to Radio 1. There’s RNE3, the state broadcaster’s ‘yoof channel’ but we don’t pay a licence fee so it’s not dominant. And yet, the choice on the FM dial here is better than in London. Although I choose to listen to Internet radio, when in the car I can go Radio Vallekas, Maxima FM, Antena 6, Europa FM, Kiss, MQM, Circulo, Marca, SER, Top Radio, Los 40, Onda and many others – all covering the Radio 1 demographic and providing a far wider range of music. Why such a large choice? ‘Cos there ain’t no Radio 1 equivalent squeezing the life out of the commercial sector, that’s why.
Radio 1′s time is up. It’s old and stale and about as exciting as pilchards. Let Britain move into the 21st century. Scrap it now.
[...] years on.4. Mark Pack on internet friendships.5. John Prescott takes Harriet Harman to task.6. Tom Watson thinks Radio 1 should not be privatised.7. Guido on a legal spat between Alan Sugar and Quentin [...]
Isn’t the value of Radio One that it is one of the few National frequencies in the UK. The only non BBC National Radio service is Classic FM. In comparing Commercial stations offerings with the Beeb you are comparing local services with a National Service that has massive tax payers funds behind it. At the moment the BBC seems determined to alienate as many people as possible. Older women are sacked, the sort of gesture such as a present for a colleagues baby are paid for out of the BBC tax (I always thought that a group of colleagues paying out of their own pay was a far more thoughtful gesture). We now know that the Controller BBC1 has a second job training BBC presenters.
Teenagers, young adults and some mature adults love Radio one. The diversity of music is a compliament to the station. One of the best things also is that their is no interruption with annoying adverts. The Tories will be doing a diservice to popular culture within the UK if it is allowed to be sold off. They are afterall Conservatives who say they stick up for the traditional culture of the UK. Radio 1 is a part of our traditional culture.
“They talked to the people they trusted – the Radio One Newsbeat team. At a time when the mainstream press were either ignoring, or didn’t know the concerns of soldiers in the field, Radio One pushed the story that Snatch Land Rovers were no match for the crude roadside killer technology.
It caused me much distress and great political difficulty at the time – I was a Defence Minister at the MoD. Yet believe me when I tell you that Radio One gave their listeners a voice. No commercial radio station would have bothered to run the IED story, let alone dared to break it”
Why did the soldiers and their families not feel able to trust communicating their concerns to you or the other Defence Ministers or the senior MoD civil servants directly ?
Why are there no confidential “whistleblower”, or other lines of direct communication, available to them ?
You are seriously damaging your argument for keeping Radio 1 from being sold off, by using Chris Moyles as an example. He repeatedly causes genuine offence to lots of people with his insults e.g.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3546650/BBC-DJ-Chris-Moyles-sparks-anger-by-appearing-to-suggest-Poles-made-good-prostitutes.html
[...] Visit Radio 1 – More than a music station. Don’t privatise it. [...]
Perhaps its worth applying some of the same insights that have been applied to online media, to radio.
A central message that has emerged is that a medium like twitter or blogs can be used for very different purposes. So for e.g. #iranelection can sit quite happily alongside #RIPMichaelJackson, doing very different things but using the same tool.
Is it useful to separate radio in that way too? Unlike the internet, bandwith on the radio is relatively scarce, even with DAB. Is public interference in this market appropriate? Either way, its clear that Heart or GWR are doing something very different from Radio 1.
I’m a fan of PSB in general and support a publicly-funded BBC, but playing devil’s adviocate for a moment: If Radio 1 is valued at £100m, and you’re saying that this value comes from its PSB content, then wouldn’t a commerical owner maintain the same types of content in order to protect the brand, and its investment?
hello. if i want to listen to Radio-1 FM from Syria, what is the frequency of this station?
can anyone provide me with this info?
and thanks…
Soren K,
I can tell from the way you say “yoof” you are not part of the youth. And you are not in Britain either, so how can you speak for the British youth? As a 17 year old in Britain, I can tell you that I and many of my friends tune to Radio 1. I don’t listen to any other radio stations, because of the annoying advertisements they spew out, and because of the fact that they just play music.
Every DJ on Radio 1 has their own character to it. You say that Chris Moyles spewed out “putrid crap” for 25 minutes without playing a single record. Well, you probably tuned in for the first half hour of the show where they talk for half an hour until the 7 o’clock news. While you may consider it “putrid crap” you are not the “yoof”, so you cannot speak for the target audience. I and many other people enjoy listening to Moyles. Let me tell you, I don’t listen to Radio 1 for the music. While I like the type of music they play, if I want just music I’ll go to my iTunes playlist. I listen to it for the entertainment factor.
I challenge you to find a radio station that has a show like Scott Mills’, where they have daily features which take more than 5 minutes to produce. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find any other radio station that has a DJ who can produce a 40-50 minute podcast every day from a 3 hour show.
Tom Watson has hit the nail right on the head. Radio 1 is great because it isn’t commercial and doesn’t have to turn a profit at the end of the month. This means it can serve the interests of it’s listeners.
On a side-note, I am in two minds about Moyles. While I find him quite entertaining, as somebody already mentioned he has caused offence to people so many times in the past. He needs to tread carefully.
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