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The month of August is traditionally the height of the silly season – the time of year when so many people are away the news agenda is light.   But not this year.   The pandemic means the news agenda has never been busier.   Find out how to cut through and make the most of this not so silly silly season.  https://shoutcommunications.co.uk/blog/

It’s become expected practise that spokespeople will have received media training before appearing on radio and television, but presentation training is often overlooked.

Securing international broadcast coverage for clients is becoming much more prevalent and often the icing on the cake off the back of a successful UK campaign. Many clients have an EMEA and global brief too and selling into more than one territory is often a requirement.

Content has evolved from mere repetition of radio programmes and extensions of these programmes to stand alone series, be they feature led, comedy, talk shows or drama documentaries. In PR terms we can exploit the opportunities offered by podcasting in a number of ways…

We have held our Big Talk events for several years, but this was the first time we’ve had an all-radio and an all-female line-up. When it comes to PR stories, whilst many brands would love to find airtime with them, they’re a tough audience to please

On Friday 12th April, 2019, Shout! Communications broadcast its own online radio station.  Being a broadcast PR agency, we focused on broadcast PR. But the same framework could work for any brand and campaign, no matter what subject or who you want to reach. Having your own radio station is a unique and cost effective tool with which you can reach a wide or a niche audience

It’s RAJAR day! The Q2 2019 results are out and there are some major changes across national and regional radio in the UK.  We’re taking a look at those changes to see who’s come out on top this quarter…

Love Island, it’s one of ITV 2’s most popular reality television series, with producers scrolling through thousands of applications each year. While it may seem life in the villa is all things glamorous, it is indeed a big risk for these (mostly) everyday beautiful people to leave their full –time jobs and hope they stay in the series long enough to make an impact. Don’t get me wrong – most Islanders go on to make mega-bucks, but what about the ones that only hang on for a few days? Before we look at the successful future careers of the main attractions, we have to take a look at the ones who came in looking for love, but probably only left the show as unemployed.  

Research can sometimes have a bad reputation in PR circles, but in our experience, radio in particular still has an appetite for a story based on numbers.  Many of the most successful broadcast days we do are based around some sort of new research.  But with so much competition for air-time, how can you make your research appeal to broadcasters? 

The joint founders and owners of Talker Tailor Trouble Maker spoke to Shout! Communications co-founder Catherine Bayfield, on Shout! Digital Radio, earlier this year. 

Andrew Verity told our audience at the latest Shout! Communications Small Talk. Andrew reports for radio and television across a range of BBC programmes. His main focus is economics, but he also works on investigative stories for programmes like Panorama. 

Shout! Communications set up Shout! Digital Radio for a special day of broadcasting in which we covered many different aspects of the broadcast and PR landscape to hopefully spread some light on areas listeners may not know so much about. I invited Lyndsey Ferrigan from RAJAR to take part. She’s the communications manager for the organisation which is responsible for monitoring audience figures in the UK.  

Shout! Communications co-founder Catherine Bayfield talked with some of the PR world’s biggest names, including Andrew Bloch, co-founder at Frank.

It’s a national, digital radio station which reaches over half a million people every week, but also one that is perhaps not as well understood as the more mainstream BBC stations. So it was with interest that we welcomed George Mann, Impact Editor at BBC Asian Network, to speak at one of our regular Shout! Communications Small Talks. 

The radio industry has gone through a sea change these last few months, so RAJAR’s (Radio Joint Audience Research) latest audience figures were much anticipated. RAJAR are the official body for measuring the radio audience in the UK and release a quarterly report that details which stations have gained audience and those which have dropped.

In this digital age, it’s smart phones that rule the world; but are you using yours to its full potential? According to our recent Shout! Communications Small Talk speaker, Marc Settle, if you’re only using your phone for calls and texts, then you might as well have an old-school Nokia from the early 2000s! Marc is the BBC’s trainer in mobile journalism and his insights were nothing short of extraordinary. Not only is mobile technology changing the way broadcast journalists work, it will change the way we view and interact with it as an audience too.

The UK’s first radio station, dedicated to all things to do with public relations, recently took to the air, broadcasting online for a day. Shout! Digital Radio featured some of the biggest names in the industry and a programme called “Five At Four” show-cased profile interviews with founders and agency bosses including Sarah Ogden, Head of Corporate Brand at 3 Monkeys Zeno.  This is a transcript of some of the highlights from her interview with Shout! Communications Joint Managing Director, Catherine Bayfield:   

To OB, or not to OB? That is the question…Whilst many radio days can be completed from the comfort of our lovely Bloomsbury studio, there are some which can benefit from the atmosphere of an outside broadcast (OB).  

An OB typically consists of studio equipment which is set up in a remote location, outside of a studio. It means live and pre-recorded interviews can be conducted with more context and atmosphere. Potentially (technology allowing) it can be done from anywhere: an event, a ship-launch, a field…you are only limited by your imagination. So, if you’re tossing up the pros and cons of an OB for an upcoming campaign, this should give you more of an idea of what it’s all about.  

With trepidation, and ten seconds to go before the computer clock turned 1100, we pressed “Play” and Shout! Digital Radio was broadcasting.  And actually, for the one day we were on-air, it went really well.    

All our content for the six hours we broadcast last Friday (12th April, 2019) was pre-recorded and I think that was the right decision.  It meant that we could edit down and air the very best content from the amazing line-up of speakers who joined us.    I have a background as a radio and television journalist, which involved umpteen (sometimes heart-stopping) live broadcasts; but, for Shout! Digital Radio, there was reassurance in knowing all the interviewees were there – no one was going to be lost because of technology or on account of them going to our old studio address!   

On Friday 12th April, 2019, Shout! Communications is running its own radio station. We’ll be broadcasting online and talking about PR – with a special nod to broadcast PR, of course.  How the sector promotes itself, the extent to which Brexit is affecting the industry and the big shake-ups that have taken place in radio so far this year, are just some of the topics that will be hitting the air-waves.   

The “B” word. It’s topical, it’s divisive and you’ve probably not gone a day without mentioning it since at least June 2016.  We’re talking about Brexit. That was the topic of our latest Shout! Communications’ Big Talk event, where we asked a stellar line-up of senior broadcast editors to share their thoughts on the current political landscape.  

The gender pay gap, HeForShe and #MeToo have pushed gender parity to the forefront of 21st century societal changes. Broadcast by definition includes the widest possible audiences; it, therefore, plays a unique and important role in this gender revolution.  TV and radio have a particular responsibility to accurately represent society, both in terms of who appears on our airwaves, and with the journalists who put the programmes together.

As much air-time as you desire and as many brand mentions as you can fit in….just a couple of the advantages of launching your own radio station. And that’s not as far fetched as it sounds. For a modest budget and a bit of effort any organisation or individual can “own” some of the airways as part of a dedicated broadcast PR campaign.

The radio group will network its breakfast shows on Capital, Heart and Smooth by the end of 2019 and will close numerous regional stations completely. Hoping to rival the likes of BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2, Global say they’re creating the three largest commercial radio breakfast shows in the UK on Capital, Heart and Smooth with 4.8m, 3.7m and 2.7m weekly listeners. It comes after Ofcom made changes to its localness guide and announced the deregulation of commercial radio in October 2018.

Radio PR, radio days, radio studio days….whatever label you give to a PR campaign involving radio the number of listeners you can reach is massive, with nearly 48 million people in the UK tuning into the medium each week. So how can we in the PR industry best use technology to exploit this potential? 

There is no denying podcasts have taken the world by storm in a scarily short amount of time.  It’s crazy to think around 6 million UK adults are tuning in to podcasts every week. That’s a number that’s almost doubled in five years (from 3.2 million in 2013) according to the latest Ofcom figures.

The main headlines see the total reach drop more significantly in London over the past 12 months than across the rest of the UK. Total UK radio audiences were down 0.9% in Q4/18 compared with Q4/17. In the capital the drop was 3.9% – with some stations losing hundreds of thousands of listeners. Regardless of this, 88% of the population listen to the radio at some point each week (48.4 million people). 

And just like that, January 2019 and all the broadcast PR campaigns about health and resolutions, has come to an end – over in a flash (or maybe not for those whose month has been drier than others). February often seems quite frantic and by March, ordinarily, the year has found its regular pace. Not this year though….

Netflix- the streaming giant has long been untouchable and on its own in the streaming market, with its main competitors unable to get close in terms of numbers and dominance of the market. The company recently announced that its year end subscribers total 139 million, and estimates it now has 10% of all screen time in the US.  But is 2019 the year that it’s competitors up their game?

It’s been described by some journalists as “the dark art” and by disgruntled PR’s as an industry struggling to adjust, a profession which has many health issues and doesn’t like to self diagnose. It’s good to take a peak behind the PR curtain and as a PR practitioner I’m disappointed to see so much negativity and confusion about who we are and what we do. 

I was feeling less nervous than the previous time. I can’t have been that bad I thought, as I made my way to BBC Broadcasting House to take part in Radio 4’s The Media Show, or they wouldn’t have invited me back.

Christmas videos:  you either love them or hate them. From Reuniting loved ones to a ‘wrapping’ Santa. We list some of our favourite corporate/ business Christmas videos for 2018. 

We now know who the winner of “I’m A Celeb” is, but what happens next? Who is going to be hitting the screens and soundwaves with the PR pound behind them? As you may have seen on Sunday, Harry Redknapp was crowned king of the jungle, replacing his predecessor Georgia “Toff” Toffolo.

The latest speaker in our long running series of Small Talks was Scott Beasley, Assistant Editor for Sky News’ “Ian King Live” programme.   The FTSE 100, macro economics, interest rates, smaller companies, technology and interesting characters are just some of the topics that float the “Ian King Live” boat.

This year’s “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” is the most popular series to date, based on viewing figures, in the show’s 18-year history. But why is this group doing so well and why is watching celebrities eating fish eyes so entertaining? 

Broadcast PR. You hear us talk about it a lot- after all it’s what we live and breathe- but do you know what it actually is?  

Keren will appear on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow- she takes some leaves out of her own media training book in preparation!

In some countries it is known as ‘Cucumber Time’, but in Britain it’s the silly season.  The term was coined in an edition of the Saturday Review published in 1861 and the phrase has just stuck.  We’re now at the tail end of the summer, the point when radio and TV programmes allow themselves to be more frivolous, but are you making the most of it?

If you’ve ever been ‘ghosted’ by a date, then you’ll know how awful it feels and how it leaves you questioning what you may have done wrong. If you’ve experienced ‘ghosting’ in a professional sense, then you’ll also know that hurts too!   This week, we delve into the issue of what we’re calling “professional ghosting” and the way it could come back to haunt you. Chances are, you too know of a few professional ghosters…

By Kate Fallis, Broadcast PR Consultant

So, you’ve booked in your broadcast campaign and the launch day has finally arrived. Now it’s showtime and the pressure is on your spokesperson to weave in key messages and branding within the interviews, to keep you, or if you’re an agency, your client happy.

By Kate Fallis, Broadcast PR Consultant

Securing overseas coverage for clients is becoming much more prevalent and often the icing on the cake off the back of a successful UK campaign. Many clients have an EMEA and global brief too and selling in to international broadcasters is increasingly a requirement.

by Catherine Bayfield, Co-Director

Often the kids are brilliant to work with, but the proud mums and dads can sometimes over promise and under deliver when it comes to their child’s ability in front of the camera, literally pushing them in front of the camera in some cases, when their child is tearful and reluctant.  Our recommendation is to over book the number of children you need, invariably one will drop out and even the most outgoing child can clam up when you switch the video camera on.

by Matt Napier, Broadcast Assistant

Much like comparing TV to radio, some stories simply aren’t made for everything. If you’ve got a story with a visual aspect then TV will, naturally, be more appropriate than radio. However, if your campaign is based on spreading information to the masses using spokespeople and statistics, then radio will be the way to go.

By Kate Fallis, Broadcast PR Consultant

We recently had the pleasure of hosting Jim Grice, Head of News and Current Affairs at London Live, at Shout! Communications for a ‘Small Talk’. As a regional and national media veteran, we knew Jim’s insights would be invaluable to us and our guests, so we’d like to share them with those of you who weren’t there.