James Hanson began his broadcasting career at Radio Somerset. It was the sort of job where there’s a small team and you have to do a bit of everything, from making the tea and writing the travel bulletins, to reading the news and presenting programmes. Based in a mainly rural area, there wasn’t often a busy news agenda so James and his colleagues had to work hard to find a story.
This was the start of a ten-year stint at the BBC for James, a decade that included reporting for The Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 and Radio 4’s Today programme. A highlight, however, was an interview he conducted with the then Prime Minister Liz Truss for BBC Radio Bristol in September 2022. She had just presented her mini budget to much furore and, some suspected, she’d thought she’d get away with an easy ride if she did some BBC regional rather than national radio interviews. She didn’t! James was one of several who gave the Prime Minister a grilling – and he won a Press Gild Award for his endeavours.
James Hanson left BBC radio to become a roving presenter for Times Radio – standing in for various hosts in their absence – a great way to really understand the station, the sister station to The Times Newspaper.
About Times Radio
Times Radio is an all speech, news and current affairs station. This, James says, brings its challenges when you have a 24/7 schedule to fill and no music to pad the gaps. For that reason, James says encouragingly, PR story pitches will always be considered.
Stories that get the most attention, however, are ones that fit in with the news agenda of the day. That’s when offering an expert on a particular topic will often result in coverage. James gives financial services as an example – anyone who can comment on topics like interest rates, GDP or inflation, amongst other subjects, is going to get snapped up.
Different programmes on Times Radio have their own styles. Days after speaking at our Small Talk, James Hanson was presenting a Saturday show, which is much more arts orientated, featuring the likes of authors and comedians. Fi Glover and Jane Garvey’s programme meanwhile favours celebrities.
The Breakfast and Drivetime programmes are the most news focused and for this reason stories are covered in brief.
The Times Radio Audience
The audience of Times Radio, James Hanson explains, is similar to those that The Times Newspaper attracts. Typically they’re ABC1s, or, as James says, “one of the poshest listenerships in the country”. They’re more likely to be university educated and more likely to be affluent.
The link between the radio and the newspaper is invaluable as a good interview on the former can often end up in the later – as long as it’s newsworthy. James gives an example of Jeremy Clarkson, who was on Times Radio talking about his new pub recently. That’s more a feature. But, during the interview he vowed to ban Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer from the pub. That angle made the story in the newspaper.
Spokespeople
Whether Times Radio takes a corporate spokesperson will depend on the story. If anything the story needs to be more engaging than ever to compensate for this.
James says they want powerful interviews, that get to the core of humanity. Case studies really help with this.
Times Radio loves an expert, one who can comment on the news agenda. And they like to mix things up – they’re always looking for new guests, rather than inviting the same ones back time and again.
Branding
James Hanson says a radio PR story can’t be an advert but he will let guests get their messaging across.
Sorts of stories
As with any news outlet, there are some perennial stories but James Hanson likes to find a new twist on them. He cited a Shout story from Christmas last year: the story was talking about preparing Christmas lunch and James took our client, a charity called Mary’s Meals to give a different twist.
The Times Radio audio enjoys a travel story, because they have more disposable income therefore want to travel themselves.
Health is always a good one, particularly health issues common in later life – again reflecting the audience’s own interests. For example, is red wine good for you.
Awareness days makes James a little wary. He will do them, but there needs to be a stronger story alongside them.
They have a strong interest in international news too, particularly what’s going on in the US, Russia and Ukraine. With other international news they’ll try and give a UK angle, for example the impact of the French election on people in the UK.
Embargos
Can we trust Times Radio not to break an embargo? James says, yes we can. Sometimes however they might ask the reason behind an embargo time. For example, if the embargo is 0600 that would preclude the station from using the story on the 0500 show. Our advice is to embargo a story to 00:01, that way you don’t miss out!
Zoom or studio?
As we all know, the pandemic changed everything and pushed radio interviews – that used to be conducted over an ISDN line – online instead. James Hanson is reluctant to take a phone interview because the sound quality is not as good. The audio quality is better on Zoom but some producers still prefer guests to come into the studio.
Added value
Times Radio is not alone in visualising their programmes. That means every radio programme is recorded on video too – then clipped up for use on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Times Radio has 1 million subscribers to their YouTube channel alone, so this is a great bit of added value.
Podcasts
“The World In 10” is Times Radio’s summing up of the daily news agenda in ten minutes. As such PR stories are unlikely to feature – but there is a plethora of other podcasts produced by the organisation on all sorts of subjects from sport, to the Royals and lifestyle and wine.
If you fail to get coverage on Times Radio this doesn’t preclude you from going direct for a podcast. You don’t have to be on the radio first, which increases your chances of coverage.
Podcasts, James assures, have a very loyal audience.
Top tips for a radio PR campaign
Some points James Hanson says will help increase the chances of your PR story getting on air:
- Be clear what the story is.
- Ask yourself why listeners should care
- Have a great spokesperson – and one that suits Times Radio. Nigella Lawson or Rob Bryden would be great in James’ eyes, regardless of what product they’re pushing!
- Email is better than phone
- DON’T offer a spokesperson – just for them not to be available after all. That, James says, is SO irritating
For more tips about radio days click here: https://shoutcommunications.co.uk/what-we-do/broadcast-media-relations/radio-public-relations/
Interested in securing coverage for your brand or clients on radio stations like Time Radio? Email hello@shoutcommunications.co.uk or call us on 020 7240 7373 to speak to a member of our media relations team.
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