BBC posts

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. 

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. 

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.

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). 

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.

Radio 4’s Today programme is so often the icing on the cake in a broadcast PR campaign, so it could come as a shock to many of us in the industry to learn this flagship news show has suffered a fall in listening figures.

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 Keren Haynes, Co-Director

At Shout! Communications we don’t think broadcast PR IS separate from “mainstream” PR, and it has always amazed us that there are those in the industry who think it is anything other than an integral part of any campaign.

By Kate Fallis, Broadcast PR Consultant

The latest RAJAR figures are just out, reflecting the first 3 months of this year, and there are some surprising outcomes to say the least.

By Arthur Perkins, Broadcast PR Consultant

You think you’ve got a strong story; the stats and spokespeople are lined up, you call the planning desk and they want you to send over your press release, you get a call back, they’re interested! Then, the producer calls and says, “something else has come up, we can’t do this anymore”. Cue despair.

by Catherine Bayfield, Co-Director

From Monday 16th April it’s all change at ITV Daytime with their big move from London’s South Bank to White City.