Big L a month on

It’s Flashback Friday.  Every Friday we bring back a golden oldie article from yesteryear. A chance for you to re-read it and see if it is still relevant today!

So, Big L, or Radio London, or Wonderful Radio London, or Radio London International, the heart and soul of rock and roll, broadcasting night and day from music city, UK, is now a month old.

I know nothing of airtime sales. I’m a programmer. I understand formats and how the public relate to them. The one thing I know about Big L is that, since it’s not on a level playing field with all the major Borg groups and their radio stations, it really does have to make that effort to go the extra mile. I don’t think it is. Yet.

I’m finding the presentation from the daytime guys very very tedious.

Mike Read is fine and brings with him a very good interpretation of all that’s Big L, but the guys after him just sound so old school ILR.

There’s three records being played in a row. Yawn. There’s jingles being randomly played without being ‘jockeyed’, despite having long instrumentals for that very purpose. There’s no content in anything being said. And one even does that awful “We’ve got [blah] and [blah] on the way after this” signposting the fact he’s going to a commercial break. Then you get jingle, commercial, jingle, song, song – all that’s evil, predictable and boring about commercial radio in the UK. Arghhhh!

Now, when Ray Anderson is on the air, he certainly is the master of talking up and talking down the jingles and the songs, weaving his magic into making the presentation different, compulsive and unique. Even Roger Davis has an idea about what the Big L presentation happy difference was. But with no Ray and no Roger, afternoon and evening is no different to Classic/Capital Gold. What a disaster. Without the happy difference, Big L is doomed.

It has to be different. Different to what though? If it’s not different to any other Gold format station then it loses. Big L has to dare to be different.

To be different it doesn’t have to sound identical to the original Big L, since an awful lot of the output of the original Big L actually sounds complete crap (by today’s standards) anyway.

But, with the opportunity to experiment with free-form free-expression broadcasting the new breed of presenters need to look at doing more than going to show-prep sites and just reading out stuff that might not be relevant to the demographics likely (or intended) to be listening.

There is an opportunity for them to think outside the box of what they have known before. This is what Big L needs. The original Big L had people like Kenny Everett thinking outside the box. That doesn’t mean that the result of his thinking outside the box should be copied forever more. That would be awful, and to my mind there’s already far too much using his brilliance to try to re-sell and re-package the current Big L.

It means the idea of thinking outside the box needs to be copied, hopefully resulting in new ideas and different concepts on this modern day Big L. They have an opportunity like they will never have again. They need to think about it and challenge everything they’ve heard on commercial presentation. They need to break the mouldy mould.

This Big L will not survive because of the music it plays. It’s already not doing anything that fantastic compared to any other station. Radio won’t survive in this millennium just by impersonating an iPod when it’s also on a disadvantaged medium like Big L is.

Apart from needing some clever and imaginative salesmen, it will survive if the on-air atmosphere becomes compulsive listening because of the personalities. That’s how Radio 2 works, and it’s wiping the floor with everybody. Big L has to take on Radio 2, but be slicker, faster moving, more irreverent, and above all, from time to time, complete laugh out loud fun. It has to capture the essence of the Laser/Euroseige can’t-switch-off-or-I’ll-miss-something era meeting the Wolfman Jack era meeting the original Big L era. That’s something that is missing from radio in the UK, and would trigger responses from new audiences.

Technically this requires the new guys who never heard the original Big L to dart in and out of the jingles, talking over the instrumental bits, but not always. Enthusing about the songs not just listing them, but not always. Talking up to commercials, talking after commercials, but not always. Knowing how to drop in a single line of words, but not always. Intelligently segueing, but not always. Above all it’s about not being predictable. Once a person has sussed your delivery patter then you’ve no longer got a hold of his balls.

Holding a persons balls is really important. It’s about grabbing his bollocks to get his attention, then using your own personality and humility to keep his attention until he can’t live without your grasp on his bollocks.

If you listen to the long oft retold story about the original Big L, the guys studied tapes of an American station they were to try to bring to the UK. The presenters (or DJs as they were called in those days) were encouraged to explore this new sound and new ideas. They did all of this to a brief before actually getting on air. By the time Big L (the original one) came on – pow – it had a very distinctive identity and quality to it.

Big L (today’s one) doesn’t have time to give it time and let the programming bed in. Hell, it’s been a month already. It has to be shit hot from (as near as damn it) day one. It has to hit the ground running, or people will drift in, yawn, and drift out never to return. Yes, the anoraks will listen regardless, even if the output is just a 1kHz tone carrying an old offshore radio station name, so it doesn’t matter what you do as far as they are concerned, although even some of them have actually been critical in places of anorak assembly such as this mighty fine Anorak Nation, so things must be bad!

However, there are only a few hundred anoraks left alive. That’s not enough to interest any potential advertisers. So, it’s important to capture the imagination of the general public, especially as Big L can’t be heard on normal radios for 95% of the UK. If Big L just copies what’s already available elsewhere, then why should normal non-anorak people bother to try to find it?

So what needs to be done? Nobody said to Kenny Everett, “Develop your personality this way”, he just worked it out himself, but was encouraged to so do by being given the freedom to develop it. However, I would say that there’s a fine line between being an announcer and a human being. I don’t think of the announcers at railway stations as being human beings. I do think of all of those on Radio 1 or Radio 2 as being human beings. So, the listener has to warm to the ‘real you’ of the presenter, yet stand back and accept it without question when he talks with authority. He has to be able to take listeners on an emotional journey of empathy, regardless of the music. Mike Read does this really well.

Mike Read on Big L captures the ‘magic’ of the original Big L (and if the point isn’t to try to capture it, then why bother using the same name as a dead pirate station in the first place?), plus interweaves his own personality and definitely makes the show his own, playing with the listeners in a number of different ways. Quite possibly, Mike is sounding at his absolute best ever.

Adverts. If presenters always signpost past the ads, people become used to it as a sign that it’s time to hit the button and find something else, since there are now plenty of radio stations, and they don’t all play their ads at the same time. In a way, the presenter has to love the adverts as much as he loves the songs, and treat them the same. He is there to encourage the listener to love everything about the station, not love the songs and hate or at the very least just ‘put up’ with the adverts. Very rarely does a presenter say “And hey everybody we’ve got an ad for [blah] on the way after this from the Rolling Stones”. I’m not saying presenters should say that, but just think about why they don’t say that. Adverts are an integrated part of the show, and shouldn’t be treated as if they are some disease. They also pay wages and keep stations on the air. So, apologising for them and sandwiching them between jingles is not a good thing.

Presenters can tease the listener partly with the trailing the music, but regular “And keep listener for the new one from [blah] and a great oldie from [blah] in the next hour” is boring and unimaginative. For example something daft like, “Now, I’m just trying to find a really brilliant song from [blah] that would really suit this weather, I’m sure it’s round here somewhere” makes the listener feel the presenter cares and is putting himself out for them. They feel included and part of the show. (Obviously, the example given can’t be said every 20 minutes or they see through that too, by the way!)

Partly a presenter should also tease the listener with the immediacy of what’s going on. Just as they were thinking about switching off – wham – he’s unexpectedly hit them with something he hadn’t trailed every link for the last hour. This gives them the ‘wow’ rush. They can’t really go ‘wow’ when they’ve heard for the last 10 links that you are going to play their favourite song.

It is the presenter AND the music, not one or the other that’s important. Again, it’s a fine line. It’s very hard to judge, and you can’t always get it right, but the balance has to be equal.

If radio is a patchwork blanket, made up of individual patches of songs, jingles, commercials, news, information, as the individual self contained patches, then it is the presenter who is the stitching that imaginatively holds all the little bits together and weaves in and out to make the whole thing flow into one single larger lovely comfortable continuous and warm blanket that the listener feels happy with.

In contrast lay the patches next to each other without any stitching, and you’ve got, erm, just a collection of little patches really.

Surely Big L is called Big L because of the memory of that original lovely patchwork blanket?