Summary

In the next three sections we look at three areas of managing programme content: firstly, techniques for designing and managing programmes to keep the audience listening; secondly, managing different aspects of music and programming, and; thirdly, managing two specialist areas of speech - radio news and phone-ins.

Introduction

To gain a broadcasting licence from Ofcom it is necessary to specify, in suitably broad terms, what audience the station intends to serve and what programming mix will be provided to meet that audience's tastes and needs (see Section 2.4 Applying for a licence). BBC management, similarly, must apply to the BBC Trust and then the government's Department of Culture Media and Sport before launching a new service, detailing the audience need that will be served and outlining the proposed programming.

The average listener is not particularly interested in the business of radio, they are more worried about getting to work on time, fetching kids from school, or finding a job. For most, radio is just another utility that exists only when required and switched off when no longer useful. If the station does not meet the perceived needs of the listener within a short time they will switch to another and will stay with the new service until that station misjudges their needs. Winning stations have managers who recognise this and aim their programming at people with other things on their minds.

To build and hold the maximum possible audience for a given format there are two possible strategies: 

1. Never make mistakes in judging the needs of your core audience, or; 

2. Ensure the competing stations make mistakes more often than you do

The first is unrealistic so competitive programme management is all about the second option. Whilst we strive to eliminate technical problems that may annoy listeners, such as items failing to happen and dead air, correct programming is far more important. While a small operation may never be able to achieve the technical perfection of a BBC network station, they should know the wants and needs of their more closely defined target audience far better and can more often do the right thing at the right moment.

Knowing the wants and needs of the target listener is critical and so, before we start drawing up even an outline programme schedule, we must decide who we are going to talk to. Research will show if there is a gap in the market, its size and wants. If we broadcast digitally to all western Europe then an audience of train-spotting brass- band enthusiasts may be viable; if our FM licence covers a community of 10,000 people then perhaps we need to appeal to all of them, at least for some of the time.

Once the regular listeners are identified it is necessary to define, usually through research, what needs to be broadcast to keep them listening. This forms the basis of the station's format. Unfortunately many do not think about formats but about variety of music and programme features. Often this involves using the channel to play their own favourite music and talk about their own interests, and justify this by saying that no other radio station provides exactly that service. The management of an effective radio service requires empathy with the target listener, an understanding of their wants and needs, and is more than a technical conduit connecting audio to a receiver. As Garrison Keillor (1992: 45) wrote, a radio station is not just the audio equivalent of a printing press or a web server:

Radio… was a raw primitive gorgeous device that unfortunately had been discovered too late. In the proper order of things, it should have come somewhere between the wheel and the printing press. It belonged to the age of bards and storytellers who squatted by the fire, when all news and knowledge was transmitted by telling. Coming at the wrong time, radio was inhibited by prior developments such as literature.

The public will not listen to a service because we say they should, we have to provide something they want, or believe they need, and be able to describe to them, preferably in just a single sentence, what we are going to do for them. We can provide lots of other things as well, of course, but our programming philosophy must remain faithful to that single sentence. The programme philosophy is further expressed in station marketing 'straplines' which reinforce the station philosophy in the mind of the listener to, for instance, BBC Radio 1's 'In new music we trust', Smooth Radio's 'Playing the best music from the past five decades, Love Life, Love Music' or the community station Radio Teesdale's 'It's yours'.

The station's positioning statement must relate the service to the listener, avoiding empty hyperbole. A classic positioning line, adopted by WINS New York in 1965 and since adapted by many all-news stations, is: 'You give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world'. In just a few words that tells you that the station offers a rolling news service focusing on national and international stories and is a promise of what they will provide for the listener. In today's instant news culture 22 minutes seems a long time to wait, so 1010 WINS carries the simple but equally effective strap line 'All news. All the time'.

Having made a contract with the listener through this repeated positioning of the brand it is crucial to deliver what has been promised. The manager must set up and maintain systems to ensure the station remains true to its promise at all key times of the day and week. There must be a clear station music policy and a well defined house-style for the selection and presentation of speech material, and all peak-time programmes must adhere to them.

Fortunately, listeners have become conditioned to appreciate slightly different programming in the evenings and weekend afternoons, but during the day they usually expect their chosen station to provide a predictable service that remains true to the established format. Skilled programme managers recognise that, within this broad format, different audiences are available at different times of day and different days of the week. So it is perfectly sensible, even with the most tightly targeted station, to vary programming in different day parts. But the manager must always ask: 'Does our target listener want it - or is it just convenient to us?"

Presentation style

Most formats give a central role to a programme host. Whether cast as an announcer, chairman, or disc jockey, the host voice will act as a guide and link to the various programme elements and can define the tone and attitude of the service. Listeners are invited to identify with, and relate to, this embodiment of the station's values and style.

While managers are careful to select suitable candidates for such central on-air roles, it is equally important to define what they talk about, based on the known or suspected interests of the required listener. In local radio it is possible to set out five reasons why a presenter should choose to talk about something on the air:

1. It is topical (in radio this usually means it has to do with today)

2. It relates to the transmission area (it affects, interests or concerns local people)

3. It relates to the listener (giving them something they personally need or want)

4. It relates to the presenter (what they've been up to, conveying their own personality)

5. It relates to the station (a trail for another programme, a promotion, or some community initiative backed by the station).

It would be unusual for all five requirements to be met in every piece of speech but as long as at least one is present it could be argued that the item earns its keep. The really solid-gold link contains strong elements of all five, as in: 'Big FM is presenting Elvis Presley live on stage tonight at the Bigtown Arena, I'll be there from 7 o'clock, and I've got some traffic news for you if you are planning to drive there from the Grange area.'

In local radio the manager must ensure all presenters understand the geographic proposition put in front of listeners and potential listeners. For the listener to feel that the local service is their station it must position its presenters where the listener is – not where the studio happens to be located. A station serving listeners across the Midlands can reasonably say 'down in London' or 'up in Scotland' but not 'Up in Walsall' or 'Down in Solihull'. For the same reason it should avoid phrases like 'Out at the airport', or 'Down there in the suburbs'. The listener who works at the airport does not think she is 'out' anywhere, she thinks she is 'here'. Much the same principle might be adapted to a national or international station where listeners are defined by a shared interest, background or demographic quality, substituting the language of inclusion in an interest group (you, we) and exclusion (they).

Show preparation

A common complaint about music-based radio stations is that the presenters talk too much. It is unprepared, irrelevant waffle that causes the most concern. Many 'disc- jockeys' are wedded to reading out little snippets culled from the morning's tabloids or cut and pasted from a 'show-prep' web site. A favourite song has yet to finish and the presenter talks about a Guatemalan pig farmer who found something strange in his cornflakes.

There is a long-standing debate about how much, and what type of, preparation should go into a typical DJ-led sequence. It is generally assumed that a presenter will spend some time before each show collecting material, in the office, at home or (ideally) out and about in the real world. Few disc-jockeys can busk all the links for a three hour program, to 'show and go' as the common expression puts it, most spend hours in front of a computer finding all the usual 'this day in history' and topical show- business material which is the staple of so many shows.

The ability to cut-and-paste stories to make up the topical links seems the answer to a presenter's dreams. Unfortunately the broadcaster may have lifted the story from a web site who took their 'facts' from a tabloid paper who in turn subbed them down from an original piece in a foreign magazine. Any relationship to the original story, and any claim to topicality will have been lost along the way and there will be no suggestion of relevance to the station's target market. The programming manager cannot simply set targets for how long a presenter must spend 'prepping' the show, or for the quantity of material required. It is the quality and originality of the material that matters judged by regular monitoring and feedback. The role of radio broadcasting is to be immediate and relevant, not to be the recycling plant of the media world, original thought and work must be encouraged.

It is not suggested that anniversary dates, surveys and the utterances of wacky academics have no place in programme planning, they are indeed valuable 'hooks' which can be used to justify the further pursuit of a topic. Many of the items on the revered BBC Radio Four Today programme validate using just such introductions.

Show preparation can only be as good as the understanding of the presenter, producer and/or researcher of the programme's target audience. The live radio sequence must anticipate what the listener wants to be told, the level of detail, when and for how long.

Before a show a local radio presenter will always ask themselves at least these six questions:

What sort of a day is it?
What is everybody in town talking about?
What is today's big news story?
What big event is coming up?
What sports stories are the listeners following?
What films or TV shows do they want to see?

The show should be developed around these ideas, plus any station-wide promotions, and regular features. The definition of perfect content is straightforward: hot topics are anything that the target listener will talk about today. During Wimbledon fortnight listeners might appreciate regular updates on major tennis matches, similarly it might be appropriate to reflect news on big football, cricket and rugby matches, major court cases and industrial disputes. To help programme staff identify hot topics in future programmes, managers at some stations encourage new team members to travel around the target area by public transport, to go to social gatherings of the target audience, and to simply listen to what these people are talking about.

Designing a live programme

The idea of segmentation, dividing a programme up into easily digestible parts has long been popular with radio broadcasters and listeners. Crisell states that it is 'ideal for broadcasters and advertisers because it homogenizes the output, making the commercial breaks and informational elements seem all of a piece with the music' (Crisell 1994: 214) and useful for the listener because they can drop in and out of a programme as they tend to the demands of everyday life (op.cit).

It may sound strange to talk about 'designing' a radio show, but just like any other product intended to meet a need or satisfy a market programming must be conceived with these clear objectives in mind. Before launching a new programme the programme manager should sit down with a pen and a few blank pieces of paper and design the layout of each individual hour.

Every hour is different and no two editions of a programme should sound exactly the same but there should be an underlying structure to the programming (see also Norberg (1996) for detailed description of various structuring devises used by U.S. commercial radio programmers). Regular listeners appreciate a clear pattern within a regularly scheduled show and it is one of the more subtle ways to build brand loyalty. Listeners know where to find the items they want to hear, just like they know where to look in their favourite daily newspaper. Other station sounds like hard work by comparison. And for the presenter a good framework means that they never run out of time for the commercials, or forget to include a regular feature.

The simplest and clearest way to design a programme is to use a clock, sometimes called a wheel, to display the features in each hour. The clock for one hour on an imaginary station is shown here:



At a glance we can see how the features have been spread around the hour, we can tell our music computer how many tracks of music we will need and tell the traffic computer when to schedule the advertisements. The clock will clearly show if we bunch too many features into one segment, whilst we might want to create a music sweep of several uninterrupted tracks at a certain point, we might also want to avoid a long block of speech where the news, ads, weather traffic news and a feature all run together. Usefully, and unlike a simple list of features on a running order, the clock is unforgiving if you try to fit more than 60 minutes of content into the hour.

Looking at some individual items in clockwise order:

NEWS: Here we have allowed for a three-minute national bulletin from a satellite feed followed by a locally-read weather forecast. After a brief introduction we move straight into the first record. One minute is more than often needed for the weather but allows for a few other words from the presenter before or after the script. We always round-up the length of each item to allow for other links.

SONG 1: We establish a typical duration for the music we would play in this hour. This varies with format, a fifties rock & roll programme will play a lot of short tracks, while a classical format will need more flexibility to play longer pieces. We do not bother with half minutes, if the average track is three minutes 30 seconds long then allowing four minutes for this first disc and three minutes for the next works out fine in practice.

SONG 2: No specific time is allocated between songs 1 and 2 so any link will have to be brief, and probably make maximum use of any long fade of song 1, or long instrumental introduction on song 2. SONG 3 is shown as segued from song 2 - it follows without any interruption.

ADS: In this hour there are four commercial breaks of two minutes each and one of one minute. In practice there may be more or less than this sold on any particular day. We try to show the expected duration on an average day, NOT the maximum.

Notice that, in the remainder of this hour, all the links bar one have a major feature, or commercial break, attached. In this busy sequence, typical of local commercial radio breakfast or 'drive-time' shows, the presenter is left with only one major opportunity to add a one-off feature of their own making to the hour.

While the advertising pattern shown in the sample clock will be familiar to most commercial radio listeners, there is no rule that insists that commercials should run in groups of three or four or more. As long as the advertising messages are identifiably distinct from the surrounding programme they might even be run singly, dotted throughout the hour. Such regular and predictable commercial interruptions might not be conducive to good programming but the other extreme of a single hourly break with, say, twelve individual spots in it would not be acceptable to advertisers, particularly those in the middle of the sequence. Worldwide research into the effectiveness of radio advertising, considering such factors as length of commercial break, number of other adverts, position in the break and the use of comedy and music (RAEL 2002 and RAB 2008) provides a general consensus that the advertisement is more effective in a shorter break. It is the programme manager who usually must decide how and when to accommodate the required number of advertising slots in the programme clocks, often balancing the expressed desire of listeners for longer spells of uninterrupted programming against their objection to breaks that run for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

The same clock might serve as a design for all the hours of one particular show and some tightly formatted stations can use the same clock 24 hours a day. However it is more common to find variations in each hour, more traffic news at breakfast, no local news at night, extra features in the evening, fewer songs in hours attracting more advertising or with longer news bulletins, for example.

In preparing a new programme, the manager should sit down with the presenter and others involved with the show and talk through each hour using the clocks, making sure they agree that they are workable and agreeing any necessary changes. Master copies of the clocks are often kept in the on-air studio or are available on screen of computer play-out software. Each presenter is expected to refer to their clock throughout the relevant hour and they will find it much easier to spot when their timings are going adrift, and to do something about it. The clock is also invaluable to a stand-in presenter who might at short notice have to run the same sequence. But the best reason for insisting that the team builds its regular show on a clear framework is that it enables them to change things during a live programme when necessary while still finding their way back to the basic format afterwards. It is easier to be spontaneous and include a surprise item if you know exactly what you must drop to make way for it.

Self-editing in the live show

Day-to-day production responsibility for many programmes now rests with the people presenting them. Without a separate producer the host may be left alone in a soundproof box, out of sight and without anyone to supply instant feedback, to look excited or bored, or to provide hand signals suggesting it is time to move on to the next item. Broadcasters must be encouraged to develop their own techniques to ensure they stay on the rails during each live link.

Music-led stations often impress upon their presenters the principle of 'one thought per link'. Although this is usually softened to allow for trailing ahead, identifying music or cueing the next feature, the underlying philosophy is that the link is an opportunity to engage the listener with one big thought. The 'thought' might be the subject of an interview, a humorous story, news item, promotion, competition or an appeal for help. Anything else in that link should be clearly secondary.

Having planned what they are going to do in each link, the presenter must not let their mouth run away and do something else. In music radio they should finish the task allocated for a link and then stop talking and play the next song. Any good idea that occurs halfway through a link should be saved until later, when they have had time to think it through properly. Management can encourage this good practice with regular feedback and dissection of past programmes with presenters. Managers should stress that presenters are only as good as the best piece they were unable to use, the great radio presenter always having unused material left at the end of their show.

Regular coaching of presenters also helps ensure that the selection and rejection of content meets the policies and priorities of the station. Stories abound of keen disc- jockey types who proudly manage to play 15 songs in an hour while failing to insert any advertisements and arriving late for the next hourly news. Conversely, often it is the music that suffers when time is tight, songs are faded out too early when upon cold reflection they would realise they had talked too long during an earlier link. Staff on a music-led radio station must understand that rarely should the music be shortened to give way to unscheduled speech.

The programme manager must define, explicitly or implicitly, a pecking-order for dropping things from an hour. For example, in a music led local radio service this might read:

First to drop: Irrelevant chit-chat.

Second: Temporary items which do not appear regularly.

Third: Regular features which only appear in this show (can promise to do it tomorrow).

Last to drop: Features which also appearing or are trailed in other shows (for example major station-wide competitions, big promotions).

Never drop without senior permission: Anything regularly scheduled in all programmes (News bulletins, advertisements etc).

Repetition of material

Whilst a frequent source of complaint from listeners, there are editorial reasons for scheduling the same item repeatedly, whether a programme trail on BBC Radio 4 or a current playlist hit on local radio.

The first reason is simply that Rajar data shows that an item must be repeated many times on a single station before even half of the weekly audience of that station will have heard it at least once. Rajar indicates that the average listener hears a single station for typically between 8 and 12 hours per week, so we can suppose that they listen for a total of only around one and a quarter and one and a half hours on the average day. Although this might be spread over two or more listening sessions a policy of playing a programme item every two hours does not appear excessive in ensuring they will hear it at least once.

The management of programme repetition can have implications for the marketing of the service. While the BBC Radio 4 audience appear to welcome both the lunchtime repeat of the previous evening's episode of long-running soap The Archers, and a third transmission as part of an omnibus edition on Sunday, dedicated listeners to a music station can become irritated by the repetition of some current songs, sometimes as frequently as every two hours. One response has been for stations to brand themselves as "the home of the no-repeat workday" where no song will be played more than once between 9 and 5. Nevertheless it remains common in music radio for a handful of current songs, usually designated the A-list, to be played in rotation so as to appear every two or three hours. Where research shows that a particular song is currently very popular with the station's target listeners the programme manager will wish to ensure that most hear it whenever they switch the service on.

The second reason for building repetition into a radio schedule applies mainly to promotional or advertising material. It is generally believed in the advertising community that the average listener needs to hear a typical commercial three or four times before they fully react to the message. Radio sales people say that this is not a weakness of radio, but rather that radio advertisements work their way deeper into the listener's brain before they are aware of them and argue that that is why radio is such a powerful tool.

The general assumption is that effective radio campaigns require spots to be sold and scheduled as packages of typically 28, 35 or 42 spots per week. It follows that a programme trail or public service message on a non-commercial service must be broadcast with similar frequency to achieve a measurable response. Rather than promoting everything a little it is better to focus, for perhaps a week or so, on a few programmes, features or issues and to promote them heavily with frequent repetition of the message. The line 'Repetition builds reputation' is frequently quoted in this regard, variously attributed to a number of American radio gurus.

Outside programme suppliers

Most stations take some of their programming directly from outside suppliers. For example, across the UK, the Independent Radio News (IRN) network feeds some 300 analogue and digital stations, each taking the live hourly bulletins or the same material in kit form, with scripts and audio 'cuts' delivered via a dedicated digital satellite system or via the Internet. Every year, IRN broadcasts 22,000 news bulletins and over 30,000 audio clips, 40,000 scripts and cues are distributed.

A number of other commercial operations offer a variety of traffic, sports, entertainment and financial news bulletins, usually funded by sponsorship revenue paid directly to the originating company. At the most basic level the client stations receive the topical programme material free of charge in return for transmitting it complete with the built-in sponsor credits and, in some cases, a campaign of promotional trails, also containing the sponsor reference, must also be aired at other times. Examples include the Entertainment News from UBC Media, two-minute self-contained, fully-produced entertainment bulletins provided three times a day and heard on nearly 150 commercial radio stations across the UK, and bulletins from traffic and travel specialist Trafficlink which provides voice and data services to many commercial radio stations and the BBC (the latter paying for its service).

Under the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (HMSO 1990) all programming on commercial and community radio may be sponsored with exception of news bulletins and any 'news desk presentation'. The Broadcasting Act 1990 Section 90(1)(b) requires that "any news given in whatever form is presented with due accuracy and impartiality." Ofcom (2005) feels that sponsorship could compromise this requirement and IRN news cannot therefore be funded under a sponsorship model. Instead IRN licenses the use of its material in return for a slice of the client stations' commercial airtime (in the case of the smaller community radio services and Restricted Service Licence stations IRN currently permits access to their material in return for a relatively small fixed fee). Stations taking the live IRN hourly bulletins, or using IRN national and international material alongside their own local stories to build their own 'mixed' bulletins, must broadcast a specific advertisement following each morning peak time bulletin. These spots, marketed under the brand "Newslink", fund the service with any annual surplus being distributed among the client services. IRN is now owned by the major radio companies GCap and Bauer. Since March 2009, the service is produced by Sky News under contract to the commercial broadcasters.

In addition to the hourly bulletins and international and national news coverage, IRN also offers its own sports, financial and entertainment news feeds. In addition to the dedicated satellite feed the IRN Net Newsroom is a fast way for stations to access national and international news. As well as audio clips, the net service offers downloadable scripts, headlines, packages, what's coming up in the next hour and daily prospects. Access to the service is limited to clients of IRN.

Full-length syndicated and live networked programmes are supplied to many stations often under sponsorship deals requiring the broadcast of a number of promotional trails across the week in addition to the sponsor credits included by the producer in the programme itself. The longest running example of these was The Network Chart Show for many years relayed by most commercial radio stations each Sunday afternoon, now replaced by a number of different initiatives.

Competitions

"Tune in to win" seems a perfect marketing proposition to put to potential listeners, and most commercial stations use it from time to time in some way or another, but evidence that competition prizes actually influence radio listening is difficult to identify. A multitude of factors influence the reported listening to any station and it is not possible to isolate the importance of a single factor such as a competition.

In July 2007, after a series of damaging revelations about the use of listeners contributions, including some to BBC flagships such as Blue Peter and Children in Need, BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced a total suspension of all phone-related competitions on BBC television and radio. The ban remained in place on most services throughout the remainder of the year until after the publication of the BBC's first Code of Conduct for competitions and voting in November 2007, and, were competitions an important factor in influencing listeners to BBC services, might have been expected to impact on reported listening. In fact, during the Rajar period ending December 2007 (Rajar 2007), while total hours listened to all radio dropped by 3.7 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, BBC radio services in total increased their lead over all commercial radio, gaining a 55.4 per cent share of all UK listening.

Clearly importance of competitions must vary with the format and listener proposition of the station. It seems likely that BBC local radio was more adversely affected by the competition ban than the network services who could afford to be more content-led and for whom listener competitions are at best a side-show, but even here there is no consistent conclusion to be drawn from the Rajar figures.

Just as with any other form of programme content, station management should have a policy on competitions, a strategy based on the needs and wants of the target listener. Too many presenters regard a give-away as a quick fix for a situation where they have nothing else to talk about in their show, but for maximum audience impact it is better to have one big game happening somewhere on the station during the week, with every programme talking it up, than to run dozens of insignificant unexciting competitions all over the schedule.

The programme manager may bring all prizes under central control and not allow anyone to give away anything without permission. Not only does this allow the manager to put together fewer, bigger promotions (one big competition could give away a lot of those smaller prizes) but it can also ensure the competitions are run in a proper and fair manner while making sure that the available prizes get to the programmes which need them rather than staying with the presenters who are best at blagging freebies.

When designing a radio competition, as in many other aspects of the business, the manger should remember the maxim KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Many great radio ideas sink without trace under the sheer weight of complications added during the production process. The manager should be clear what they need the game to achieve. If it is to increase the station's weekly reach then they are looking for something which non-listeners will hear about so they feel encouraged to tune-in and play. This often suggests some publicity in other media, or a game card which they collect from a client, or something which comes through their door. The game will happen at predictable time or times which can be advertised in other media and spread by word of mouth. The message is as simple as: "Tune-in at 7.15 a.m. daily and listen for your chance to win."

It is commonly thought that, where there is flexibility about when non-listeners should be encouraged to tune-in to take part in a promotion, the station should pick a time just ahead of the breakfast-peak, say at around 7.15, as this can give the biggest impact on overall listening figures. There are simply more people able to respond to the publicity at that time of day, and most of them could stay for an hour before leaving. If, on the other hand, the aim is to hold on to existing listeners, to encourage brand loyalty and increase average hours listened, then the manager might look for a game which runs throughout the day, or even across the week. The times might not be entirely predictable, because in this case the underlying message is: "Stay tuned ....the longer you listen the more chances there are to win."

The station must be realistic about the power of any such promotion. It may not be reasonable to expect the average listener to remain tuned for four hours just to hear the outcome of a simple quiz. The sad fact is that most listeners will not stay with any programming that long, even for the most fascinating stunt, they have lives to live in the real world. It is more realistic to time the promotion to get just an extra 15 minutes out of them on the average day, a realistic, achievable target that could add significantly to the Rajar figures.

The majority of commercial radio competitions involve prizes donated by outside suppliers, an arrangement seen as acceptable as long as rules on sponsorship and accounting for commercial revenue are not breached. It is not usually necessary to set up a complicated contra-deal, with commercial airtime being traded for the prize, it may be sufficient to offer a mention of the donor each time their prize is described. Allowing for pre-promotional trails, the appeal for entrants, the competition itself and the final announcement of the winner, this can amount to a considerable number of credits for the supplier. Nevertheless such deals are a frequent cause of friction between sales and programme managers. While the sales manager will see such a relationship as a strong basis for further sponsorship and advertising sales the programmer will be concerned that the prize fits the lifestyle and aspirations of the station's target audience. The programme managers should be pro-active in working with the sales team to find a great prize, often defined as something which the listener might never buy for themselves but which they have always wanted, exactly those items which make the best birthday presents.

Where the programmes department organise a prize they can sometimes be accused of under-cutting the sales department. If the local pizza shop discovers that they can get ten mentions each evening for the effort of delivering one pizza they will be unlikely to show any interest in the sales manager's advertising rate card. A good rule of thumb is to look at the yield of the average sponsorship credit, or ten second commercial spot, on the station. If someone is paying you £200 per week for twenty sponsor credits, then it is reasonable to equate a prize worth £10 with only one free plug on-the-air. The station cannot be rigid about this, but, for the programme manager, putting a decent value on their own airtime should be a matter of pride.

Although not generally available as part of a deal with the supplier, a cash prize has generally broader appeal than any specific item, being useable by any listener. Cash further offers the possibility that the prize can be snowballed, with perhaps £20 being added on each day there is no winner. Such growing cash piles can become popular talking points among listeners and can increase brand loyalty.

Where possible the prize should be something unique which money cannot buy: the chance to meet a big star backstage; a journey in the cab of a high-speed train through the Channel Tunnel or the opportunity to push the button which demolishes an old chimney. This may require creativity in packaging what is already on offer: turning a restaurant meal into a candle-lit champagne dinner for two served personally by the head chef; getting some copies of a hot new CD signed by the artist; preferring one pair of VIP "Access All Areas" backstage passes to twenty ordinary concert tickets.

While the prize is be the bait which encourages the listeners to play the game it should not appear to be the reason for the game. The programme manager should never allow a presenter to say: "I've got six of these to give away, so this is what we're going to do…" The greatest prize must simply be the final crowning touch to a perfect promotion.

Many of the best radio competitions start with a simple idea, perhaps a line from a song or a clever title. And the great ones stay simple. Here are ten basic principles behind the design of simple but devastatingly effective on-air promotions:

1. Recognise that the majority of listeners will not, in fact, enter the competition. For them the game must be fun to listen to, it must be an entertaining piece of radio. The success of a promotion cannot be judged by counting the number of entries received, the impact on non-participants will always be more important.

2. Find a snappy title for the promotion and make sure that all presenters always refer to it by this name.

3. Look for a topical "hook" for the promotion. Something connected with the lifestyle of the target listener. Can you tie-in with a new film or leisure craze?

4. Do not make the listeners jump through too many hoops to enter the contest. If you cannot explain the entire game in two sentences it is too complicated. Avoid contest mechanisms where the listener has to "register" in order to play. If only those listeners who have sent in an entry are to selected why should anyone else keep listening?

5. Keep the game as open as possible for as long as possible. Avoid games which lead to semi-finals and finals. Once the listener knows they have not won a place in the semi-finals their hopes of winning the big prize have vanished, and the competition has lost 90 per cent of its interest for them. If possible design the game so that any listener believes that they could win right up to the last possible moment.

6. Unless a purchase is required, avoid skill-testing questions if possible. Ask the listener to call when they hear a particular song, or if you read out their birth-date or postcode, and take a certain numbered caller to air as an instant winner. Where any purchase or payment is required from the listener as a condition of entry then there must be a reasonable element of skill involved in winning or it may be regarded as an illegal lottery.

7. The most entertaining quiz questions are those where the answer is very difficult to work out or remember until it is revealed, when it immediately seems blindingly obvious. Sponsors will often suggest questions about their product, which may also form the prize, but it is better to devise a clever alternative based on the lifestyle and interests of the target listener. The people who already know all about the product are not the ones the client needs to impress.

8. Ensure the entry mechanism is available to most of the target listeners at the relevant times. Some target groups are more likely to be attracted to a text competition than telephone or email.

9. Design the game so you can keep it moving with high production values. The station must retain control of when it will begin and end, how long each segment will last and how it will sound. A specially prepared music bed is useful in giving the game shape and identity.

10. From the beginning make it clear how the winner will be selected. For example do not say the first correct call or text will be the winner. Some listeners will say they were disadvantaged and the station will lose all control over how long the promotion lasts on air. Better to say that you will pick a reasonably high numbered caller, and count the calls lighting up the switchboard before picking the first entrant or to set a time limit and say the first correct answer drawn out wins.

Even where every care is taken in devising and operating a competition any station will sooner or later receive a complaint alleging unfairness. As with any complaint, it is vital that the issue is dealt with promptly and politely. The usual defence is to claim that the game was played in accordance with the rules, but, unlike in print or on product packaging where small print is available, the full rules of a competition are rarely broadcast in a radio programme. A common solution is to devise standard rules which will apply to any game or competition broadcast by the station. The rules should be specific enough to cover all the usual causes of misunderstanding or complaint, but general enough to allow variations in the specific mechanism of each promotion. Only the conditions specific to the present game need be broadcast, the listener being referred to the station's web site for the general rules and conditions. Different services will want to draft standard rules to suit their own style and policies and it is a good idea to get legal advice, but the standard rules will probably include some common elements:

1. The competition is not open to employees (or members of their immediate families) of the radio station or anyone connected with the promotion.

2. By entering the listener is deemed to agree to abide by the standard rules.

3. Any specific broadcast instructions for each promotion form part of the rules.

4. Entries must be received by the radio station before the closing date and/or time mentioned on-air.

5. Where the prize may be won by a numbered caller or participant (as in the 97th correct caller) the selection of the winning entrant will be at the sole discretion of the station.

6. The station cannot be held responsible for any difficulty in communicating with the radio station by telephone, test, email, post or other means, or for the non-delivery, delay or loss of any entry.

7. For copyright reasons, that all entries become the property of the Company (unless otherwise stated) and cannot be returned and that the entrant agrees to their name and home town being published on-the-air and elsewhere. By entering they will be deemed to agree to their participation being broadcast and recorded.

8. For legal reasons age limits may apply to the winners of certain prizes. The station cannot present a prize to a person who, for any reason, would not be allowed by law to purchase or use the prize or where the supply to that person would be unlawful.

9. Only the stated prize or prizes will be won, there will not be a cash alternative to a specified prize. In the event of the stated prize being unavailable the station can arrange the supply of an appropriate alternative of similar value at the station's sole discretion.

10. In the event that there is more than one winner of a prize which is by its nature divisible (for example a cash prize) then the prize may be shared between the winners. In the event of there being more than one winner of a prize which is not divisible the decision of the station as to the ultimate winner shall be final.

11. While the station will use its best endeavours to ensure that prizes are received by the winner it cannot be held responsible if the prize fails to arrive. The station will notify the winner of the arrangements for collection or delivery of the prize, if it is not claimed or collected within 14 days it may remain the property of the station.

12. The station has the right to amend or end any promotion without prior notice.

13. In the event of any dispute or ambiguity over the running of the promotion, the decision of the station is final.

Point three above is particularly crucial in ensuring, for example, that, as long as the station stated clearly on-the-air when inviting entries that the game was only open to people called Bill or that entrants had to say a certain phrase when they rang, then that condition became part of the rules. A presenter cannot be permitted to change the instructions after some people have already entered, the manager must run through the mechanism carefully with the relevant presenters, to anticipate and iron out any snags, before it is launched or promoted on the air.

In practice few complaints relate to the conduct of a game on the air, they are more usually occasioned by the winner not receiving the expected prize and often this is a result of radio station itself being let down by a supplier. A promotion has been arranged with an outside company in which they supply goods to give away to listeners in exchange for related on-air mentions. The promotion is agreed, everyone at the station, the client and their agency is excited about it, and it goes on-air. But human nature is such that, after the fun is over, nobody notices that the prize has not arrived at the station, a situation worsened when it emerges that nobody in the station has retained a formal written record of the names and addresses of the winners announced on the air.

Effective management of on-air competitions requires a clear paper trail from start to finish. Many programme managers will not permit a prize to be offered on the air until and unless it is in the physical possession of the station. A prize with no physical existence, for example the offer of a restaurant meal or VIP treatment at a big event, must be confirmed in writing before the promotion goes ahead. When the prize is not a small physical object it is usually most convenient to give the lucky listener a letter proving them to be the winner and entitling them to claim the prize from the supplier at a convenient time. The client or sponsor might be encouraged to originate the letter on their own letterhead and give it to the station before the promotion is launched.

Fairness and audience response

It is generally recognised that a broadcaster has an editorial right and duty to decide what and who to include, or not include, in a programme. Guy Starkey (2004:84) observed: 'Ideally every caller who is allowed to speak in a programme will have been spoken to before hand, either by a producer or researcher, who should attempt to identify those who will sound most interesting, have something to say and not be too much of a liability.'

Some managers specify that all listener contributions should be pre-recorded as a guaranteed method of quality control, with apparently live telephone contributions to DJ-style programmes being recorded some minutes earlier. Usually the studio mixer is configured to feed recorded material, typically music or advertisements, directly to the listener while at the same desk the presenter can talk with the caller - digitally recording the result for rapid replay and even simple editing - before broadcasting only the more successful items.

While this degree of selection and editorial control over listener participants has been practised for many years without any significant controversy, the increasing use of premium-rate numbers drew attention to some of the practices and raised new management issues which were publicly brought to a head by a succession of television revelations in 2007.

Traditionally the broadcaster did not gain financially from the telephone revenue, nor indeed from the postage, generated by their thousands of respondents. The cost of participating was limited to the price of a standard stamp or telephone call and listeners generally understood that decisions on their inclusion in a programme were akin to a lottery. The coincidence of the rapid growth of an independent telecommunications sector able to offer specialised telephone services and the slowing up of traditional revenue sources attracted many commercial broadcasters to start using premium rate numbers for voice and text responses to their programmes.

A number of arrangements are offered by telecommunications suppliers, but in general the premium rate call revenue is split three ways between the caller's network supplier, the telecommunications company providing the call handling and the broadcaster. At it simplest the broadcaster's share is used to fund a competition prize or other programming element which would not otherwise be affordable, but increasingly, particularly in nationwide commercial television, the call revenue was seen as sufficient to support and justify the entire production. Inevitably such a programming model led to suspicions that programmes were being shaped to maximise the number of phone or text calls and indignation when it was realised that some callers were being invited to spend money on calls when they had no prospect of being selected for the programme.

This focus on the propriety of broadcasters' dealings with their viewers and listeners has heightened the importance of ensuring appropriate procedures are employed in managing audience response to radio stations. However carefully the station manages its competitions, things do go wrong in live broadcasts: there may be no correct answer or even no entrants at all; the text, phone or email system may fail; or there may have been a mistake in the question or supposed correct answer. In these circumstances it is natural for the staff to adopt the show business adage that the show must go on and to endeavour to fake a winner or encourage people around the station to act as contestants.

Following a number of revelations of abnormalities in high profile commercial television programmes, in March 2007, ITV appointed Deloitte & Touche LLP to carry out a comprehensive review of the use of premium rate interactive services (PRS) in programming on all ITV channels. The review (ITV 2007:3) identified some serious issues which were of equal concern to management in radio broadcasting:

• editorial discretion being applied by the relevant production team in the process of selection of a competition winner or result of a viewer vote. Whilst this appears to have been done with the aim of producing the most entertaining programmes possible, clearly the exercise of editorial discretion in this way is fundamentally incompatible with fair conduct of viewer competitions or voting;
• lack of proper consideration being given, in pre-production planning of individual programmes, to ensuring fairness in the use of PRS; late receipt of a minority of competition entrants or votes from specific platforms, with the result that some entries or votes from that platform were not entered into the relevant competition or vote; and
• failure to blank out PRS numbers on some programming in a time-shifted service when the relevant competition had already been concluded but a caller would still be charged.

Although the resulting press furore focussed on major ITV and BBC television programming it engendered considerable soul searching in the radio community. It became clear that in future radio stations were expected to be honest and transparent in their conduct of radio competitions. In January 2008, finding a competition on BBC Regional Television to have been in breach of its guidelines, Ofcom (2008b) issued a warning: 'Ofcom underlines to broadcasters that if a material problem arises with the conduct of a competition, viewers or listeners must be informed as soon as possible. Broadcasters must not proceed with the competition without informing the audience of that problem if it is likely to affect viewers or listeners' decision to participate.'

The Deloitte report identified three specific areas of management failure in ITV's handling of audience response:

• programme producers, staff and supporting companies have not always recognised or had a respect for the impact of their actions (often driven by editorial decisions) on the integrity of the interactive event and its participants who are paying to enter a competition or to vote;
• a lack of agreed and consistently applied processes, controls and ways of working between the many parties that are often involved in the end to end process; and
• supporting technology, which is in the most part supplied by third party suppliers, and the environment in which it is used, have lacked the reliability and resilience consistently to deliver the required level of services and to prevent errors arising.

It would be an understatement to say there still exists a grey area in to what extent radio stations now feel able to manage audience participation to produce a more entertaining, exciting or informative result. Are we to believe that a presenter, on 97 FM, who says she is going to take the first caller on line 97 actually has access to a 97-line switchboard? Are a range of incorrect answers deliberately read out to extend the excitement before randomly choosing a winning response later in the show? If there is no financial benefit to the station or presenter and no corruption in the selection of the final winner do such creative touches matter? It is perhaps inevitable in any creative undertaking that the artist is asked to compromise between complete honesty and the artifice necessary to communicate the desired idea or emotion.


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