Talking Turkey
Having more than a passing interest in talk radio myself, it’s particularly sad to see a commercial speech station go to the wall but on Christmas Eve, Edinburgh’s Talk107 will shut up shop and hand its licence back to Ofcom after less than 3 years on air. Now without wanting to pick over the bones and second guess as to precisely what went wrong, I think it’s safe to assume that in the end the sums just didn’t add up. And in commercial radio ultimately, only money talks.
Since its launch on 14 February 2006, the new kid on the Caledonian block has faced an uphill struggle to win listeners in sufficient numbers. With a TSA of around a million adults, Talk107’s audience has only hovered around the 40,000 mark - apparently not nearly enough to generate the kind of ad revenue it needed to survive. So the station was put up for sale in October and despite encouraging rumours of a management buyout in late November, last week parent group UTV Radio decided to cut their losses and close the station down.
Talk 107’s untimely demise will leave the UK with just two local talk players in the commercial sector - London’s LBC 97.3 and Liverpool’s City Talk 105.9. That’s a truly pathetic state of affairs for a nation of 60 million, in which it seems everyone has something to say or a story to tell about virtually everything. So why is the talk format generally seen as such a commercial turkey?
After all, conversation is the great glue that bonds us together as a society - it enables us to form friendships, families, communities and even enemies. Sure, we may all have opinions to share on various topical issues of the day but there’s far more to talk about in life than regurgitated tabloid headlines or the latest celebrity tittle-tattle. And frankly, talk radio’s core proposition shouldn’t be any different.
Reflect, engage and interact with your audience on a more personal level and I promise you, they’ll come back for more. They’ll even help build brand awareness by telling their friends about you. OK, so you may have to spend a bit more money along the way (always a big worry for commercial radio) but remember, you’ll be investing in thousands of genuine, loyal and lucrative relationships built on mutual respect.
Is it really so hard to create compelling and commercially-viable talk radio programming?
Find out right after today’s Celebrity Bingo numbers.
Tags: Advertising, Commercial Radio, Talk 107, Talk Radio