In my opinion the best thing any radio station can do is to give its listeners a voice on air with a talkback show. It’s the equivalent of the local paper’s letters page (remember those?), except you get to question, debate, and discuss the issues raised by callers for all to hear. Everyone has an […]

When presenters aren’t on air you’ll likely fall back to a curated playlist of tracks you expect your listeners to enjoy – ideally you have selected ‘sticky’ tracks.

Writing the script for a radio commercial seems an easy thing to do. Mention the name of the company, the thing they want to promote, add a catchphrase or slogan, and end with a contact phone number – job done. But like anything in radio, it’s all about the connection. Having the listener hear what’s

I watched a very interesting documentary on Aljazeera TV last week about pirate broadcasters Radio Caroline and The Voice of Peace. While UK station Caroline – launched in the 1960s – promotes LA (loving awareness), The Voice of Peace, launched in the early 70s, tried to bring harmony to the volatile Middle East through music

There’s a world of independent ‘radio’ stations to listen to, but where to find them? Years ago, a shortwave and AM radio receiver was the best bet to stumble upon something new or unusual. Until recently, TuneIn.com was the go-to site to discover internet broadcasters, but a couple of years ago – for reasons that

These are strange times for many of us. A virus has led to many people having to self-isolate, to remain indoors and not go to work. Or go anywhere! Putting to one side the financial worries and all the stresses this situation brings; lots of us now have time to spare. It’s good to keep

If your stream is not HTTPS by now then you are on the back foot. You need to upgrade to a secure stream right away and then let every service that uses your old (http) stream that you have a new secure one (https://).

It’s time to go and meet the people by taking your station on the road…

You are a local broadcaster – own it Digital broadcasters are perfectly placed to adopt a hyper‑local approach and become a station that genuinely reflects their community. A big part of that mix is local presenters who can reference neighbourhood events, local personalities and everyday happenings during their links. That alone signals to listeners that

You know what vanilla ice cream is. No one really dislikes it — it’s fine for every palate and goes with just about anything. Add a scoop to apple pie or drown it in toppings and you can’t lose. But on its own? It’s bland. It needs something extra to make it interesting. That’s where

It doesn’t take much to see what a semi-pro or fully professional radio studio looks like – a quick Google search and the mouthwatering photos pop up like candy in a sweet store. And while many of us may dream of such things, the beauty of radio is that we can broadcast perfectly fine shows

As a young journalist with next to no interest in sport of any kind; my Monday morning chore was to call about 10 schools and colleges to get the weekend’s sporting results. From soccer, to hockey, and athletics, I’d have to get the names of the teams, any star players (and their ages), location of

Any limitations broadcasters had are long gone. During the past 20 years online radio has gone mainstream; but what lessons can we learn from the commercial FM stations? One thing I keep coming back to is that FM stations – due to their restricted broadcast range – have a defined area in which to market