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22.06.12 MusicWeek 25
TAG TEAM BLAXILL’S DIGITAL TRIO
Ric Blaxill’s responsibilities also take in overseeing digital radio stations The Hits, Heat and Smash Hits with a staff of just three people across the three services. Despite such a tiny team, The
stations and around the UK and talk to the PDs about the project,” he says. In the case of the Coldplay broadcast, which like
those before it goes under the In: Demand brand, work started back in April 2011 when – six months before the album Mylo Xyloto’s release – Blaxill sent a speculative email to EMI. “You know the album is coming. You want to
support it. They’re a key band for our listeners so you’ve got to start conversations early sometimes,” says Blaxill, who worked on the project closely with EMI promotion and publicity senior vice president Kevin McCabe. “The benefit to us and our radio stations and
listeners is getting access and content from international artists that might be difficult to get any other way and the benefit to the artists is we can join everything up and there is a proper promo campaign laid down which if you were to buy that airtime would cost you a lot of money,” he adds. “The total audience for all those stations is
6.4 million so that is a lot of people, a lot of promo and a lot of talk up. Plus there is all the stuff we do through social media and spreading the word about it and it’s on all our websites and we can create a special website for the project, so in terms of awareness and reach it’s pretty impressive for the artist as well.” Blaxill reckons the Coldplay broadcast is also a
good example of how he and Bauer can plug into other outlets within the media group to provide extra promotional support, “Q magazine are supporting the Coldplay project
editorially and online,” he says. “When we worked with Rihanna, More magazine gave her a front cover and took the interview and featured a lot of that inside and we talk to the TV channels and see if they can do complimentary programming to cross- promote the radio broadcast so when you come to us again I need to have conversations with the radio side of the business but can also talk to people in magazines and TV to see what support Bauer as a business can give.” Blaxill suggests the Coldplay broadcast shows not
only what Bauer itself can do but commercial radio in general to support music projects. “For a commercial radio business to give over an
hour of airtime to a live concert that’s not really completely playing by the rules because you don’t expect commercial radio to do that kind of stuff,” he says. “We will completely do it when the artist is right and that is a good advert for our stations and
for Bauer as a business, but it also enhances the music credentials of commercial radio on a wider basis as well.” Blaxill and his Bauer colleagues will have a
further chance to boost those music credentials for commercial stations at this summer’s Olympics and Paralympics in what amounts to a first partnership with Absolute Radio. The two groups are broadcast partners for a series of concerts taking place under the BT London Live banner, including events at Hyde Park and Victoria Park, and which also involves Live Nation and News International. The link-up clearly opens up the possibility of
Bauer and Absolute teaming up again in the future with Blaxill noting: “We’re delighted to work with Absolute and we’ve got a lot of respect in Bauer for [Absolute Radio COO] Clive [Dickens] and his team for an opportunity to work with those guys to show there is collaboration within commercial radio which is important how the business presents itself but also how it challenges the BBC in some things.” Bauer’s live summer of music will further take in
a series of big multi-artist individual station events, kicking off on July 21 with Radio City Live at Liverpool’s Echo Arena. This will be followed the next day by Key 103 Live at Manchester’s M.E.N. Arena and Radio Aire’s Party In The Park at Temple Newsam Park in Leeds. Intriguingly, all three events are being headlined by
Syco’s One Direction, the act whose records were infamously pulled from the airwaves by Bauer’s main rival Global Radio after band member Harry Styles thanked Radio 1 for a Brits best British single award that had been voted for by Capital FM listeners. This high-profile backing for the Billboard
200 conquerors is one obvious big difference between the two radio groups, but more deeply is Bauer’s continued support for regional stations airing individual programming when Global has opted to replace theirs with quasi-national Capital and Heart networks. “I just think it’s two different philosophies. It’s just
two different ways of looking at radio,” Blaxill says simply. “We feel that the place, the locality and the personality of the area are really important to us and we don’t want to dilute that. We see it as an advantage. It also means we can vary the music offer around the stations so it’s not a homogenised playlist and it can have some different nuances.” Unlike with the networks of Capital and Heart,
which play the same tunes in the same order across all their respective outlets, the stations in Bauer’s
Hits’ audience moved back above 1 million people in the latest Rajars covering Q2 to 1.08 million, while Heat’s reach rose 10.5% on the quarter and 14.4% year-on-year to a new high of 716,000. Smash Hits’ reach is around 1 million, standing at 991,000, according to Rajar, a 9.4% drop on the year and down 1.3% on the quarter. “I’m really proud of the team
that works on those stations and the results that we’re getting on,” he says “There’s a team of three people and myself and we obviously use presenters, some who work for other Bauer stations and some are regular freelance presenters. “It’s quite a task pulling
everything together but the team are superb and they totally get it and they’re young and totally focused and understand what
ABOVE Bauer summer: One DIrection will headline three individual station events – underlining Bauer’s support for its stations’ individual identities
the brands mean. In terms of building interaction with listeners The Hits is up to 155,000 people on Facebook and a year ago it didn’t even have a Facebook page and we’re up to 50,000 people on Twitter now and we weren’t on Twitter until fairly recently either and we don’t market the station at all. People will find it and then share it with their friends and that’s our marketing.” Among this station portfolio,
Blaxill suggests The Hits’ reputation is increasing with record companies. “It’s so targeted at pop and
labels are now seeing the benefits of working with us on projects and we can go slightly off format with things we want to do in terms of how we make content,” he says. “Heat as a brand is really strong and across all those platforms will continue to grow. News to us is entertainment news. “I don’t think there is anyone
else who treats entertainment news like that. That’s part of the Heat philosophy that we try to bring to life every day.”
Place portfolio of regional stations are all individually programmed locally. “When you talk to the labels I get a lot of
feedback from them about how important regional radio is to breaking records,” says Blaxill. “There is a belief that regional radio is still
powerful and can still break music so it doesn’t have to be done via a network. Also from a record company point of view it is seen as positive as you’ve always got a chance of getting your song played somewhere. “It’s not a centrally-made decision. The only
central playlist that Bauer runs is the Upfront list which are three songs and gets new music a little bit quicker to our listeners.” While it would be impossible to ever rule
anything out, Blaxill says the philosophy in the Place portfolio is very strong, suggesting the group will not any time soon ditch its heritage regional brands and head down the network route. “It has benefits in terms of keep maintaining
audiences and building hours, which are really important to us,” he notes of the existing approach. “All those things we get measured on in the portfolio, which is in a really strong position.” And, as the Coldplay concert has shown, Bauer
when appropriate can also tap into the power of networked programming as well.”
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