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Posted on 05.01.09 by Matt @ 11:32 am
Today, the first wave of the Heartification process kicked in, with Radio Broadland, SGR Ipswich, SGR Colchester, Hereward, Chiltern Bedford, Chiltern Dunstable and Northants 96 (update: oh, and Q103) moving from the One Network to the Heart Network. Whilst the change is significant, the stations have been runnning the Heart music log for some time and have gradually moved to the Heart positioner – More Music Variety. I thought it would be interesting to have a listen and do a programming log of a new local Heart in the 10am hour this morning. This is the first hour of the new networked Toby Anstis show. It's a bit mean to look at a first day, as there'll naturally be teething trouble, but I thought it would be a good to get an insight into their thoughts about how the network progamming will sit with the local programming. I caught it at about 10.03 this morning. Toby Anstis, 10am, A Heart East Station Music: Atlantic Star – Secret Lovers Overall it's a tight commercial radio hour, adopting, without mentioning it, a 30minute non-stop sequence out of the 10am news. There was then Four links across the hour, getting through 11 songs. I guess the thing that I was most surprised about was how little local drops there were in the hour. I would of expected local promos at least out of ad breaks and thought they would have localised the production with town mentions etc. This is very easy to do, so is obvioulsy a strategic thing. It will be interesting to see if in the local hours it follows the same pattern. (Update – apparently London has 'London's Heart' production) In the presenter links, there was the standard network practice of generic mentions of people and places without locations. I'd be interested to see if there's any split links for London. A few catch-all errors, like mentioning digital, when half the East Anglia stations aren't on it and speaking about a competition as if people have heard it before – but really that's a but nitpicky. Toby sounds good and slick, allthough I thought they could have done with some early links in the hour, at least for today, providing some context for East of England listeners. Especially as for many listeners, tuning in for the first time after Christmas, the whole Heart thing may have come out of no where. Therefore using jocks (networked or not) to hold their hand is important. Remember you can get these straight to your inbox by entering your email address at the top right of this page. The RSS link is up there too. Tags: radio Comments: 3 Comments
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You forgot Q103 (Cambridge) – that switched over this morning too…
Comment by James — January 5, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
“Heart” is on “digital radio”, though – they’re all online, and big daddy Heart London is on Freeview and Sky and cable, and I bet even those areas not on local DAB have overspill from London, Leicester, West Mids, Norwich, Cambridge, Peterborough DAB. The confusion partly comes down to defining what “Heart” is. Is it “the radio station to which you are currently listening to”, or is it “the radio network to which you are currently listening to”. Is Heart a singular or a plural? A local station or a national network? It’s those kind of linguistic – dare I say existential! – questions they need to answer for themselves before they can make it clear for the rest of us.
I think it’s more complicated to do with Heart, as it replaces existing heritage names, in overlappig TSAs, than it is with “This is Galaxy” where you almost always only receive one on your radio.
Networked Anstis at least sounds a bit more interested than networked Snaith or networked Collins, I thought.
Comment by Mike — January 5, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
“To which you are currently listening to”?
Idiot.
Comment by Mike — January 6, 2009 @ 12:36 pm