Piece from Sunday Times about Pirate Stations and Spin 103.8

MoeJay

Apologies if this has been previously posted!

Sue Denham wrote in the Sunday Times (August 24) and I quote:

"Who was it that fuelled the recent heavy-handed raids on Dublin's pirate stations by Comreg, Ireland's new regulator of boradcast communications? The pirates have long suspected the ailing licensed music stations. Sue can confirm that Spin 1038, the "youth" radio station whose investors include a son of Mr Spin himself, PJ Mara, was very keen to take them off the air. A letter, called, in Stalinesque terms, for the "eradication" of the pirates - they "not only dilute our audience but also diminish our advertising revenue." The proliferation of pirates had reached "epidemic proportions", it warned. Now that its wish has been granted, Spin 1038 will be under pressure to improve its 2% market share, revealed in last week's JNLR radio listenership figures for the year to July."

2%???? Did you "ask for it?"

It's all about the Benjamins.

Pearl

I know Spin is awful, but has anyone actually spent time listening to it? (for research purposes of course). I don't even hear it in Spars and Centras. Can it really be worse than 98fm?

MoeJay

Therein lies the argument Pearl, with such an allegedly high demand for a youth, or new music etc oriented station, why on Earth has spin only got a 2% market share?

There must be something wrong, and trying to sound like a foul-mouthed BBC Radio 1 is not going to cut it. Whoever decided that there was a huge demand to hear constant dance followed by "r'n'b" [sic], obviously didn't know what the people want.

In fairness to 98fm, they know their market. They aim at bland, MOR, AOR, twentysomethings who think they're thirtysomething, and thirtysomethings. And they listen in their droves because, unfortunately, I know a few people like that.

Where ComReg (or the BCI or whoever) got it wrong was when sending out these shiny new licences, they concentrated on who claimed whose bottom line produced the most € profit. Never mind the fact that people actually wanted to listen to it, hence we get Country FM, NewsTalk, and Spin 1038.

The future of radio is more and more niche marketing. We can't have Top 40 playlist stations, or those widely oriented stations, as people are going to turn off until they hear the music they really want to hear all the time. It's just that Phantom FM figured this out way before anyone else did.

Tyrrial

you said it MoeJay. i'm so sick of what i hear on the radio, thoughs people just have no idea what the public want to hear. if we can just ignore the obvoisely satified drones that listen to the crap spouted out by what ever carbon copy station and put something new onto the airwaves dublin will be a happier place.

El Chico

what really pisses me off is that 2fms new "cool" phantomesque wireless show is a load of bollox also. weezer have been on every time i've turned it on. i think hes afraid to play zeppelin

sanvean

Originally posted by El Chico
i think hes afraid to play zeppelin

This is a good thing.

I have to listen to Spin in work (a coffee shop near Leeson Street) and it's not the worst station in the world (it has a couple of good songs on its rotation list, although I can only think of Seven Nation Army at the moment - but even for that one song, it's better than 98FM or FM104. They do try too hard to be 'young' and 'cool' and 'down with the kids'. For example, they embarrasingly call the Gardai 'cops' in their 'news' bulletins. They also have a pointless five word weather report, where they pointlessly put the weather into five words (why?). The djs are just as irritating as any of the major stations, and there's little variety in their music. It's like what FM104 should be playing if it wasn't such an AOR radio station.

Raggamuffin

Ever ehard them read out the news?

the music is louder than the guy's voice and he reads everything out like it's the next coolest gadget or something.

Why "youth" station must also mean "dumbed down" station.

ah well

Monkey

"They do try too hard to be 'young' and 'cool' and 'down with the kids'. For example, they embarrasingly call the Gardai 'cops' in their 'news' bulletins. They also have a pointless five word weather report"

last time I listened to it they did the news with this terrible beat in the background and the guy read it in a Larry Gogan type voice. Not very suitable considering most of the news that day was about people being killed and child abuse.

healyron

To give at least some credit where it is due, Spin are at least 'trying'. Some would say 'very trying'.

When we released "Scene Unheard", no other station in teh Dublina rea was interested. One or two DJ@s who we know thru other contacts did play a track or two. However, the stations themselves were just not interested. Here we were, a dublin based 'indie' putting out a compilation of new 100% Irish music. GigSmart did the same thing the same week. What stations did a mini news spot on these releases? None.

Spin, on the other hand, at least gave us the opportunity, with Eva Staic, of coming into the station for a long chat. As far as I know (I don;t get to hear it where I am) they also mentioned it on their news-ish stuff (not the actual news but the "whats happening" kinda slot).

It is very difficult to get things right quickly. To me, this is not different than when you a re a youngster (say 10 or 12) and you have mates around and your parents try to be cool. They're not. They're embarrassingly uncool and it's more embarrassing because they're trying to be cool and your mates are going "What the **** would they be like if they didn't try...?"

Guess what? I'm a parent of three (eldest is almost 11) and I am definitely not going to try to be cool. Spin should take the same attitude. They should bring in people and let them do their job, not bring in people and turn them into "kiddies-TV-presenters-in-training". Eventually, they'll get it right, or at least a little bit more right.

As for their content, the annoying thing is that their playlist is very small and this is purely a financial consideration. If they ahd their ehad on their shoulders they would devote a lot of time to 'new' material from all over (especially Ireland) and work out a deal with the labels, publishers and bands that this 'new' material should have it's royalties waived. That way they could play more new music (I reckon it should be only for indie labels and unsigned bands) as well as saving s afew quid.

Finally, in the case of Phantom FM, it has to be said that they are not perfect, but they are better than most. In fact, in the stuff we do (promoting unsigned bands) there is no-one better. On the other hand, can they do it commercailly? Can they do it when they have to pay salaries and pay 9% of their income (or whatever it currently is) to IMRO?

Can they afford to employ DJ's who will stick around long enough to build an audience and not **** off to someone that pays well and has a bigger listenership? 'Pete Reed' knows that Phantom are a traiing ground for DJs and he's happy to take it as a compliment from what I can gather. Yes, there are plenty of people out there who will do the shows for free (and I did it myself for a while) but it cannot be strategically planned unless you have contracts and so on. Otherwise you'd be jsut a pirate/amateu with a license and it would soon die a death. It might not start of as bad as Spin but pretty soon everyone would be saying "What happened to Phantom FM?".

I hope it doesn;t happen. I hope the advertisers cop on and realise that even those of us old enough to know better (I'm almost 36) still listen to the less 'Americanised' radio stations around. They do that, and Phantom have a chance. They don;t and Phantom will be broke. It's an expensive business running a radio station.

On the bright side, if Phantom can get into the Colleges (which we think they can, in plenty of locations) via the Internet, then they have an 'in' on the lucrative student advertising market.

Here's hoping

[Any replies that need an answer, please email them to me as I don;t get in here that often]

Regards

Ron, IrishUnsigned.com