#Blog Alert I Saw Ron Moody's last performance.

I really enjoyed a celebration of 50 years of Oliver in 2010 at the Theatre Royal in Dury Lane now with Russ Abbot as Fagan, Rowan Atkinson had been the original Fagan.  The ensemble cast of kids were truly brilliant, the use of the stage and the sets and the clever way they played the murder scene all added to a terrific night.  Even though the Theatre was peppered with hardened members of the press we gave the cast a standing ovation and then something truly remarkable happened.

A podium was brought on and Russ Abbot walked up to and said ladies and gentlemen, please will you welcome to the stage of the Theatre Royal Dury Lane - the original Fagan - Mr Ron Moody, and on he came and spent the next twenty minutes talking about his life in showbusiness.  He held us in the palm of his hands, made us laugh, made us cry.  And then something truly remarkable happened.

The band struck up the first chords of 'Pick A Pocket or Two" the kids came on and a very elderly Ron Moody sprang, I kid you not, into life and danced and sung with the children as if he was thirty years younger.
 
I remember turning to Chris who was moaning about missing the last train, and saying "This is Ron Moody's Swan Song, we are watching his very last stage performance."  And again we all stood up and gave Ron a standing ovation.   

Listen to lovely Audioboom version of this blog click here for more

#Blog Alert Run Rabbit Run

 lets kill a pet rabbit live on the radio.


That's what  Danish radio host Asger Juhl did.  The rabbit in question was called Allan and was struck on the head with a bicycle pump, Mr Juhl wanted to use a metal bar, but didn't have one, then he dispatched the rabbit by wringing its neck.

 So was it pointless cruelty or a perfectly good way to talk about the subject of animal welfare.  It was probably a capricious act by a presenter keen for publicity, which he received in bucket loads.  I think if I was the Producer of the show I would have prevented him from actually killing the rabbit, but allow him to go through the process.

There is a radio version of the line in the sand, where you should not cross, and if you you do, there will certainly be consequences.

Radio Presenter, comedy writer and performer Jon Holmes decided to broadcast a quiz on Virgin Radio called "Swearing Radio Hangman for the Under-12s" - the title alone should have been cause for alarm from somebody in the management of the radio station.

On one particular night he persuaded a nine-year-old child to repeat the swear of the day, that was "soapy tit wank"

Jon is actually proud of this achievement and the record £75,000 fine that followed from the regulator.  I know this as he came to work for LBC.  He is a very funny, bright presenter and would try every time to cross that line in the sand.  Martin his Producer and I had a single word that would bring him back into line though.  All we had to do was whisper the word "Soapy" in his headphones and he knew that he was going to far.

Maybe someone at the Danish Radio will in the future be whispering "Rabbit" in Asger Juhl's ears when he next steps over the line?

#Blog Alert The Day The Music Died

is Apple trying to kill off free music streaming?  Listen to this Blog/Podcast here At least one news source thinks it might be.  According to Business Insider "Apple has reached out to artists about curating their own channels for its streaming service, which is expected to be unveiled in June at the company's WWDC event.

They believe that 'this isn't going to be a new piece of software, but a complete relaunch of iTunes to move away from paid downloads to a paid streaming service.'

Apple acquired headphone company 'Beats' back in 2014 for US$ 3 billion but that didn't just include those ubiquitous headphones, found around the head of every 'cool' dude who is into their music.

Beats had its own streaming service a a star cast of music industry players. Meanwhile Apple has been busy behind the scenes asking artists like 'Florence and the Machine' and 'Taylor, I'm taking my music off Spotify Swift' to sign exclusive content deals.  A bit like some shows only end up on Netflix.

While Digital Trends dot com doesn't think that 'a handful of exclusive albums will not be enough to convince consumers to cough up cash.' They think the Appleisation - good music curation, ease of use and a better royalty payment to artists might.

The rumour is that Apple will offer a plan launching in June at $10 a month in the U.S. that's about £6.50 in the UK - Apple has plenty of cash around to make this a success.

The Achilles heel?  Well for it to work you need a robust internet service and there are plenty of parts of Britain, including the city I live in when I get 'no service' on my smart phone. And sleepy hamlets like parts of central London where the download speed from BT is not even half a mega byte.

#Blog Alert Happy Marconi Day

or how a bunch of drunk engineers gave birth to broadcasting. Back in 1920 the government and certainly the Post Master General did not want spoken radio.  They thought they could make lots of money selling frequencies for commercial (Morse code) use, things never seem to change do they?

In 1920 when The Daily Mail and The Marconi Company of Chelmsford broadcast the first advertised radio performance, featuring the famous opera singer Dame Nellie Melba it was a great success. Too successful,  it worried the Government of the time so much that they refused to give out another licence for two years.

So it was in 1922 that finally a licence was given for The Radio Society of Great Britain to transmit 'experimental' radio 'broadcasts' rather than Morse Code. The Marconi Company provided the equipment.  And the Engineer in charge at that time was Peter Eckersley:

"I happened to be at the Marconi Company at the time and we inhabited a place called Writtle, a hut, a long low hut, full of long low people, and we had a wireless transmitter and we were eventually appointed by the radio society of Great Britain to do this thing called  'broadcasting.'

We had to talk into this thing (microphone) and give them signals.  It was very formal, mark you, but we went ahead nevertheless and that's probably how the first regular broadcasting station in Britain ever started.

We were, we were half an hour a week! Every Tuesday and we just broadcast, that's all.  At first of all it was terribly formal a man picked up the microphone and said: "Hello C.Q. this is two-emma-tock Writtle calling." and we will now play you a gramophone record."

So it was awfully dull until the evening when Peter himself, fortified by a trip to the local pub and with the help of the publican's piano changed those formal broadcasts into something very different:

"But one day it seemed to me to be rather fun to pick up the microphone, we went to the local and we had some 'dinner' and I started to broadcast and we went on and we talked, at least I talked and we sang and we played the fool and so-on and I think that was the first broadcasting ever in Britain."

And so it was from a small wooden hut in a village just outside Chelmsford in the United Kingdom that regular broadcasting began.  The Marconi Company were at first horrified by Peter's drunken antics, but then the post arrived.  Hundreds of letters asking them - 'to do it again,'  and 'did they have any picture postcards of themselves'  and 'could they request a gramophone record be played.'

Happy Marconi Day and thanks to David Lloyd's Radio Moments for the audio used in the Audioboom  Podcast.

#BLOG ALERT Best voiceover microphone

 I think I am about to open up a can of worms with this blog.  The very best microphone to buy for your vocal performance is ... the one that suits your voice.  If that sounds a bit glib it is not meant to be.

Human voices come in all sorts of different tones, pitch and delivery and I am not just talking about your vocal chords but the way you pronounce words, your accent and delivery.  So it's worth trying out a number of different microphones until you find one that suits you.

At the moment I am baby sitting a Neumann TLM 193 it's been around the block and I guess it is at least 20 years old but still works well.  I like the naturally warm sound and I have to do less processing to get a pleasing sound from the TLM 193. 

I think you can look at microphones the way you might look at a car,  so I am going to compare car with microphone and see if you can find one that fits your vocal style.

The Fiat 500 - The Blue Yeti silver edition

The Fiat 500
This nippy little well-designed car has a retro look.  If offers a great deal of bang for your buck, you can buy a sporty Abarth version as well as a modest 1200 litre model.

The Yeti
This is a nippy little well-designed microphone with a retro look.  It offers a great deal of bang for your buck, you can get an XLR pro version as well as a USB - plug it in and off you go.  Four polar patterns including cardioid for vocal work and stereo for recording live music.  It gives you an awful lot for about £100.00

The Ford Focus - The Rode NT1-A

The Ford Focus
A safe pair of hands, sturdy if a little mass produced, the Focus gives you a quiet ride and though its quite a bland car delivers a lot of extras at modest cost

The Rode NT1-A
A safe pair of hands, sturdy if a little mass produced the Rode gives you a quiet response and though it has quite a bland sound you get a lot of extras at modest cost.  Pop shield and shock mount and a cable for £120 ripper mate!

The Audi A5 Saloon - The Audio Technica AT2020 USB plus

The Audi A5 Saloon - a sophisticated family saloon car, but has a sporty look to it. It handles well but is an expensive buy.

 The Audio Technica AT2020 plus - has a sporty look to it.  Handles well and is NOT an expensive buy, it comes with a high quality A/D converter and a headphone jack allowing you monitor without delay.  So this is a microphone that punches above its weight.

The Mercedes A Class - The SE Electronics X1

The Mercedes A Class - A smart and stylish a top end family car that still looks good and performs well. Again expensive but you get a great interior that exudes luxury.

The SE Electronics X1 studio bundle is smart and stylish a top end performer with a bargain basement price.  I like the sintered grill that does a great job with plosive sounds.  This whole bundle will cost you just £180.  It's a phantom powered XLR so you will need an audio interface to connect to your computer, but like the AT2020 it punches way above its weight.

The BMW 3 series - The Neumann U87

The BMW 3 series - a car that has an upmarket image and great driving dynamics  make this beautifully engineered German baby purr.  Reliable and versatile with great specs this has a refined and comfortable feel. But you do pay £££ for all that engineering skill.

The Neumann U87 - a microphone that has an upmarket image and great driving dynamics make this beautifully engineered German baby purr.  Reliable and versatile with great specs this has a refined and comfortable feel.  But you do pay £££ for all that engineering skill.

So there are plenty of great microphones at equally great prices but for top of the range results always choose a Neumann microphone it should never let you down. 

For equally good sonic quality Audio Technica and SE Electronics turn in a good product. 

For cheeky price and great quality and polar versatility the Yeti stands out as the best entry level podcasting mic.

The most famous cock in the world

the @britishpathe news is crowing not once but 85,000 times as the British Pathé release its entire collection of 85,000 historic films on YouTube for free 

“Our hope is that everyone, everywhere who has a computer will see these films and enjoy them,” says Alastair White, General Manager of British Pathé. “This archive is a treasure trove unrivalled in historical and cultural significance that should never be forgotten. Uploading the films to YouTube seemed like the best way to make sure of that.”

British Pathé was once a dominant feature of the British cinema experience, renowned for first-class reporting and an informative yet uniquely entertaining style. It is now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in existence. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage – not only from Britain, but from around the globe – ofmajor events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, sport and culture. The archive is particularly strong in its coverage of the First and Second World Wars.

Alastair White continues: “Whether you’re looking for coverage of the Royal Family, the Titanic, the destruction of the Hindenburg, or quirky stories about British pastimes, it’ll be there on our channel. You can lose yourself for hours.”

The Full English

watched @GMB today with @Richardaarnold.  Breakfast TV is an acquired taste, I've always preferred the radio offerings, you can make your sandwiches, get breakfast ready and listen with relative ease in the bathroom.  We mostly listen to Nick Ferrari - he's been the Breakfast Presenter at LBC for more than ten-years and a personal friend for more than 20.  But only now is Nick getting his feet under the breakfast table, it takes a long time to really get to know and like a show host.

When I was working with Doug Urbanski he told me that at 710 WOR in New York they had a host who had been on air since 1926 and over those years, generations of New Yorkers' had listened and grown up with him, trouble was he was getting very old and they worried that at some point he would shuffle off his mortal coil, then they had the brilliant idea to co-host the show with his son. And when dad finally moved onto the celestial airwaves the son seamlessly carried on, preserving the generations of listeners to that show.

So we are on day 3 of "Good Morning Britain" - I quite like the set, it has a Next catalogue urbane look with a pretty view of St Paul's. Not sure about the glass desk they have stolen from BBC News - that acts like a great watery Thames barrier trapping an incredible number of presenters of this show behind it.  I am also worried about the cream sofa - that's going to need quite a lot of shake'n'vac to put the freshness back after a few months.

The content I saw started with a rather dour piece about gambling that ran way over time, thus squeezing Richard Arnold who finally brought a bit of fun onto the sofa (they seem to run from desk to sofa on this show) followed by the slick news sequence that also ran late. Then at some point after Andy Peters popped up live from some miserable part of Britain offering us £50.  There's just too much in the show and they have not identified their target audience very well.  The pace is frenetic but I am sure it will settle down and find its own style and cadence.

Visual imaging is really nice, the imaging theme a bit ponderous and slow and sounds a bit like a ripped-off new LBC theme but without the groove track.

So at only three days old ITV's "Good Morning Britain" is a much better looking show than "Daybreak" - give it ten years and it might turn into something really rather good.

#BBC Jamaica Inn who's to blame?

my mum has bought a sound bar for her TV. One of those expensive narrow speaker things from Bose.  She says she has real problems understanding some of the #BBC shows she watches.  She is not alone over 2,000 people have complained about the poor sound quality of 'Jamaica Inn'  It does not help that none of the actors seem capable of opening their mouths on this drama.

I call it the 'attack of the whispering actors' in the good old days of boom microphones, the actors er, had to boom.  Now we have those clever little radio mics you can Sellotape to an actors body. The good thing is that now dialogue can sound more natural and the performance more intimate.

Intimacy is something I teach in my courses at The London Academy of Media, but I also teach that by all means give the intimate performance but make sure there is clarity. Mumbling like Marlon Brando with toothache in a dodgy west country accent lacks that clarity.

Some have blamed the Sound Engineer and there is an element of truth there.  Fantastic as Dolby surround home cinema sound is, most people, including my mum, listen off the crappy speakers on their TV and the stereo mix on some shows means that dialogue is swamped by the music, this means that the mix should work on the crappiest of speakers.  I often check my students work on my iPhone, it is the ultimate acid test to see if their performance cuts through and my production does the same but does not drown their performance.

Equally I would hate all the actors to turn in an r.p. performance with the odd 'ooo arrrrrr' thrown in for good measure so the answer is clarity of performance and checking the quality of the sound production on the poorest form of carriage (a smart phone) and the BBC might not have lost 1.6 million viewers between episodes, and much more importantly my mum would not have to spend her pension money on expensive sound equipment. 

LBC is now Leading Britain's Conversation

LBC goes from local to national

LBC radio goes national.  From 11^th February LBC will start broadcasting nationally on DAB, using the D1 channel recently vacated by Jazz FM.  After forty years the late Sir Christopher Chataway’s dream of having national commercial news talk radio has been realised, sadly just a week after his death.

LBC had been available on a number of regional DAB services and that service was removed in 2012, prompting social media anger among the UK listeners that had been enjoying the service:

“I heard the terrible news that just a few days ago LBC has been pulled from several parts of the UK on DAB.

My parents who are avid listeners to LBC, listened daily in fact every room within their house had a DAB radio that was tuned only to LBC.

Every station on FM and DAB is either music or sports oriented; in fact 70% of the stations in Lincolnshire is aimed towards the older listener. I've been reading through several website forums, which are filled with angry, upset and confused LBC listeners across towns and cities up North with utter disbelief.

Twitter and Facebook have again many comments and questions aimed asking why LBC has gone, yet they haven't even had the balls to reply with the fact LBC will not be coming back”  -

Orangeandlemon – Digital Spy

Well at least one listener and his family will be pleased at the news that LBC goes national on DAB.

#iTunes #Radio

about to launch in the UK? Some iPhone users in the UK report that it is turning up on their phones - but this could be just a 'glitch' according to MacWorld.  This is what they say: "iTunes Radio is a new service by Apple that allows you to play any song in the iTunes library. When will iTunes Radio launch in the UK is a question a lot of our readers have been asking, after all our US friends have had iTunes Radio for a while now.

Many Macworld readers have reported that iTunes Radio mysteriously started appearing in the UK in recent weeks. It seems that some users in the UK get iTunes Radio. This has led to much speculation that Apple is due to launch iTunes Radio in the UK.

Social Vandals

@archiveatBBC most of us are aware that during the late sixties and seventies the BBC television archive ran out of shelf space.  Rather than build more shelves they decided to perpetrate the most appalling cultural vandalism and destroyed or wiped many shows that would deprive historians and the public for the rest of human time.

I have my own story about the LBC and IRN archive - a new owner at LBC decided that we had run out of shelf space and that the archive was to be pruned down to just a handful of 'important' recordings. (Familiar story hey?) I along with Chris Lowrie (still at LBC)  and Derek Cole (Now at Sky) were given the task to fill a very large builders skip with archive tapes.

The three of us decided that this would be cultural vandalism.  Derek went hunting around the building and we filled the skip with all manner of junk - old sound mixers even a broken dishwasher from one of the kitchens.  Then we layered a thin cover of tapes on the top - to make it seem we had emptied out most of the archive.

Then came the tricky bit making the archive room look less full of tapes.  Well by shoving a lot of tapes closely together and sliding reels on top and by farming off the whole of the LBC show 'Cinema Screen' to its former presenter - Carol Allen - we managed to pull it off.

Writing this I can still see in my mind Carol Allen's old estate car driving away from the underground car park so weighed down that there were sparks coming from underneath as it caught the concrete floor.

Fast forward to another time and place and our precious archive was now stored at Kings Cross - a bid for lottery funding had been put in to have the whole of LBC/IRN recordings from 1973-1997 digitally archived.  The bid was successful and Bournemouth University took on the mammoth task of cataloging all the tapes.

A few weeks ago I was teaching a student who had a masters in Journalism - I asked what their dissertation was about? "Oh comparing the BBC radio and Commercial radio coverage of the miners strike during Mrs Thatchers time as Prime Minister, did you know there's a fantastic audio archive of commercial radio on the University Library system?

As a footnote 'Cinema Screen' and all its tapes that had been sitting in Carol Allen's garage were lovingly collected by the British Library and now reside in their archive.

R2 D2 #DAB #RADIO

A second national commercial radio DAB multiplex is expected to be announced on Monday. The question of who will be the gatekeeper of such a service and more importantly what the content of a national Multiplex might contain should give the radio industry and OFCOM much to think about.  

As usual 'John Myers' has written an insightful blog about the subject: 

"A strange week in Myers land. I was asked if I’d like to join a consortium to apply for the anticipated new national DAB licence called D2, although I’ve not seen anything official from OFCOM just yet. To be honest, when asked, I had to ponder for a moment. So much has happened since the licence was first awarded to Channel 4 in 2007…"  Read the whole blog CLICK HERE 

Meanwhile (A word I hate with a vengeance and really not needed in the middle of a radio news bulletin lol) 'Radio Today' have been speaking to Arqiva who run the current MUX and favour a low-cost smaller national commercial network (not sure what that is?) 

"We’ve heard speculation that radio groups and non-radio organisations will be bidding for the chance to control the overdue digital platform, although one company already has the network to expand upon. But would an Arqiva-owned D2 be allowed in this monopoly-aware industry…? Read the whole story CLICK HERE

Whilst today the government will be clarifying the plan to switch off FM Radio (are they mad? .. no need to answer that btw) and we also see next year the new local TV stations going to air on Freeview, including London live with a budget of £15 million and is backed by the London Evening Standard, so 2014 looks an interesting year for broadening listener and viewer choice in the UK.

It's in The #MixRadio

@nokia_UK have launched a music service with over 26 million songs available to stream for FREE.  Using a TiVo type thumbs up and down you can personalise the music you listen to.  There are also a bunch of playlists created by the likes of Nile 'Get Lucky' Rogers you can listen to.

So is this another nail in the coffin of traditional music radio?  Well I have just spent 11 very sunny warm days in the Canaries enjoying Telefonica's idea of broadband and 3G - I had enough trouble reading my email - so streaming even on WiFi was pretty much a no-go, without traditional FM broadcast radio my holiday would have been radio free.

BUT with the push for 4G that mobile operators are selling as a network that can stream - services like Nokia's MixRadio are surely going to take a slice of the market away from traditional radio?

Shout Out

Yesterday I talked to a real #radio #listener about #LBC973.  It was another day of @Greateranglia delays and my fellow commuters started to talk to each other as we waited 20 mins for a train to arrive. The guy who always stands next to my for the last two-years asked what I did? When I told him, he said I love the radio, I listen more than I watch TV.

When I said I had been working for LBC 97.3 the last couple of weeks he replied much as he loved the format he "didn't want people shouting him at the breakfast table in the morning."  At first I thought he was picking on the big man - Nick Ferrari, but what he actually meant were the shout with too many words commercials that still populate the radio airwaves here in the UK.

I have just read a very good book by Tony (Radio Operators) Hertz "The 7 Secrets of Creative Radio Advertising."  He agrees with me that shouting radio ads with too much copy squeezed in to 30 seconds never worked and as each day passes sound out of tune with the way we consume advertising now.

So how pleasing it was to hear The Lloyds Bank commercial this morning, no shouting just a narrative about a man who started a winery in Kent, that was followed by equally natural and understated ad for Waitrose unfortunately on the heels of Waitrose was a commercial for a secretarial service with a woman screaming the many and complex benefits - edited so there was not a single breath in her delivery.  The industry is getting better at making commercials but we are not quite there yet.

#Adobe #Hacked

Well done after forcing us all into the cloud to keep up-to-date with the professional software that us media people have to use from Adobe -  3 million encrypted credit card details, all passwords and possible un-encrypted credit card details have been nicked - as we say here in England.

I had my reservations about the Adobe Cloud, its been unstable on my iMac and has crashed a number of times, always when I had tight client deadlines. So I am now actively looking for something that will make quick radio production, produce HD video do some photo-editing - I can find an alternative to Prem Pro in Final Cut but have yet to find a better (quicker) software package to replace Audition.

If you are reading this and have some ideas, do let me know. Off to check my business account for 'unusual activity' as Adobe call it.

Bum Deal

How to do charitable appeals on the radio.  Bob Monkhouse died of @ProstateUK Cancer in 2003. I was asked to help create the radio version of Bob's very clever posthumous appeal for funds for Prostate Research Foundation - Some of the audio was pucker Bob and some was a very good vocal impressionist.

I had the pleasure to work with Bob's wife - Jacqui who thought humour would be a very good way to broach the delicate subject of prostate cancer - something that 40,000 UK men get diagnosed with every year.

The appeal worked very well and gave us an accessible platform to discuss the subject.  Despite getting a good response there were some calls to the radio station saying they didn't want to hear about middle age men and their bums.  When I replied that we openly talk about breast cancer you would usually get the answer that talking about breast cancer was OK.

In 1969 my grandmother died of breast cancer.  She was ashamed when she found a lump in her breast and did not want to 'bother' the Doctor.  When the lump was finally diagnosed as cancer it was too late and my Nan died.

Now it's OK to talk about breast cancer - and thousands of women's lives have been saved by a change in attitude .  I hope we can soon say the same of men who have prostate cancer.

FREE AUDITION

Adobe are giving away Audition 3.0 for free! The software is used by many radio and broadcast professionals because  it is stable, flexible and intuitive If you want to save over £300 on the cost of buying the latest version - or you want to 'upgrade' to an official and legit version of the software - download Adobe Audition and a serial number here.

This version of Adobe Audition 3.0 works perfectly well under most Windows operating systems, including Windows 7.

Official Adobe Statement

Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.

Thanks to Francis Currie Consulting for this post.

The Tuning Scales of Justice

A Colorado woman was charged with two felonies after allegedly calling into a local radio station and bragging about how she posed as mentally unstable to get excused from jury duty Read more:

Eye eye eye like you very much

New iPad was born yesterday a sexy slim thing with an eye for a great display. BUT the real reason that the iPad and iPhone are such a runaway success is CONTENT Get your content right and you can be king of the castle.  The Apple App store has had over 25 billion downloads. Apps are great and downright sexy I mean who doesn't love shooting angry birds at little green piggies?

The radio industry should adopt the Apple mantra for success.  Get the content right and you attract an audience and, if you are a commercial operation, - you make money.  I know some really great programmers who know just the right buttons to push to get an audience but have  regrettably also experienced programme directors who have pandered to the owners or managing directors little peccadillo's and put programming or played music that the bosses liked, knowing full well that it didn't make the station better or encourage audience growth.

Silly Plugger

Why Chris Evans is a brilliant little plugger.  Listening to Radio 2 this morning I caught Chris Evans teasing in detail the whole raft of specialist shows that BBC Radio 2 have on in the evening.  Which he described as a 'music school' for those who love all kinds of music.  He then played a song he had heard the previous night on one of the specialist shows, whilst cooking his dinner. 

It's so important to get listeners to extend their hours of listening it helps the Rajar and the revenue for commercial stations.  I just wish more talent followed Chris' example and skill at being the best plugger in town.