The Flying Eye in the Sky

In 1974, LBC's Helicopter 417 took to the skies above the capital with reporter Bob Holness onboard keeping an eye on rush hour traffic conditions and providing live updates for listeners on their commute. Two years later, the iconic Capital Radio Flying Eye followed suit.

Analysing data from INRIX (or ROMANSE as we also used in Hampshire) is one thing, but to articulate news of a tailback you're looking at from several thousand feet above is quite the job.

Capital used twin-engined fixed wing planes which are faster and cheaper to run. G-FLYI, used first, is now based at Biggin Hill Airport and G-FLII is no longer in service.

Power and Ocean FM's Flying Eye was G-BSAW which is still operational and based at Compton Abbas Airfield in Dorset.

Clyde was the last station in Scotland to offer "bird's-eye view" travel news. The chopper used, G-BUXS, is also believed to still be operational having been used as an Air Ambulance in various regions over the last decade, including temporarily by Hampshire & Isle of Wight.

The most recent example of Eye in the Sky travel that springs to mind was JACK fm Berkshire (now The Breeze) which used a helicopter for reports into the breakfast show.

Radio doesn't come cheap

On this day in 1993 (according to David Lloyd's Radio Moments, obviously), GWR acquired Wolverhampton's Beacon Radio for £3.7m as well as Mercia FM, Leicester Sound and Trent FM for £4.8m.

Kieran McGeary notes Beacon's smaller local competitor, The Wolf, was purchased for £5.2m in 2000 by Forever Broadcasting.

With inflation, GWR's acquisition of Beacon would’ve equalled £6.8m in 2015 - the year Global acquired Liverpool's Juice FM from UTV for a whopping £10m.

Is this big money for a local or regional commercial radio station?

A business is often worth its price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) - in other words, a multiple of its profit which varies by industry and economic environment.

Other methods to value a company include:

• its balance sheet (tangible assets minus liabilities)
• calculate projected cash flow at today's rate of inflation
• compare how much it would cost to start a similar business from scratch
• factors that cannot be measured (location, reputation, trust, patents, trademarks)

For a loss-making startup, its valuation would be based on future prospects and/or turnover. Some industries have a "rule of thumb" or standard ways of calculating valuations (e.g. retail looks at number of outlets and customers).

Ultimately - and I know it sounds cliché - a business is worth what a potential buyer is willing to pay for it.

If there are synergies, the strategic benefit of an acquisition will be important in determining that figure or the buyer may have a vision to make the business more cost-effective.

In purchasing Juice, Global was able to fill a major gap in its FM coverage and saw the value in a CHR station with an established audience whose profile matched that of Capital's.

The only other way to have got that would've been to acquire Radio City, which Bauer would never have sold, so a strong and profitable Juice was Global's only option.

Election night live

Is it just me - a self-confessed political geek - or is there nothing quite like the buzz of the night after polls close in a general election?

The exit poll that may or may not prove accurate, the mad rush of collecting North East ballot boxes in a bid to be the first constituency to declare, the high-profile wins and losses, the swingometer... I could go on.

Work commitments have never allowed me to experience an election night unfolding in real-time - until last night, when I had a great time covering the local count from the press gallery for Winchester Radio.

Having watched the shock exit poll result at 10pm, I travelled to River Park Leisure Centre where counting was taking place for the Winchester and Meon Valley constituencies.

• While Meon Valley is a Tory stronghold, the BBC were forecasting a 63% chance of a Liberal Democrat gain in remain-voting Winchester.

• The incumbent, Conservative MP Steve Brine, held on at the last general election two years ago with a 52% share of the vote, down from 55% in 2015. His majority also decreased from 16,914 to 9,999.

• The Lib Dems increased their share of the vote by just over 10 percentage points last time around - up from 24.4% (13,511) to 34.5% (19,730) and they took control of the City Council from the Tories in May.

• The Green Party didn’t field a candidate in Winchester supporting Paula Ferguson (Lib Dems) as part of the 'Remain Alliance' pact between the two pro-EU parties.

Winchester Radio had its own table overlooking the count from the balcony viewing gallery and we were in esteemed company alongside colleagues from the BBC, ITV, Newsquest and the University of Winchester amongst others.

We kept listeners up-to-date throughout the night with as-live links and the result came in pretty much on schedule shortly after 5am (FYI the Tories hung on with a majority of just 985 - down by more than 9k - with the Lib Dems closing the gap by adding 7,715 votes).

Us radio people have all recorded, edited and/or uploaded things in a plethora of random places over the course of our careers. I polished our post-declaration interviews in Audition and uploaded them to Winchester Radio's Myriad playout system from the comfort of the balcony at River Park Leisure Centre.

Arriving home just before 8am, after a long and busy but thoroughly enjoyable (and fascinating) night, that horrible combination of needing to sleep immediately but also needing to eat immediately struck!

A few Birdseye waffles later, I was soundo! See you in 2024...?

Does Spotify pose a threat to radio?

How many times have you heard "radio is dead, everyone listens to Spotify now" or words to that effect?

It's not true, of course, with the latest MIDAS survey showing live radio accounts for 73% of UK 15+ ear-time while on-demand music streaming (OMS) is miles behind on just 11%.

Live radio also reaches 93% of the 15+ population with OMS on 28%, so radio remains solid - and that's why big tech has long been keen to bounce the ball in its court.

Fortunately for us, the likes of Spotify and Apple don't seem to have any real understanding of radio from the inside - as a medium, it's appeal and how listeners interact with it - because their people are merely listeners and not industry experts.

However, that's not to say we should underestimate the streaming giants as we don't know what their plans are. The international radio industry cannot afford to be a victim of its own success.

iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman is confident in FM radio and says he does not view Spotify as a competitor.

Clearly FM is not the future, whichever way you slice it, but Pittman is right to suggest it's becoming increasingly important for radio's primary purpose to be companionship and human connection rather than just music.

There is no long-term future for jukeboxes interspersed by twelve minutes of spot ads per hour - in fact, on American radio, that's about the duration of a single commercial break.

While there's generally some acceptance among heritage audiences, if commercial radio launched in today's climate it would never have ended up with such a heavy ad-load and would've been more keen to explore innovative, creative revenue streams like branded content.

What purpose do tight music rotations serve?

One of the most common criticisms of commercial radio is it plays "the same few songs all the time" - so why do it?

The logic is simple - the most frequently-played tracks are likely to have proven most popular in that station's music research, and someone is statistically likely to hear one of those tried and tested favourites whenever they tune in.

A common methodology for conducting this research is the auditorium test whereby existing listeners and target listeners are brought together in a room, listen to a load of songs and score each one based on how much they like it.

While likability is the most important data overall, programmers are also interested in familiarity (knowing the song) and burn (sick of hearing the song). These two are particularly relevant to current tracks and determining if a newer song has cut through or been overplayed.

Auditorium testing isn't exactly cheap so doing it more frequently would be costly and if you test too many songs in one session, by keeping people sitting there for too long, productivity sharply decreases thus affecting the accuracy of results towards the end.

However, what you could do is gamble excluding a certain number of huge songs that consistently score well to make way for a few extras - at least for a while.

While technological advancements in recent years make online music testing possible - which some smaller stations have done - this is less reliable as it's conducted unsupervised and unrealistic to think every person who makes a start in their own time will complete the survey and do so correctly.

BBC radio may seem less music-intensive than commercial radio but then you factor out the ad breaks it doesn't have to contend with. This is also the reason BBC stations are better placed to risk playing more songs that maybe aren't as popular or familiar.