Enkele belangrijke ‘geheimen’ die Sean Ryan, directeur van Nova in Brisbane (Australië) hieronder prijsgeeft, zijn ook voor Nederland zeer relevant om op landelijk niveau het leven van Radio538 zuur te maken ten gunste van jouw radiostation, gericht op mensen onder de 40 jaar. Ik ben er dan ook trots op dat wij enkele filosofieën met Nova gemeen hebben, zoals DJ’s die klinken als normale mensen en daarmee de afstand verkleinen tussen de luisteraar en de zender. Lees het interessante artikel afkomstig uit een lokale krant. THE numbers are in and Sean Ryan is smiling. The masses have voted with their dials and his radio station remains top of the heap.General manager of Nova 106.9, Ryan rides the fickle wave of public taste that dictates the winners and the losers. Winners are grinners and he's smiling as we sit in the modernist surrounds of his Teneriffe office. He introduces his staff and I'm suddenly and painfully aware I'm the oldest person in the building. FM radio is a young person's gig.
Ryan admits he's edging towards the upper end of the demographic but isn't planning on moving on any time soon.
He's the boss, and bosses are allowed to be over 30. He defends commercial radio mores and believes the industry generally operates within what he describes as "contemporary standards of decency".
"Look at some of the programs on television. There's a cooking show that the other week, I think, featured 85 expletives in half an hour," he says. "I don't agree with all the things I hear on radio or TV, particularly as I've got five kids myself aged 18, 16, 14, 11 and seven, so I've got the full range of critics in my home, particularly my wife who'll be driving the kids to school and hear something on Nova and let me know if she thinks it unacceptable."
Nova's point of difference, he says, is its avoidance of clutter.
"Unless our announcers have something to say, they don't talk. They don't just ramble on about nothing. There's a lot of things that clutter radio stations and it's not just talk. It's big ad breaks, big promotions, big credits for customers," he says. "It's something you won't hear on Nova. We never do more than two ads in a row and we avoid 'in' jokes because they mean nothing to the listener. The only time we'll be inwardly focused is when we're taking the p--- out of ourselves."
Ryan acknowledges he is at the sharp end of an intensely competitive industry and says he thrives on the adrenalin. "If it wasn't that competitive I'd get bored. It was quite a challenge when Nova moved to Brisbane because the other stereo stations had been here for years and done a good job and our challenge was how to change that," he says.
"We did lots of research before we started and worked out where we thought the market was and where the opportunities were and, eight months later, we were Brisbane's leading radio station." Its success was due, he believes, to the sameness of what was already being offered.
"I think Brisbane was ready for something new. We actually listened to what the consumer wanted and found out that they were sick of the typical things you get on radio – the big deep voices, the time calls every 15 minutes," he says, breaking into a parody of a breakfast announcer and parroting, "g'day, it's five to eight in the River City". "They didn't want to hear that any more. They wanted to hear down-to-earth people. We say the only difference between us and our listeners is that we hold the microphone."
Ryan believes the age of the announcer as a "star" who is bigger than the artists whose songs he or she plays are gone. "We don't refer to our announcers as stars. They're just people who reflect the views of other people in Brisbane," he says. "We also realised that new music was being tested on MTV rather than on radio, so we thought 'bugger it, we'll test new music', so we played a lot of local music. We've played literally thousands of local songs that have been produced here in Brisbane.
"And they don't want to hear the phone number of the commercial three times. The text book says you should repeat the phone number three times in a radio commercial. Our consumers say: 'We're savvy. We understand. Give us the information and, if we want to find it, we will. Don't ram it down our throats.'
"And we don't boast about what we achieve. You'll never hear us saying we're the leading station in Brisbane. We just don't do it. I've seen some media take out full-page ads saying: 'We're number one!'." He says the station's average male listener is a 28½ years old and the average female listener is 29 years old. "They both live in the suburbs. There's a misconception that just kids listen to Nova, that it's a young station, that it's hip and funky. There are elements of that but we're essentially a suburban station.
"There are always free movie tickets and CDs floating around a radio station. We take them for granted but for listeners out there in Coorparoo or Inala or Westlake, it's a big deal for them to win something like that and that's our average consumer, out there in the suburbs." Radio audiences, he says, are on the rise and he sees the advent of digital radio next year as a precursor to a further increase in these numbers.
"The big thing for us is local. Everything you hear is from Brisbane or has been requested from other markets . . . like the hour we do every night which is the best of a Sydney broadcast."
Local announcers, he says, will never be replaced in his lifetime. "We could save a lot of money right now by simply taking a feed out of Sydney or Melbourne. "Our computers can do that but people want to hear what's happening locally and if you're not here in Brisbane, you can't pretend that you are," he says.
"You've got to smell the flowers in spring, feel the humidity in summer, experience the afternoon rain in summer. You can't fake that sitting in a studio in Sydney." Ryan exudes the bouncy energy of a person who finds it difficult to sit quietly, a trait that fits with his philosophy for the station. "Every day you sit still, you go backwards. There's not a single day that goes past that we don't introduce something. We might just tart up the cars or tweak the way our news sounds. There's always something, a re-invention," he says.
His advice for those contemplating a career in radio?
"As long as you're relevant and it's entertaining, you've got a career. If you put yourself before the radio station and the listener, you'll only be here for the short term."
