BBC Hereford and Worcester: Sony Award

It's official! BBC Hereford and Worcester is the best radio station in the country and it's got the Sony Award to prove it. We go behind the scenes to find out what makes Worcestershire's local radio station so special. Words: Jane Sullivan, Photographs: Martin Humby.

Radio has a special place in the nation's psyche, the background to our lives. Through my teens Radio One was the station we all tuned in to. Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee-Travis, Simon Bates, Dave 'The Kid' Jensen, Steve Wright were our friends on the airwaves. How I would have got through A'levels without endless cups of coffee and John Peel, I don't know. Nowadays I have different friends on the airways - Tony, and Howard and Andrew - and I'm about to meet them here in Worcester.

Going local

Local radio has been one of the great success stories of BBC radio. I don't particularly care if the A93 from Aberdeen to Braemar has an overturned lorry and a mile-long tailback. But I do want to know if the A46 around Evesham is in gridlock. I'm not particularly interested in the opinions of the residents of Tunbridge Wells on their MP's latest peccadilloes but I am interested when Worcestershire's MPs are caught up in the latest expenses scandal. That's where local radio comes into its own.

Howard Bentham

Howard Bentham, has just come off air, and is planning tomorrow's broadcast. Spare a thought for Howard when you rise in the mornings. At 3.15 am every weekday his alarm goes off. "I'm at work for 4.30am," he says. FOUR THIRTY. Just thinking about that time of day makes me tired. "I probably get about four or five hours sleep a night but I am good at power naps," reveals Howard. "I can get my head down for a nap anywhere."

Howard's show starts at 6am (Start Your Day Howard's Way!) and this morning it's the Bee Gee's Night Fever. Well, if you have to rise at that hour you may as well do it with a spring in your step. For the next three hours a lively mix of lighthearted banter, witticisms, music, news, traffic, helps us all on our way to work. It's good stuff - nothing too dismal, things to make you smile, make you think and above all it's local. I know everywhere they're talking about and even some of the people that get a mention.Hospital radio in Dudley was Howard's first venture into the studio. "I had no mad desire to be a DJ but I found that I could do it," says Howard. A demo tape found its way to Beacon Radio, shortly followed by the man himself. "I got the midnight to 6am slot on Saturdays and Sundays - the genuine graveyard shift. Then I got some freelance shifts at The Bear and after a while I was offered the breakfast slot there."

Breakfast obviously suits Howard. He's as bright eyed and bushy tailed off air as he sounds when he's on air. For several years he combined teaching history at The Croft School in Stratford-upon-Avon with his early morning show on The Bear. "When I moved over here I couldn't keep it up, but I still do three afternoons a week coaching sport," he says. With a three-hour slot to fill each morning there is a lot of preparation and the subject matter is so diverse. This summer when the Australian cricket team were in town Howard's show followed the autograph hunters at New Road and managed to persuade Ricky Ponting, the Aussie cricket captain, to record a soundbite advertising the station's ball-by-ball coverage.

It's the nature of local radio that it covers all aspects of life. "We took the radio show to Belfast to meet our local troops who were off on a tour of Afghanistan and that was incredible to meet them and tragic that some of the guys we spoke to haven't come back."

Tony Fisher

It's now mid-morning and Tony Fisher is well into his show. I've always thought of Tony Fisher as BBC Hereford & Worcester's answer to Tony Blackburn and I don't mean that as an insult. Tony Blackburn was devoted to radio and it showed through the airwaves. Listening to Tony Fisher I get that same feeling of absolute enthusiasm for the medium so it comes as no surprise to find that radio is the only thing he has ever wanted to do. "Even from the age of seven I was pretending to be a DJ at home. When I was 12 years old I won a competition in The Sun newspaper to be a DJ with Tony Blackburn and that was it," says Tony. "I went into hospital radio making the tea at the age of 15 and then worked for a commercial radio station up in Bradford and by the age of 19 I had the breakfast show up in Leeds."

He turns to the microphone as Toto's Africa comes to a close and then reminds the listeners that the kids are back to school and "we're talking about how to prevent the colds and sniffles this morning. And later on I'll be talking to Dr Dawn Harper...". He flicks a switch and swivels his chair back round to talk to me again. "Then I went down south to Guildford and I've been in Worcester for four years," he says not missing a beat. Tony's show is billed as 'real life in the two counties.' "The main focus is always stories from the listeners," he says. "No subject is taboo. One day we'll be talking about the menopause, the next day we might be talking about different types of milk. "People sometimes forget that they are talking to thousands of people and that's a real privilege when they're talking about something that's personal to them.

"We had a caller recently who said that she didn't want to sleep with her husband anymore because of the menopause. She came on the radio and told us all about it and so many

other women then phoned in and said the same thing had happened to them. They were talking about this 'taboo' subject and discovering they were not alone. That's what's so great about having format where you can bring in the listeners."

Music for the masses

That the menopause as a subject should light up the switchboard shouldn't really come as a surprise for the target audience is very firmly over 50 says James Coghill, the station's editor. "We make radio for the over 50s but we have quite a lot of listeners in the 30 to 40 age bracket. Our listener is someone who's in their 50s with an enquiring mind." Deputy editor Mark Hellings chips in: "Our audience is very different to the audience of 20 years ago. We went on air in 1989. The 50-year olds of 1989 remembered The War. Fifty-year-olds today don't, but they do remember the moon landings."

And as children of the Sixties today's 50-somethings are into their music. It's no coincidence that most of the music the station plays appeals to this audience because everything on the playlist - from the Bee Gees to Duffy - is targeted to their tastes. Gone are the days when the music was chosen by what the producer or presenter fancied listening to that day. "The music we play is chosen very carefully - every song is a favourite," says James. "From 6am to 7pm we play music that has been very carefully selected and tested." And here's how. "The BBC runs a series of auditorium tests where a couple of hundred women of the right age are played 10 to 20 second blasts of songs and then they mark them," says James. Songs that get enough ticks from enough women are put on the playlist.

Isn't that rather limiting? "Not at all," says Mark. "We're as likely to play things like Duffy or Amy Winehouse. It's not all old songs." So that's how the music is done, now onto the news.

The news agenda

I'm invited into the morning meeting. "All staff members of the radio station are invited to join the morning meeting, not just the news journalists and presenters," says James. "We look at what's on the news agenda - original ideas as well as what's in the diary. We're not breaking world exclusives every day we're covering local stories that are appropriate to our audience." The day of my visit the meeting discusses the missing £2.5 million lottery ticket. "There's a question mark over whether it's legit," news editor Joe Baldwin tells the meeting. "The worst case is if it's legit, we have a local winner and they don't want publicity."

The meeting moves onto Qinetic's £23 million contract for space research. Someone suggests getting Patrick Moore to comment. Then the meeting discusses the death of a young soldier from Bromsgrove before moving onto an item about exploding custard. "We are a magazine on air and so we will focus on the human interest stories as well as the more ighthearted tems," Joe Baldwin tells me afterwards. The current conflict in Afghanistan is something that's really touched people's hearts in the two counties and we have had a number of troops killed and severely injured." One of the biggest stories the station has covered recently was the scandal over MPs' expenses. "It was a story that brought an unprecedented response," says Joe. "All the big stories were from Worcestershire."

The Floods

Another huge story was the 2007 floods, and this was an incident where local radio, once again, came into its own. Mark Hellings had been at work on that fateful Friday and had already taken the decision to extend news coverage of the floods.

"I went to the pub after work, as you do on a Friday night, and it became clear that things were getting serious. I went back to work - which was a bit touch and go because I was on the wrong side of the river. We were going to need to get people in to work through the night." BBC Hereford and Worcester transmitted through the night - something that was unprecedented. "During the night I drove out to junction 7 of the motorway and looked down on the miles of traffic. There was this queue of people sitting in their cars with the engines and lights off. It was about three in the morning and a lot of them were listening to the radio and that radio station was probably us."

As BBC Hereford & Worcester prepares to celebrate its 21^st birthday in 2010 we are delighted to welcome Howard Bentham as a regular Worcestershire Life columnist. Look out for his new column in next month's issue.

Sound bites

Sony Station of the Year 2009 (300,000 - 1 million). The judges said BBC Hereford & Worcester is: "A station which displayed creativity and ingenuity in the way it covered its patch - bringing poignant local stories to the fore."
117,000 listeners a week (Rajar August 2009).
34 people works for the station including journalists, presenters, producers, web producers and production assistants.
In addition to the Hylton Road studio in Worcester there is a studio in Broad Street Hereford, where four members of staff are based. A district reporter covers Wyre Forest, Bromsgrove and Redditch.
Two web producers manage the website www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester
The station is funded by the licence fee.