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Programme Controller Paul Johnston |
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Monday, 15 January 2007 New station slogan
One of the projects for 2007 which I am currently working on is changing the station strapline, or slogan. At its most basic level, the strapline is there to sell to listeners what exactly the station is all about. We have been using 'Here When You Need Us Most' for almost 10 years now, but I have thought for a while that it does not really sum up what we do.
There is no exact science to choosing a strapline, but I do feel quite strongly that great slogans encapsulate in just a few words what a product does.
Several years ago, many local radio stations started using the word 'variety' in their slogans. At one stage, it seemed that every station played the best variety of music, which was of course a nonsense. Apparently it was because the word came up time and time again when researchers were looking into what people wanted from a radio station. The programmers cottoned on to this and the theory was that if a station said it played a wide variety of songs, listeners would believe it - even if the said station only had 750 songs on its playlist! I never quite believed that people could be that gullible, and the phase now seems to have passed.
For Radio Clatterbridge, I spent some time thinking about the core nature of what we do in order to devise a form of words that I felt best fitted. Essentially we play requests for patients and staff at any time of the day or night, along with information relevant to their stay in hospital. After a couple of days in a darkened room, I settled on 'Your Music, Your Station'. It's short, simple and expresses quite clearly that listeners control the output.
The new strapline will be tricky for the presenters. They are that used to saying 'Radio Clatterbridge, Here When You Need Us Most' every time they open the microphone that it is bound to take a while to get used to it. I think I will stick a big sign on the mixer so they do not forget!
There are also a whole pile of new jingles to record, and we are using it as a chance to freshen up how we sound on the air. Our voice over man is coming in (when he has got rid of his cold!) and I have got Andy Jackson (son of 4-2-7 Daily presenter Neil) on the case. He is a whizz with computer software, has more sound effects than the BBC gramophone library and will have them mixed down in no time at all. I will get the webmaster to upload them on to the website when we put them to air so the anoraks among you can have a listen!
posted by Paul Johnston # Monday, January 15, 2007
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