Juggling life and presenting a breakfast show is no joke

November 19, 2024 3:46 p.m.

One of the miracles of the modern media world is that not only did television and video not kill radio, nor did the advent of the Internet and podcasts. Yes, radio has changed, and what we once called local radio has all but disappeared, but otherwise the radio business is in great shape – almost In the UK, 90% of adults listen to a radio station at least once a week..

Most British radio is personality driven, and nowhere is this more true than in the highly competitive world of breakfast radio. As a radio station, if your breakfast show attracts a large audience, it trickles down to the rest of the programming right through to drive time. The success of a mid-morning show often depends almost entirely on the performance of the breakfast show and the number of listeners who remain loyal to the station after the 10 o’clock handover.

Zoe Ball decision to withdraw from BBC Radio 2 Breakfast show will send shockwaves through the industry, as program programmers see an opportunity to eat away at the already declining industry. Radio2 audience. When Ball took over the breakfast slot from Chris Evans in 2019, he left behind an audience of nine million. Zoe Ball hands over 6.3 million to her successor. It is still the most listened to breakfast show on British radio.

You have to have the constitution of an ox to put on a breakfast show. It’s not just about the 3:30 a.m. alarm. It ruins your social life. This disrupts your body clock and sleep patterns. I know. I did it, but only to cover Nick Ferrari of LBC. I’m not going to pretend that this was the highlight of my 15-year radio career. I knew from the first show that while I enjoyed it, doing it day after day wouldn’t be for me. Ferrari has presented the LBC breakfast show for almost 21 years. Five days a week, week after week. It’s a machine.

Zoe Ball’s mother died in April. She also has a 14-year-old daughter who is at a key stage in her education. Juggling everything while presenting breakfast is no joke. This disrupts all normal life, not to mention family life. The fact that Ball would now live in Brighton must also be a factor. I live in Tunbridge Wells, but every time I covered the LBC breakfast show I had to stay in a hotel in central London. I couldn’t face a 75 minute commute at that time of the morning and having to get up even earlier. For Ball, it would have been even worse.

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The breakfast shows are upbeat, upbeat, upbeat. You have to project urgency, make the listener feel like they’re going to miss something if they switch to a competing station. Almost no one listens to a breakfast show for three hours. People listen for 20-40 minutes if you’re lucky. It fits into people’s morning routine. It is therefore essential to keep the audience.

This means not taking as much vacation as other presenters. This means knowing how to anticipate an upcoming feature so people don’t switch off. This means constantly coming up with new ideas for gadgets and features, which is especially important on a music station when you don’t have access to news and current events.

Radio 2 has only had eight breakfast presenters in the last 50 years. Terry Wogan held the chair for 28 of those years and Chris Evans for nine years. The ball lasted six hours and Scott Mills, his replacementknows that a huge challenge awaits him. Any radio station that loses its breakfast, mid-morning, afternoon and drive-time anchors in the space of a few years will inevitably go through an uncomfortable transition period.

The loss of Chris Evans, Ken Bruce, Steve Wright and Simon Mayo has completely transformed the Radio 2 listening experienceand in a way, the station could have easily gone into crisis mode. Commercial rivals such as Heart, Smooth, Absolute and Capital are eating into its audience, although the station remains the UK’s biggest. But for how much longer?

Iain Dale presents the Evening show on LBC Radio, Monday to Thursday, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.