Colin Tells It Like It Is
It was standing-room only at our staff meeting in Glasgow yesterday as a man from commercial radio came in to tell us where we were going wrong...and right.
Colin Paterson was, until a couple of weeks ago, the man in charge of the Edinburgh radio station Talk 107. When I heard that he was now "available" I asked him if he would talk to our programme-makers and give us his views on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland from the other side of the fence.
"don't pull any punches," I told him , "tell us about our strengths and weaknesses."
Colin is not a man to mince his words. His first recommendation was that we should have big signs put up in our offices with the words "Who Cares?" printed on them. He questioned a news agenda that concentrated on events abroad at the expense of happenings in Scotland. He said too many of our programmes sounded like we at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ were having a great time not telling the audience what was in it for them. He praised our evening music programmes but said the music we played in daytime should be more familiar to a mainstream audience.
He said we didn't do enough to remind listeners that ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland has exclusive commentary for SPL football games and that we spent too much of our airtime promoting small half-hour documentaries.
As he paused for breath some of our producers and researchers got the chance to ask him a few questions. He fielded most of these with great confidence although he did stumble over a query about his knowledge of Gaelic music. Later he admitted to me he was going to make a cheap joke about that, but then rememebered where he was and decided to keep his mouth shut.
It's always good to get this kind of outside perspective on what we do and I'm planning to invite more guest speakers to our staff meetings in future. I had to admire Colin's bravery. Imagine walking into a room full of strangers and telling them things they might not want to hear.
"That's what makes it easy, " Colin told me, "I didn't know any of the people in that room...I had no friends in there that I was going to upset."
"Well," I said, "I've been in my job for two years and I don't have many friends in that room either."
P.S. Sorry about this slightly blurry photograph of Colin. My hands must have been shaking while he was talking!
