Radio Academy
Last night in Glasgow I chaired – for the first and last time – the Scottish branch meeting of the . My first act was to resign my position and ask if anyone else was willing to take on the role. Let me explain.
The Scottish branch has been in the doldrums for a while but the new Director of the Radio Academy, Trevor Dann, had grabbed me by the lapels at this year’s Radio Festival in Cambridge and asked if I could help resurrect it. He didn’t actually threaten me with violence but said he knew where I lived. He also promised I wouldn’t have to do it forever and I took that as my escape clause.
So last night with our numbers boosted by the attendance of Jay Crawford (who runs Real Radio, Smooth and Rock), Luke McCulloch from Radio Forth and Stuart Barrie from Xfm, we gathered in a meeting room at Pacific Quay to plan the way forward.
My ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ colleague, Tony Currie, offered to take the chair while I promised to organise more involvement from radio stations in the north of Scotland. We spent the remaining time talking about next year’s Radio Festival (which moves from Cambridge to Glasgow), training initiatives for students and, well, a bit of gossip about the big movers and shakers in our industry.
I always enjoy hearing the perspective of people who work in commercial radio. Their issues and pressures are so different from those of us who work for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. Sometimes I envy the cut and thrust of their world, but mostly I count my blessings.
One heartening comment came from Stuart Barrie who had been working at Telford College in Edinburgh four years ago when I went through to give a talk to students there. He remembered, word-for-word, some of the things I had said and claimed he used some of them as his programming philosophy for Xfm
I was chuffed. I just wish I could remember those words myself
