"News"

miketv

Never really think about radio news till the last day or so. Phantom seems to have a different approach, i.e. the broadcast it on the half hour instead of the top of the hour when every other station does it in Dublin. Its a welcome change in my opinion and their news, bar the main headlines, it is very different to any other station with their news content(radio 1 influence or 2fms newsbeat in a few minutes), either way it works in my opinion.

It may be a budget thing but i also like the way the presenter also does the traffic, they get on with it.. as opposed to,... heres bla bla with the traffic/jingle/sponcer/AA person/presenter says thanks followed by jingle and possibly an ad..
thank you for a change phantom, other people in the office also have noted this today, although opinions differ some what on some presenters and music but i suppose you cant keep all the people happy all of the time!

Mike

damienom

Without taking the shine off Phantom, SPIN have been doing this since April 2002, news at a quarter to the hour and then a sweep of music when everyone else in in news!

yamo

have to say, i like the phantom news as well. not slavishly copying and pasting stories from rte.ie/breakingnews.ie/ireland.com/inn like certain other stations who shall remain nameless. as for having news on the half hour or at a different time to other stations - that's been a trick in radio worldwide for a while. spin did well to create the conciousness about their news at a quarter to though....

on a slightly different note, I caught the sports news on phantom around five thirty and also heard a few traffic updates, and they were weak. sports news was full of mispronounced words (basic ones like derby county spring to mind) and was a bit all over the place in general. and the traffic....oh the humanity. it was all over the place. read one line of traffic news.....10 second gap with just the bed playing.....read another line....10 second of bed playing etc - just awful. To be honest, they'd be better off ignoring traffic and making a virtue of that fact by saying - look, everyone knows traffic is uniformly awful in this city. there's no point in us repeating the fact that it's backed up on the navan road to the blanchardstown centre - it's just not traffic news anymore. everyone knows the black spots....traffic news now only seems to be useful on country roads - updating people on accidents etc.

giftgrub

From what i've heard phantom does a copy and paste job from INN when it comes to their scripts, you can tell they havent been re-written in many cases as INN tends to be a bit wordy

Their story is also a bit odd, the other day they'll followed a package about a band with a story about a woman dying in a fairground accident

Generally i dont think their news output fits in with the rest of the station, which is very important, int not just about the actual news content, its about keeping listners from switching over

Genghis

Yeah, Phantom news is copied from INN, imho. But that is fine with me - Phantom is about the music. I think you have a good suggestion there about the traffic, most presenters tend to mention the pointessness of it all at least once a bulletin anyway. Either that or just do the AA thing like everyone else ... and get on with the music.

I find the half-hour news okay, but playing music through the hour is a little disconcerting - travelling to and from work - usually rushing to be on time - I punctuate my journey with news bulletins. More than once last week I found myself idling along at 9:10 thinking I was still fine as I hadn't heard the news / changeover at 9am!

superdudeman007

damienom wrote:

Without taking the shine off Phantom, SPIN have been doing this since April 2002, news at a quarter to the hour and then a sweep of music when everyone else in in news!

But Spin fit 10 songs into an hour by cutting choruses out of songs or starting a song somewhere in the middle and spend the rest of their time playing jingles with skangers saying "Spin 1038 is better than FM104" and "FM104 is crap" - and who has the highest listenership :rolleyes: ???

Ginny

Scanger???? and you're defending FM104, how about that lovely show on after 9 on FM104, yes thats nice and classy.
I don't like Spin but never have I once heard them cut out choruses or start it midway, I have heard 98FM and 104FM do it though.
Spin is also a fairly new station in comparision to FM104 so yes of course it would have a higher listenership, but what you should be looking for is the growth in listenership which for June 04-June 05 (only figures I could find online) Spin is +3% but FM104 is -1%.

catch--22

GinnyJo wrote:

Spin is also a fairly new station in comparision to FM104 so yes of course it would have a higher listenership,

Eh?

Culture2007

Bringing it back on topic... Different stations have different styles so it suits them to sound different. I think it's fair to say if stations had a choice, they would probably either dump news or keep it to the bare minimum.

The idea of moving news around the clock is nothing new. Spin have been doing it before Phantom and Red before Spin and so on. Even some of the "on the hour" news stations go to headlines a minute or two early.

I've listened to Phantom's news and to their credit they have managed to link a lot of local gigs into their main news which I'd imagine suits their listeners. Similar with Spin, their bulletins are a lot lighter to suit a younger audience. Although I sometimes think Spin's news feels like it's going on for a bit too long. Perhaps it's the same style music bed running throughout the whole bulletin.

For music stations, I think both FM104 and 98FM do a good job in getting the stories out fast and putting their own feel to them. For breaking news they are usually on the ball and reliable. Similar with their sports bulletins.

superdudeman007

GinnyJo wrote:

Spin is also a fairly new station in comparision to FM104 so yes of course it would have a higher listenership, but what you should be looking for is the growth in listenership.

FM104 HAS HIGHER LISTENERSHIP FIGURES THAN SPIN!!! IT'S NUMBER 1 IN DUBLIN!!!

And yeah, the Phoneshow is tripe but it helps me to count my blessings :rolleyes:

superdudeman007

Culture2007 wrote:

The idea of moving news around the clock is nothing new. Spin have been doing it before Phantom and Red before Spin and so on. Even some of the "on the hour" news stations go to headlines a minute or two early.

Just thought I should mention that when RTE Radio 1 only had a few updates a day they were at the bottom of the hour, as were the original TV news shows.

And you can just go online for free on your phone at any time to watch the news if you need it that badly...

DarkJager

See if any of you can get a listen to Limericks Live 95fm. The news starts on the hour, so 5 mins between news and sports. Then you get obituaries for 10 minutes then the ****ing agricultural news for another 10. Then you get back to whatever crappy show is on. Everybody in Limerick (except brainless teenyboppers) has a deep rooted hatred for this station. I'd go into describing their playlists but I'm already frothing at the mouth just describing their news!

Liam Byrne

Phantom, 2007 (half past). Innovators ? No, because.....

Spin, 200x (quarter to). So they're the innovators ? No, because....

Capital Radio (forerunner to FM104), 1999 : "Capital 20/20 News" - headlines at 20 past and 20 to.

As for Live 95 - the post is unfair. The deaths are broadcast 3 times a day, not every hour. AFAIK, the agricultural news is on twice a day. There are some problems with the output and some formatting issues and the fact that it's a local monopoly, but DarkJager's post doesn't seem to be particularly objective, particular considering that Live 95's remit and licence is to cater for the entire CITY AND COUNTY; if they left out the ag news they'd be letting down a huge part of their audience.

For the record, ag news is of no interest to me, and I throw out the farm and property supplement thingys before I even open the newspapers, but at least it's more relevant than what 2-bit celebrity might or might not be going out with which often passes for "news".

bbop

personally i wouldnt be a fan of news on the half hour and i think some of the news reading on phantom can be pretty poor

However, i dont think many people listen to phantom for their news content!
but as someone said earlier there is a slight problem with doing a music news story and then following it up with someone dying. Heard something similer on Todayfm some weekend not so long ago

I think Phantoms sport isnt great either, as with a lot of the Dublin stations they just seem to get someone with no knowledge of sport who just pronounces all the names wrong, surely having an interest in sport should be a basic requirement

Liam Byrne

Culture2007 wrote:

I think it's fair to say if stations had a choice, they would probably either dump news or keep it to the bare minimum.

This would appear to be the case, but Heart's proposal for Limerick stated that their research showed that people wanted more talk, news and sport on the radio, and that they would have allocated an additional 2 hours per day to it.

I think it depends on how it's done or packaged; with today's iPods and MP3 players, people have much less reason to listen to radio just for music, and people who are listening to their own MP3 player and watching satellite TV have no exposure to what's going on in their country or locality.

The main reason that news isn't done properly by most stations is because of the cost of doing it properly; but done properly, it's a huge selling point for a station, IMHO.

bbop

must agree with Liam, nothing prompts listener reaction like news and sport.
1 stations news and sport i never understand is 2fm, some hours its straight news and sport next its some sort of newsbeat thing, also about 3 times this week during sport they have gone to hand over to snooker and rick o shea has forgotten to press play, v. unprofessional!

Wertz

Liam Byrne wrote:

Phantom, 2007 (half past). Innovators ? No, because.....

Spin, 200x (quarter to). So they're the innovators ? No, because....

Capital Radio (forerunner to FM104), 1999 : "Capital 20/20 News" - headlines at 20 past and 20 to.

BBC R1 newsbeat moved to bulletins on the half hour back in '94.
There are no innovators in the Irish market....it only looks that way.

MarkN

Sorry to go off topic but...

GinnyJo wrote:

I have heard 104FM do it though.

Em, no you haven't. I'm the Music Director in FM104 and no songs have ever been cut.

Thanks.

superdudeman007

Except on the Phoneshow...