Good morning from a hot and humid Cambridge for the start of the 24th annual Radio Festival. The event's chairman, BBC Radio 5 Live controller Bob Shennan, has promised an "outwardly focused agenda" this year. And with the radio industry experiencing massive changes, from audience habits to technology and revenue models, now would be a good time to stop navel-gazing and look at radio within the larger broadcasting picture.
11.45am update: Matthew Bannister is giving his take on creativity in the radio industry.
9.20am: Last year's festival in Edinburgh was remembered for two things: GCap Media chief executive Ralph Bernard threatening to sue Ofcom over the regulator's ambition to create a second new national commercial digital radio multiplex, and for Chris Evans signing his Radio 2 contract live on stage.
Then there was the G8 rioters, an emotional speech from Live 8's Midge Ure and the announcment that London had won the 2012 Olympic bid.
Let's see what happens this year. It's a crucial time for radio, can the industry use it's annual event to spark new debate and inject some dynamism and urgency in to radio's development?
This year we've got business leaders telling us what they think of the radio industry, the power of the citizen journalist and Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant talking about the relationship between radio and artists.
And in a late entry to the agenda, Ralph Bernard will again take to the stage and tell host Jeremy Vine about the GWR / Capital Radio merger. Should be interesting.
9.45am: Richard Park, programme director of Emap's Heart, freelance radio consultant and Fame Academy headmaster opens the first session of the day, aiming to explore what it takes - the music, the marketing, the budget, the talent - to make a market-leading radio station. Mark Damazer, controller BBC Radio 4, is among the panellists.
Ceri Hurford-Jones, station manager of The Local Radio Company's Spire FM, said in the 14 years the station has been on air, "making things happen" has been the key to being a strong local station. With nine staff, a £1m a year turnover is no mean feat. But how, Ceri? Tell us.
"The biggest competition comes from within...we've got to hold up a mirror to our community and reflect it - every member of the team lives in the community."
The station has calculated that it has made £65,000 on the Spire FM brand alone - "the locals taxi firm pay us to have our logo on their 10 taxis". That's an unusual revenue model.
Mark Damazer, controller BBC Radio 4 tries to answer the question of why his station does so well in London with a 2.25million weekly reach, ahead of Radio 2's 1.99 million and Magic's 1.86 million.
"The Today programme over-performs in London, it boosts the whole station's performance," he explains, but adds that the sheer concentration of centralised power - financial, political - in London has a huge effect on the station's popularity in the capital.
A roster of on air talent than amounts to an embarrassment of riches, helps. Not that Damazer is satisfied. He said he wants a greater diversity of accents on the station: "It's not wide enough or diverse enough."
Presenters from the South East and Scotland are well-represented but he wants moren people from the land in between. "There are new people in between, but not enough," although he added "I won't employ people just because they are from Manchester or Liverpool."
Park bowls a googlie: Should the ball-by-ball cricket coverage have been moved to the BBC's digital station, he asks Damazer. "Even though I can't see them, I can feel Bob's buttocks clenching somewhere," says Damazer, of Radio 5 Live controller Bob Shennan.
But Damazer concedes, that, yes, cricket coverage will increasingly move off Radio 4 LW and on to Radio 5 Live Sports Extra.
"The branding of cricket on radio will increasingly be on Sports Extra. We will continue to broadcast on LW but a significant section of Sports Extra will be more prominent for cricket coverage than Radio 4 LW," said Damazer.
Keri Jones, founder Radio Pembrokeshire, is a one-man whirlwind. He is managing director, programme director and marketing director and 62% of the population tune in to his station. An amazing statistic.
Jones works flat out on the station - super-serving his audience of 55,000 people out of a possible 88,600 - there's a live overnight show and seven people working on the news, for instance. The commitment of those kind of resources would be envied by much bigger stations.
What's the secret to Radio Pembrokshire's success, then? Again, localness and "almost Sunday supplement lifestyle content" is crucial, with Jones describing his station as "a drop in centre" for local people. "We try to make a destination programme for every section of the community...and we try to make it sexy and interesting," says Jones.
"And we don't spend a penny on marketing - a grand in last four years - but people from station out and about all the time - that's how we do it."
10.20am Paul Bennun, creative director of independent production company Somethin' Else, is here to chair a session entitled "Podcasting: Opportunity or Threat?" He wants to know how to monetise podcasts and if they represent an opportunity or a threat to traditional radio. Podcasting looks like becoming the festival's watch-word.
Andy Johnson, co-founder of Open Sources Studios and consultant to Channel 4, said that using podcasts for data capture - through free subscriptions or a small fee for instance, gives them a value.
"The core of this issue is that from now it is about delivering content to consumers in way they want to receive it - if you can capture who the consumers are then you are starting to take steps to monetise it," said Johnson.
Roger Wright, controller BBC Radio 3, reminds the audience that podcsating is a relatively new phenomenon. "We can easily forget how new this whole thing is. The BBC first podcast was in 2004 - it hasn't quite had the time to bed in with different economic models, there is still an enormous amount of shakedown to come...but at the end it will come down to content."
Pete Simmons, group head of programmes Chrysalis Radio, said the company's London speech radio station LBC saw podcasting as a big opportunity because it of LBC's loyal audience. The station's podcasts have 4,700 subscribers, he says, each paying £10 for 6 months' use. Not only that, the venture makes money, he says.
Although he is less explicit about exactly how Chrysalis is turning podcasts in to money, he is evangelical about podcasts being a fantastic opportunity for radio companies: "It is putting radio back in to a sexy arena, which is very important, particularly for commercial radio."
But what about the threat? Bennun won't give up. Is podcasting the thin end of the wedge that will edge out traditional radio?
"It is inevitable, that as with any new technology, the geeks are in at beginning but it will break in to mainstream and we have to be there as an industry supplying that content," said Johnson.
"Portability and the ability to personalise will drive it," says Wright, "The linear [radio] experience is here for a long time but this is an additional way consumers want to consume."
Wright attributes his station's Beethoven season, which resulted in 1.4 million downloads, to single-handedly making the record industry smell the coffee over podcasting and start trying to work out the musical rights issues.
"Without putting too much blame on the record companies, they have been relatively slow to respond to direct mareketing and the digitalisation of catalogues - but what we did last June [with Beethoven] has actually sped up whole process...as a dierect result of seeing the potential of the market out there."
He added that the Beethoven experience only went ahead because the music was by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and not subject to copyright.
Bennun refuses to let the possibility of podcasts bein a threat lie. Won't the democratisation of radio through podcasts finish the industry off, he askes? No, says Simmons, because new entrants don't have professional background or expertise radio companies have. Quality does matter, he believes.
Johnson said the danger comes from media companies with big brands, like the Guardian, moving in on radio's territory: "The future for [the Guardian] is splitting their content out and the threat [for radio companies] is from traditional media companies moving in to the radio space, like Channel 4."
But Bennun then poses a question no-one seems sure how to answer: is there a danger that radio companies may find their biggest rivals in podcasting come from the talent they usually work with, such as Ricky Gervais, who are now able to by-pass the middle man. As Wright said, its early days in podcasting terms, maybe the answer will arrive in time for the next session.
11.45am: Matthew Bannister, sometime BBC director of radio, BBC marketing director and Radio 1 controller - when his Night of the Long Knives revamp of the station heralded the end of the Smashie and Nicey era - is better known as a radio presenter on Radio 4 and 5 Live these days. After 30 years in the business he now feels well enough equipped to offer a personal perspective on creativity in radio.
Where does creativity come from, what stands in its way and how can it be encouraged? Let's see if Bannister can host a session with more answers than questions.
Fear of failure or censure is making the radio industry too timid, says Bannister. Hear, hear. "There is an atmosphere where pushing the boundaries can feel like a lonely act...Without pushing the boundaries and taking creative risks our industry will atrophy and die."
He takes to his subject with gusto: "New ideas and the people that have them are fragile and need support - failure should not only be accepted, but rewarded...the theory is that only though experiment comes progress and if you're not regularly you're not experimenting enough."
Radio 1's Andy Parfitt - on a pre-recorded video - says he's built creativity in to the station's way of life. The One Night With Laura diaries on Scott Mills show are held up as a good example of pushing radio's boundaries. And formal brainstorming sessions at Radio 1 are the norm, despite the fact that Chris Moyles couldn't understand a word of the blue-sky thinking-speak.
"Often the mavericks are the most creativity people, who get a thrill from doing something different," said Bannister, adding that any system put in place to boost creativity has to be flexible enough to deal with these characters. And let's face it, after being the man Chris Evans walked out on, he knows what he's talking about when it comes to handling maverick talent.
"Money helps," Bannister conceded. "But the key to creativity is to see the lack of money as an opportunity not a threat"
Chris Morris, Mark Radcliffe, Steve Wright, Jonathan Ross and Chris Evans are the names checked by the controllers of the Sony award-winning stations of the year when asked who has inspired them through creativity.
The most creative radio programme ever, according to a completely unrobust survey on the Radio Academy's website, was Kenny Everett.
Finally, wrapping up the most interesting and vigorous session of the morning, Bannister has a warning for radio if the industry doesn't start experimenting with creativity: "Our audience will head off to other media where risk is more available. Without creativity and risk and mavericks and the people who support them, our industry will die."
