Tony Christie Is NOT Dead

"Tony Christie is dead and I think it's in very bad taste to be asking about him" I was surprised to get an email like that in 2003.

After playing a Tony Christie song on BBC Radio Gloucestershire I asked "what's Tony Christie doing these days?" This was long before the reintroduction of Tony on the British audience via Peter Kay and his charity video.

The anger I encountered spurred me on. I knew that if he had died I would have heard about it; so I started doing a bit of research.

I found, after trawling the internet, that Tony wasn't dead he was living in Spain and that he was still popular enough in Germany that he had an agent based there. He'd even released a number of German CDs.

A quick email to his German agent got a response from Tony and I got him on the programme, on the phone from his home and I interviewed him live. He was surprised to find out that he was dead.

A few weeks later I was sent a selection of his German releases, as a thank you for being interested in him.

Lovely, I resurrected a classic star, and got a nice bit of radio out of it.

In 2005 after the huge success of "Is This The Way To Amarillo" Tony was back in the UK, and he was doing a gig near to my patch... So I got him on and interviewed him again.

I always want an interview with an artist to be about them not me, we started looking back over his career and he mentioned that a radio station had once phoned him because they thought that he was dead. I was about to say, "yes I know, that was me" when he went on to say that it was a presenter at GMR in Manchester.... Not Gloucestershire... not even close...

What do you do in that situation?

He told me the whole story of how this great presenter had got in contact and it was very odd because he was working in Germany at the time... I let it slide. I didn't want to be the person who got uppity about being forgotten.

So why talk about it now?

I think that it pinpoints 2 things that you need to be aware of when communicating with anyone, from Media Training to Presentation Training to Crisis Communications... whether you're on BBC Breakfast or in a pitch meeting.

1) People remember what's important to them - To Tony the important bit was someone thought he was dead, the detail of who that was was unimportant. He didn't care it was me, he cared that they thought that he was dead.

2) What is important to you is irrelevant - I wanted to be remembered... it's as simple as that. I wanted to be the person that found out he wasn't dead. Tony Christie didn't care about that, why would he. That was what was important to me, not him. Make your communications relevant, interesting, and important to your audience and they will remember you. It may be easy, it may be about internal change, but even then you may be more interested in the strategic direction of your organisation, your audience cares about their jobs, and if they have to move their desks.

And, by the way, I still like Tony Christie

No one gets it right

It's a very simple job, you take time, you research and you build drama around that setting. "ER" did it for American Health Care, "The Bill" did it for the British Police, but no one ever gets radio right. Ever.

I've just had the misfortune to listen to "The Archers" on BBC Radio 4 and their portrayal of a local radio presenter was so wrong it hurt.

If they carry on like that they'll have to have the Police saying "'ello 'ello 'ello, what's goin' on 'ere then".

So what's wrong with the radio industry (particularly LOCAL radio) as shown in drama?

1) Presenters are not stupid - In the BBC most people are graduates with post graduate diplomas in journalism. Or have started in Radio at a University; because it's the only place you can be an amateur these days. However they often become cyphers for a story so they always present from the point of view of an idiot. Commercial DJ's live and die by RAJAR figures, if you're stupid then you don't survive, you need to be a chameleon, working a subject from all angles.

2) Very few people, and I really mean VERY few people have a 'radio voice'. Fashions change, and what used to work for Tony Blackburn no longer works for the radio audience. Listen to any local and you'll hear someone talking to you... that's what they do. There may be occasions that it sounds "Radio" but you try telling an empty room what song you were just listening to and you won't sound normal either.

3) They Con people into giving interviews and then unmask them - Yup, Eddy Grundy in "The Archers" has just been made a laughing stock in a scenario that wouldn't have happened because of producer guidelines on fair dealing and briefing guests.

4) Presenters are well paid. Your average BBC Presenter is paid on the same scale as the producer, or a journalist in the news room. There are some exceptions, but in general it's less than you'd expect. Commercial radio, unless you're on a networked Breakfast Show can be minimum wage... I have been there... some are very well off, but the majority? Average to middling.

Minor rant, but it annoys me that with even a tiny bit of research the industry could be represented in a much better way.

Notice I didn't mention Partridge? Comedy always gets closer to the truth.

Soundbite

"A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home," Tony Blair 1998

Sorry Tony, but every day is a day for soundbites. Every day! The importance of the soundbite can't be underrated even if talking about them just seems a bit 1997, a bit Labour Landslide. It's a shame really because as soon as the word soundbite is mentioned people turn off or stop reading jolly helpful blogs...

Still here? Good.

Think of the soundbite this way; during the day we are exposed to far more headlines than the articles that we read, there's the web, printed news papers, scrolling bars on the news channels all of them are tiny bits of news poetry distilling the most meaning from the least number of words. If the headline is right then the eye is drawn into what the story is. It is, however, really very difficult to find the best soundbite for a press release that's being blanket sent to all of the print journos in the world. So what do you do? Do you jiggle with it for every publication and present them with a nice niche line? No. No you don't. You know full well that your average PR person has hundreds of other things that they have to do during the day, so why don't you take advantage of the cross pollination that news organisations perpetuate? Everybody steals off each other. If a press release is versioned for one mass market outlet, The Daily Mail for example, then you have a short hand for what the other outlets can version for themselves. Hit 'em with something that they can copy and paste into their house styles. If you want to know more have a look at this splendid site all about the world of Churnalism.

http://mediastandardstrust.org/blog/go-explore-churnalism/

They are decrying the lack of what they see as "proper journalism". From your commercial point of view take advantage of the situation and get the publicity.

So what about the broadcast media? There your aim should be the "news clip".

If you are interviewed on a local radio Breakfast Show then you'd be lucky to get a few thousand listeners. The radio station may say that they have 100,000 listeners but that's across the week for the whole station. A good breakfast show could only peak at 6000 listeners at any given time. If you're not on at the peak you may get 2000 if you're unlucky. So what can you do about it? You give good quote, you get out the big guns and have a lovely soundbite that can be run across the news bulletins for the whole day. If there are 20,000 listeners for the day then you may get all of them. Now that's worth your while aiming for the news clip isn't it?

What makes a good news clip? If it's a slow day virtually anything, from "local business man says cheese is lovely" to "local business man says cheese is horrible" but you need to aim a bit higher than that. You can't always hope for the slow news day. You want a new figure, to go against the perceived wisdom, to challenge a truth, to have some very good news, or some very bad news, and you need to do all of that in about 15 seconds, with the ability to write some bits round it. Simple eh? That's why Tony Blair had a team of writers all looking for what the soundbite was going to be.

Just being aware of some of the ways organisations get their headlines and how important a soundbite can be could be the little bit of extra focus that you need.

Smug.

If you really want to give "good interview" then you need to be aware of your flaws, for me it's verbosity; why use one word when a florid collection of thirty will do?


My colleagues in the radio industry still talk (in hushed tones) about my fascinating, beautifully crafted and intricate link that went on for five and a half minutes. That's right, five and a half minutes, without hesitation and still with a coherent train of thought. It was, however, five and a half minutes when I could have done it in less than one. My boss pointed out the behemoth and since then I have always been aware that I can just go on a bit when the wind is behind me and it's something that I now watch very carefully.

Francis Maud MP Cabinet Office Minister has a problem with smug, and someone ought to tell him. I don't just want to pick on The Rt. Hon. Mr Maude, there are many others from all works of life that suffer from 'the smugs' it's just that this morning on BBC Breakfast he showed himself to be patient zero.

If you want to avoid the same fate as Francis Maud here are some tips...

1 - Do not steam roller over the end of questions. You may be eager to put your view to the nation but stepping on the end of the question gives the two pronged impression of being so clever that you don't need the rest of the question, and that it doesn't matter what you're being asked because you're just going to say what you want any way. (And in this case you make Sian Williams look cross and no one wants that)

2 - The kind voice, oooh the kind voice, if you're wondering what I mean then have a look at this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13773800 (this is the news clip not the Sian Williams live but the effect is the same) it's that tone that's a cross between the Doctor explaining that you're going to have your leg off, and the Headmaster who's terribly disappointed in you but doesn't want to be discouraging. Tone of voice is a hugely difficult thing to manage, and there seems to be a trend, probably since Thatcher to adopt a 'the Government really does know best' tone when talking about difficult issues. So how do you get around this? Being aware of it is a very good start...

3 - Careful with the eyebrow action. It's interesting to see that there are a number of research papers looking at eyebrows and the amount that they are raised, and they point to eyebrows being raised as a form of facial emphasis. In this case it's the sections starting '...cross party consensus...', '...proposals made by Lord Hutton a former Labour Secretary of State...' and then on '...asking their members to give up a days pay...'. The result of these dramatic eyebrow raises is to communicate a passing of the blame for the decisions and the subsequent hardship to someone else.

The problem is that when you're being smug, pompous, bolshie, cross, baity, snide, sarcastic, all the things that you should avoid in interviews, especially filmed interviews, you need someone looking at the tape to tell you what you're doing, and after that someone to work with you to stop doing it.