Just my ten penneth.
I used to run a radio station that was also gunning for the 35 - 55 age group market. and here's my perspective.
Station playlist policy juggling is a hard thing to do. Getting the mix right is very difficult and a hell of a lot of time goes into it.
VIP's playlist and policy is very similar to the one we used to use but contains more northern / pop soul tunes during the day than we did. The only northern our our station was the 2 hour sunday night programme that I used to present.
The hardest thing about designing a music policy is to get the mix right to keep as many of your target audience as possible without hitting one particular niche within that market too much, too much of one alienates the other.
At the end of the day a station has to make money, the only way this is done is through advertisers. Contrary to popular belief stations receive no money from anywhere else.
VIP is in a different position to the station I ran. Mine was an 'on air' station as opposed to an internet based / Sky based one. With the plethora of stations available on the web and on sky i believe that the only way to survive is to hit a niche market and hit it hard.
I think that with Kev's influence over the station what VIP has tried to do is to attract the N soul crowd whilst at the same time attracting others from the demographic 35-60.
Unfortunately I dont think this 'mix' will work and will be re-jigged for the following reasons.
For the northern crowd they will be interested in hearing the 'hall of fame' programme but during the day will be lost. Although there is n soul played in the day it does not hit the mark as far as the n soul fans are concerned - bit poppy and not enough of it.
The other listeners that the station attracts may not be keen on those sporadic soul tracks interfering with their 'expected' listening instead opting to listen to a regular 'gold' station which although they play the 500 most common playlist tracks, keep them singing along all day long whilst working or whatever non n soul fans do
What this does in effect is create a new niche market from those who the station believe they are attracting. The northern soul fan who was also into 70's and 80's disco and isnt too fussy on what they hear as long as it's 'feelgood' music
I think that once the audience figures start to settle down and the reports come in of the listener base is that two things may happen.
1. the station moves its policy over to one of the two markets - ie, all gold or all northern / motown.
2. the station changes its daytime music policy excluding the non-mainstream soul but whilst introducing more specialist music programming outside of the 8-6 peak listener hours.
Personally I believe that the former, a 100% soul and motown station would produce more of a dedicated listenership but here lies the problem.
A station of that genre would be limited in its advertiser base and as previously stated advertising pays the wages. Therefore the latter is the most probable route they will take.
Please note Kev that this is not a criticism, just 5 years of radio programming experience coming out. you will be travelling a road i have been on many times and I wish you luck as you take these decisions.
The job of station controller is not an easy one at all. You have the audience to try to please but then you have the rebels in your presenter team who want to stray from the stations policies. You cant get it right all the time and no matter what will always have those who say it's wrong.
Before you all come down hard on Kev, just spare a thought - the job he's chosen to do is very hard and time consuming. I worked about 18 hours a day when i was doing that and i've got to say, although i've had the opportunity to do it again several times i've always turned the opportunity down. Radio takes over your life and saps your strength until you can't think of anything else.
I completely understand where you are
I remember him too at alfreton's first Ian. I didn't know him well enough but knew that sense of humour and dedication to the scene. Very sad day. Condolences sympathy and love to the family Glyn & Daphne.