Radio

hearing the audience

Chrissie has an expert track record working with local, national and international radio stations. These have been both commercial and state funded, including the BBC. With her long and deep industry understanding, Chrissie can deliver successful strategies and campaigns that transform radio listening figures, audience numbers and operational performance.

Chrissie’s radio consulting is an essential contribution to decision-making processes for media owners, media investors, CEOs and MDs of radio stations. She brings a rare expertise when dealing with the difficulties of Board room, senior management or radio station daily functions.

For Chrissie, good radio broadcasting is not about forcing content that people have to listen to, but the opposite. She starts by asking: what do your audience want to hear? Hearing the audience is her key criterion for transformation.

Chrissie delivers a comprehensive and incisive analysis of radio stations, their operational functioning, their programming and broadcast content needs. She provides business case justification for either commercial investors or state sponsors, ensuring a realistically deliverable ROI. Her specialist focus areas are as follows.

External Stakeholders

  • Informed and active engagement with the Board and CEO to resolve Director, senior management and station-level issues successfully.
  • Providing an audit of a radio station’s operational functions, progress and difficulties.
  • Negotiating Ofcom licencing agreements that target audience profiles.
  • Licence regulation for start-up radio stations, media owners and media investors.
  • Maintaining high legal standards and legally correct procedures for incident management.
  • Ensuring strategic goals and objectives are delivered in the structure and functions of a station.
  • Engaging local community interests and charities which have earned Chrissie national recognition at 10 Downing Street.

Internal stakeholders

  • Corrective RAJAR analysis to attract advertising.
  • Assessing sales management and creating effective sales strategies.
  • Identifying and solving problems with poor programming, program content, or presenters.
  • Differentiating speech responsive from music responsive listeners and managing the balance of music and speech content.
  • Analysing speech content: too much speech, the wrong sort of speech, or too little speech.
  • Managing the balance between local and national interests that hold a listening audience.
  • Implementing training provision through coaching, mentoring or workshops for excellence as the performance goal.

National & International

  • Political interviewing (research & technique) and controversial debate management.
  • Cultural diversity impact assessment for audience profiles.
  • Assessing programme content impact of race and language in multi-cultural/national broadcasting – with some countries reading news bulletins in 11 languages!
  • Evaluating the commercial impact of multi-cultural/national broadcasting.

Chrissie has decades of radio experience and skills acquired from the corporate establishment of the BBC through to start-up radio stations. Her work with local community radio brought her recognition at 10 Downing Street.

With high communication skills at all levels, Chrissie prefers to work in a non-aggressive style. This brings quicker successes through co-operation, leading to positive and transformational results.

Chrissie is also passionate about education and training, and can address any competence issues through coaching, mentoring, workshops and seminars.

The refusal to address externally audited issues from a consultancy remit can result in the collapse of listening/viewing figures, loss of funding and the shutdown of a station. Chrissie is keen to work with media owners, media investors, CEOs/Group CEOs, MDs and start-ups to establish solid foundations for successful ratings.

Contact Chrissie now for specialist advice on radio stations, or her mentoring and training courses.