Earshot with Steve Martin
Earshot Creative
Recent Episodes
Earshot is a celebration of great radio production, shared by the people who make it.
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Duration 43’21”, 192kb/s stereo mp3, file size 61 MB.
Loudness -16 LUFS.
If you enjoy the show please rate and review it.
Show notes
A lockdown edition of the Earshot podcast as Matt Podd in rural Essex and Adam Venton on the South West coastal town of Portishead play and discuss their creative audio production.
Hear Adam’s latest work for stations in the UK and the US, Matt’s Iron Imager entry and some of his work for the BBC.
We also discuss working in lockdown (nothing’s changed really) and RadioCentre’s current ad promoting the benefits of radio advertising.
Links
Credits
Thanks to Harrison RB and InQuality, makers of the ipDTL platform.
Earshot theme by the Tiger Club Band. Voiceover is Elly Fairman at Hobsons.
Views are personal. Steve and the contributors acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.
From Earshot where views are personal and original writing is licensed under Creative Commons. Follow @earshotcreative and send story ideas and examples of great creative work to the editor @smartin
The Earshot podcast is packed with great radio production, shared by the people who make it.
Play or download this podcast
Michaela Hallam, Kate Dinsdale and Debbie Dillon
Duration 39’27”, 192kb/s stereo mp3, file size 55.5 MB.
Loudness -16 LUFS.
Subscribe to the whole series with your favourite podcast app, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or iTunes. If you enjoy the show please rate and review it.
Show notes
In this edition, Michaela Hallam, Debbie Dillon and Kate Dinsdale demonstrate how the BBC’s in-house creative agency approaches radio.
They play trails that promote Audio Description for viewers with restricted sight, their Wimbledon 2018 campaign that was much-loved by Chris Evans and the launch of the corporation’s ambitious project to aggregate music, podcasts and radio together in one place, BBC Sounds.
Kate, Debbie and Michaela describe how they achieve consistency of message while creating bespoke executions to fit the sound of each BBC radio service to maximise the effectiveness of their work.
You’ll also hear how BBC Creative works with independent production houses like Mcasso Music and Audio Always, and the team share tips for you if you want to be part of a future production with the agency.
Links
Career opportunities with BBC Creative
Mcasso, responsible for producing the sonic mnemonic for BBC Sounds.
Audio Always, which has contributed to several recent campaigns by BBC Creative.
Credits
Earshot theme by the Tiger Club Band. Voiceover is Elly Fairman at Hobsons.
Views are personal. Steve and the contributors acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.
Comments
- Friday 12 April, 2019, 6 Music pioneers dynamic personalised trails | Earshot writes: […] …and this trail from BBC Creative: […]
From Earshot where views are personal and original writing is licensed under Creative Commons. Follow @earshotcreative and send story ideas and examples of great creative work to the editor @smartin
The Earshot podcast is packed with great radio production, shared by the people who make it.
Just weeks after launching its new breakfast show, station sound producers Ben Stones and Liam Hadley share the production secrets of Radio 1’s imaging. We hear also from host Greg James and ReelWorld music director Erik Huber who created the show’s theme.
Play or download this podcast
Ben Stones and Liam Hadley
Duration 45’44”, 192kb/s stereo mp3, file size 64 MB.
Loudness -16 LUFS.
Subscribe to the whole series with your favourite podcast app, Google Podcasts or iTunes. If you enjoy the show please rate and review it.
Show notes
The sound of BBC Radio 1 is heard by more than nine million people in the UK every week. In this edition of Earshot, producers Ben and Liam explain how they and their team create the imaging production and promos for this legendary station.
They unpack the new imaging for Radio 1 Breakfast and presenter Greg James describes what he wanted the imaging to achieve, and what it means for him, his audience and the show he leads. You’ll hear the different mixes of the Breakfast theme, produced by ReelWorld, including the 2 minute opener.
Ben explains how the station uses a cast of four station voices – Matt, Georgia, Rachelle and Lewis – and how he found new talent for breakfast. Beth is the female voice of the show and it’s her first ever voice gig.
We also learn how many people can fit into a tiny BBC production booth, how ideas Liam heard on Australian radio have inspired his work at BBC Radio 1 and why he insisted on reinventing the music montage.
All that, plus the creative genesis of the Live Lounge opener, the flexible structure of “The 1 for…” positioning line that ended up emblazoned on the side of a tour bus, and deep imaging geekery from two producers passionate about their craft and the power of great radio production.
What Greg says…
As with Matthew Corbett and Sooty, Greg had a hand in it…
Question and answer session from The Guardian
Links
In the show Ben and Liam mention Radio 1 Breakfast with Greg James, Reelworld, the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, the station branding service IMGR and the Official Chart with Scott Mills.
Earshot bonus: the Erik Huber interview in full
Erik Huber talks to Steve Martin
In this exclusive half-hour interview, ReelWorld Music Director Erik Huber discusses his approach to radio imaging production, how the craft has changed in more than twenty years of ReelWorld and his personal perspective on the Radio 1 breakfast project which his company won in a hard-fought open pitch.
Credits
Earshot theme by the Tiger Club Band. Voiceover is Elly Fairman at Hobsons. Special thanks to Meryn Shetye at ReelWorld.
Views are personal. The contributors acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.
Comments
- Monday 12 November, 2018, ReelWorld celebrate new sound of BBC Radio 1 Breakfast – JingleNews.com writes: […] The BBC Radio imaging team and ReelWorld Music Director Erik Huber have spoken to the latest Earshot Creative podcast about the project, which can be heard here. […]
From Earshot where views are personal and original writing is licensed under Creative Commons. Follow @earshotcreative and send story ideas and examples of great creative work to the editor @smartin
The Earshot podcast is packed with great radio promotion ideas, shared by the people who make them.
Playing games
This time, two of planet Earth’s leading commercial radio practitioners explore the world’s greatest contest and competition mechanics and what makes them so effective for audiences and sponsors alike.
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Jonathan Lumley and John Simons
Duration 47’45”, 192kb/s stereo mp3, file size 71.2 MB.
Loudness -16 LUFS.
Subscribe to the whole series with your favourite podcast app, Google Podcasts or iTunes. If you enjoy the show please rate it so its utter brilliance can be in no doubt to anybody.
Thanks to you, Earshot recently hit number 377 in the Apple podcast chart for Marketing and Management in the UK. Yes, 377. In this world one takes what one can get.
Show notes
From the Cash Call to the Bong Game® to the Real Radio Renegade, Jonathan Lumley from East Coast Radio and Jacaranda FM in South Africa and international radio consultant John Simons from the UK reveal their favourite competition ideas, both as set-piece promotional moments and everyday benchmarks.
In conversation with Earshot’s Steve Martin, they explain how their favourite competition mechanics work, the critical dos and don’ts for any promotion and how data from engaged listeners can help you demonstrate to advertisers the quality of audience you attract. You’ll also discover the 1% rule and why John’s cousin hasn’t been for dinner recently.
If you run competitions, games or sponsored promotions on your station this is a rare opportunity to learn from two of the best, from both sides of the globe.
Trademarked competition names
If you want to check whether a proposed competition has been trademarked in the UK, this is the central UK Trade Mark registry.
Jonathan Lumley (left, enscarfed) and John Simons (jacketed and labelled).
Next time: Ben Stones and Liam Hadley from the BBC, including the inside story on the imaging for the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Greg James, produced with ReelWorld.
Credits
Earshot theme by the Tiger Club Band. Voiceover is Elly Fairman at Hobsons.
Views are personal. The contributors acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.
From Earshot where views are personal and original writing is licensed under Creative Commons. Follow @earshotcreative and send story ideas and examples of great creative work to the editor @smartin
Sam and Steve of A Million Ads
The Earshot podcast is all about great radio production, shared by the people who make it.
Play or download this podcast
A Million Ads, with and Steve Dunlop & Sam Crowther.
Duration 43’23”, 192kb/s stereo mp3, file size 60.89 MB.
Loudness -16 LUFS.
Subscribe to every new edition of Earshot with your favourite podcast app, or iTunes. If you enjoy the show please rate it so positively on iTunes that its brilliance can be in no doubt to anybody.
Show notes
Explore new creative opportunities in programmatic advertising and dynamic audio in the company of two highly knowledgeable and likeable pioneers in this emerging field. Steve Dunlop and Sam Crowther run A Million Ads, the London-based agency that leads the world in dynamic, personalised audio advertising.
With patience and clarity in this Earshot podcast, Steve and Sam take Steve Martin through this emerging growth area and how it works. They also demonstrate some new creative routes to more effective communication through personalisation with real-life campaign audio from their early clients. What’s more, they do all this in a pub.
If you listen to online radio or streaming music services that carry advertising you may have already heard dynamically assembled ad spots that take account of the data advertisers know about you.
A short route to increased effectiveness or a little bit spooky? Download this edition of the Earshot podcast and hear for yourself.
The A Million Ads platform
Everything Sam and Steve describe in the podcast is achieved through this platform, unique to A Million Ads.
As they explain in the show, data from trading desks triggers individual elements to be instantly assembled to create a customised variant of the ad you hear.
On the production side, the assembly workflow takes around 1.5 times more than production of a traditional ad, yet can yield many tens of thousands of personalised variants… perhaps even a million ads.
Variants are indexed with text labels. Here there are 7 day variants x 4 alternatives triggered by live weather data
Each variant is linked to an associated audio object within a traditional DAW timeline.
A whole campaign
In this graphic visualisation (click the image to go big), the first division is a branch determined by the closest airport to you,
the second is the weather where you are,
the third is a rotation of airport specific holiday destinations available,
the fourth is the temperature you could be enjoying there,
the fifth is the flight time from that particular airport,
and the sixth is a dynamic sales message call-to-action.
Over 12,500 ads in all. Sam says it’s not their biggest, but is one of the more beautiful!
Venue
The Theodore Bullfrog
This show was recorded in the Theodore Bullfrog, John Adam Street, London. A great pub in which to discuss dynamic audio.
Credits
Research by Hayley Hayes. Earshot theme by the Tiger Club Band. Voiceover is Elly Fairman at Hobsons.
Views are personal. The contributors acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.
From Earshot where views are personal and original writing is licensed under Creative Commons. Follow @earshotcreative and send story ideas and examples of great creative work to the editor @smartin