Siobhan Kenny’s Summer blog

Siobhan Kenny is Chief Executive of Radiocentre.

As people start to head off for the summer, in this most gorgeous of UK summers, the icing on the radio cake comes in the form of the AA/WARC figures released this week, showing radio outperforming the entire market – including the internet – for year on year growth in the first quarter of 2018. After a couple of years of record advertising revenues and record listenership, it’s great to see this tangible proof of the audio revolution, led by the amazing power of radio. 

Never ones to let a good reason to celebrate go begging, at Radiocentre we are pulling out all the stops. You will see these gorgeous ads appearing around the place very soon and all our friends in ad agencies will be in for a treat this week. This flyer is just one part of it. Watch out for other ways in which we will be shouting from the rooftops.  And congratulations to all Radiocentre members whose inventiveness and creativity consistently grabs the attention of listeners and therefore advertisers across the UK.

Since we are in half yearly review mode, there honestly feels like too much to squeeze in to a few paragraphs. On the political side of the fence, we were sorry to bid farewell to Matt Hancock but continue to follow his app enthusiastically and look forward to getting to know his successor, Jeremy Wright. Ofcom are consulting on proposals for changing the regulation governing radio. And the All Party Parliamentary Group on radio now has three illustrious co-chairs – Ed Vaizey, Ollie Grender and Steve McCabe with whom we are developing an interesting agenda for the year ahead. 

As ad revenues continue to fly, it is with great delight that Radiocentre helped launch the Advertising Association’s fantastic new initiative to boost regional growth in sunny Scotland, closely followed by a call for entries in the West Midlands. The idea is simple. A team of experts from all sides of the industry – advertisers, agencies and media owners – will work intensively with a small number of businesses who are on the cusp of growth but need some help in getting advertising to work for them. The goal is to collect enough evidence to convince the Government to put some investment behind their perennial talk of commitment to small businesses and to achieve a real boost to the economy outside London and the South East.

We always believe in the collective power of working together for our industry and beyond. A spectacular example of this was the entire industry coming together to broadcast a one minute message during Mental Health Awareness Week ‘OK to say’ in May this year. Working with Heads Together and including famous voices from the Royals to Lady Gaga and Judi Dench, it was a special moment highlighting the unique power of radio. Another collaboration we are very proud of is the Young ARIAs, audio awards for the under 18s, to encourage the next generation of brilliant audio makers into our industry. Watch out for the next announcement at this year’s ARIAs.   

It only remains to wish everyone a happy holiday (although some of us have already returned) and we look forward to seeing you all in the autumn. And if you can’t wait til then to get more of Radiocentre, take a moment to explore all the goodies available on the rest of this newly revamped website, packed full of everything you ever wanted to know, and more.