Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Today I had the opportunity to visit BBC Norfolk at the Forum in Norwich city center and spoke with BBC Norfolk Radio’s editor David Clayton. Mr. Clayton walked me around the BBC and showed me the broadcast booths, and introduced me to a few of the people planning the topics for upcoming programs. He also brought me into the television studio where Look East is filmed for the regional television station. After my tour Mr. Clayton and I sat down and discussed the radio station itself.

David Clayton has been the editor at BBC Norfolk for the past eleven years. As editor he manages everything surrounding the station from program topics, to what goes on the website, to finding out where BBC Norfolk falls in terms of listeners compared to other stations (in fact he was quite nervous because the results for the past three months are being delivered by RAJAR tomorrow). RAJAR is hired by BBC and other commercial radio station to take a poll over the course of three months by a cross-section of people living in the area and they are asked to note what radio they are listening to and for how long they are listening and then RAJAR tallies it all up and submits the data to the radio stations. Mr. Clayton told me that as a station they look at three major figures, the first is the reach, which figures out how many people are listening to BBC Norfolk for at least ten consecutive minutes, the second figure is to see how long cumulatively a person listens to BBC Norfolk over the course of three months, and the final is the share, which is what percentage of all people listening to all the radio stations are listening to BBC Norfolk, and typically BBC Norfolk falls in the 20-30% range, which is relatively high for this area.

BBC Norfolk is not considered a regional radio station as I thought it was, but rather it is a local radio station. Mr. Clayton has encouraged me to speak with commercial radio in the community as a comparison to see the role that they play on the local community. He suggested that I try and speak with someone at Future Radio and also UEA’s Livewire radio station. BBC Norfolk plays an extremely important role in providing information for Norwich’s 40-50 and older demographic, but perhaps Future Radio provides more for a different demographic and I hope that I am able to find someone as helpful as David Clayton at these other organizations and to hear their point of view on the importance of local/community radio.

Additionally Mr. Clayton has offered to allow me to spend a day at the station sitting in on the broadcasts and just taking it all in so that I can fully see what BBC Norfolk offers, and I am definitely planning on taking him up on that offer. At the end of our conversation regarding BBC David Clayton told me it was my turn to get questions asked and so we discussed my experience with radio in the United States, my career goals, what I’m studying..all the normal questions. However this conversation was different; for once it wasn’t my flatmates asking me what I call the trunk of a car (although we did briefly discuss the ‘language barrier’), or one of my professors asking me about my courses back at Dickinson, it was a conversation between two people both of whom have an interest in radio discussing just that. We compared US radio to UK radio, we talked about common trends in rankings, we discussed our personal opinions about the pros and cons of talk radio compared to all music stations…we talked about something we both cared about, and we were both able to provide our own insights both from an age perspective and from a national perspective. It was a surprisingly refreshing conversation, something I didn’t realize I had been missing until now, and a conversation I hope to continue as this process continues.

My conversation today has my wheels spinning about the role of radio in society as well as other media outlets in comparison. I went into my meeting with a general idea as to where I was hoping this project was going to lead me, but I now feel that I need to take some time to reconsider the direction I plan on going with this topic. Hopefully observing BBC Norfolk for a day as well as future conversations will concentrate my idea more solidly.