April, 1996 (continued):
After two nausea-free flights beginning in Antwerp, I arrived in Birmingham, England, where I was to spend two days working with air talent from the (then) ever-growing GWR group. This was a return engagement; I had spent a very intense day with them several months earlier.
Nick Piggott was waiting for me at the airport and drove me to my hotel in Warwick. He was back Sunday morning to give me a lift to another hotel, where I conducted a full-day seminar for over 100 GWR presenters.
Once again the contrast between GWR’s reputation among some parts of the UK radio industry and its actions as an employer seemed quite ironic. Because GWR had grown so big and insisted upon well-structured and well-executed formats for its radio stations, it was common for outsiders (and some industry press) to accuse them of being robotic and unwelcoming of true on-air personalities.
But they didn’t bring me to town to tell people to shut up and follow the format; the mission of my air talent seminars is to encourage and assist on-air people to be interesting individuals.
It’s because of my fondness for “personality radio” that I appreciated the GWR philosophy: “Format only gets you so far; personality takes you the rest of the way.”
I have absolutely no memory of Sunday night…undoubtedly because after we finished at 6:00PM, I must have eaten dinner and collapsed in bed prior to being picked up (once again by poor Nick) at 6:20 Monday morning and driven the 45 minutes or so to Nottingham, where I (silently) sat in with and observed the excellent morning crew (Karen and Andy plus Mark, their producer) at Trent FM.
At one point they put me on the air as Karen’s uncle from America. I don’t recall what I said, but I’m sure it was obnoxious enough to convince listeners I truly am from the United States.
Usually as part of a Morning Show Tune-Up, I then meet with the morning show and the program director to discuss the program and explore new ways of maximizing its impact. This post-show meeting was different.
After the show, we returned to Warwick, ate lunch, and then gathered with a few dozen of GWR’s morning hosts to share some of my observations from that morning and then to brainstorm original breakfast show ideas.
Amidst a lot of fresh, good ideas and much laughter, two recurring themes appeared among the group:
1) A surprising percentage of the ideas had to do with the cartoon character, Scooby Do. I had never seen that particular program, but judging from this meeting it would seem that every British radio presenter grew up watching it.
2) There were quite a few gratuitous comments to the effect that American TV sitcoms are not funny. Although actually I share that view, the gleeful viciousness with which this attack was made clearly was provoked by my innocent presence as the only American in the room.
At the end of the day, Nick once again filled the role of chauffeur and dropped me off at a hotel just outside of London’s Heathrow Airport.
For the first time in two weeks, I had 16 uninterrupted hours during which I could do anything I chose; my only remaining obligation on this trip would be to catch my flight back to Los Angeles early the next afternoon.
