An intriguing competition idea
Splitting the content different listeners hear depending on the platform they have Radio 1 on is an interesting move for the Big Weekend competition.
Well, on Tuesday the anticipated competition to win Big Weekend tickets is on its way; it all started last week with that time old phrase “the only way in is to win” and it became clear rapidly listeners would need to tune in to Greg on Tuesday from 7AM to win tickets. It remains unclear what shape the competition will take (will it be just a Breakfast thing in the guise of Jan Slam, or an all day “listen out” thing) or whether it’s a one off or something they’ll do in the weeks leading up to the festival to keep the hype going.
But the headline grabbing thing we do know is the imploring to download BBC Sound for the competition isn’t just the classic “download and take us with you” promo thing they always say, it’s because you actually need to use Sounds in order to hear the information on winning the tickets. Apparently if you’re listening on a broadcast outlet, as the vast majority of the Radio 1 audience does, you hear the Breakfast show as usual, but if you listen on Sounds you’ll get the information on the tickets sometime from 7AM. A very novel idea actually!
The only time they’ve done anything similar in terms of split content was for England V Scotland at the football or for the BBC Introducing Wales/Scotland/NI opt outs back in the day. The thing about Radio 1 has always been that however and wherever you listen to it you get the exact same feed of output, no changes, no splits, no opt outs: that’s what makes this a very novel idea and fascinating for us as radio nerds. Doing it is pretty technologically easy I’d imagine; presumably you’ll insert something during a song, because if you have multiple links going out that could be quite tricky, but exactly what and how is yet to be clear.
In terms of the idea itself, I like it. It does two things: makes the prize appear much more winnable because you have to jump through a hoop to hear the info which some people obviously won’t do, and combined with that it obviously very effectively promotes the Sounds app and all it has to offer, because once you have people downloading it for the competition maybe they’ll explore what else the app has to offer. I presume that’s the rationale, unless there’s an interactive element you need the app for or something which again would be technologically trickier but another good reason to make it all about BBC Sounds; either way it looks set to be the most technologically advanced competition Radio 1 have done yet.
In terms of Big Weekend more broadly Radio 1 is doing a stellar job of promoting it: still plenty of hype in the local press from what I can see online, the Harry Styles headlines definitely gave it a big jolt in terms of profile and leaving it as a separate announcement was a great PR move. Also glad they’ve moved Charli XCX to the main stage because I wasn’t looking forward to trampling from the main stage to the Future Sounds stage and loosing my place! A look ahead at the Radio 1 schedules in the coming days doesn’t offer much information about the on air coverage (the way the majority of people will be exposed to the event) yet but I would expect in the next couple of weeks we might get to see what the DJs will be doing and how the schedule over the weekend will shape up.
In other news: we finally know what’s happening for the May Day Bank Holiday tomorrow! Breakfast is Arielle, and as predicted by quite a few people it’s replays of previous Big Weekend performances; another nice way to build up hype. The rest of the day is usual personality content which is nice compared to a usual Bank Holiday which is generally some variation of a back to back music, be it dance, chill, or anthems. RMC (minus Charlie by the sound of things, she seems to be off next week) from 10am, doing a full 10–1 shift, Dean doing 1–3.30, and Katie 3.30–6, where usual nighttime scheduling resumes. Should be a fun listen, nice mix, bit different to what you'd expect! And of course we have a Thurs-Sun bank holiday weekend at the beginning of June, can’t imagine Radio 1 doing anything Royal themed, but it’ll be interesting to see what content we get then!
Note: Apologies for a few days without posts, working on a couple of other projects at the moment, so the posts won’t be every day for the foreseeable, but they’ll be regular and probably longer.
