I have a vested interest in local radio, that I should make clear.

On first hearing about the news of Heart (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/21/heart-global-radio-restructure) , Smooth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/29/smooth-radio-merge-regional-stations) and even Gold reducing the amount of local and regional programming I was more than a little upset.

So why do I like local and regional radio programming?

Firstly it allows us across the markettiers4dc Group, including Sound Creative in particular, where I work, to upweight local messages across any number of the campaigns we deliver.

Secondly it was responsible for some of the greatest days of my life as a child. You see, it was local radio, in my case Reading's 210 FM, that at the slightest hint of snow we would gather round the radio with a view to establishing if school was cancelled and we had a day of placing carrotts on the faces of snow men.

Local radio is at the very heart of many communities and is not purely responsible of alliviating children of their educational duties.

A prime example of where local radio was placed at the very heart of a community can be found back in 1997 at the Grand National. The event was cancelled after an IRA bomab scare threat (http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2006/12/01/local_history_aintree_1997_feature.shtml). I have never been lucky enough to go to Aintree but I am assured by friends that the car park is in the middle of the track. So you had a large number of people in Liverpool without anywhere to stay, without their bags, cars and belongings. You also had the added headache of most hotels completely full because it was Grand National season.

A combination of the people of Liverpool's good nature and BBC Radio Merseyside offered a response to be remembered: The radio station set up a sort of 'crisis swap shop' (my term, not theirs). Those stranded in Liverpool were able to call into BBC Radio Merseyside and station what they needed, “ ...... we are two couples after a bed for the night – our car is stranded in Aintree, you see” – and listeners from BBC Radio Merseyside would call up and offer spare rooms, lifts from Aintree and even a change of clothes for the destitute race goers.

So what will happen now local radio is being reduced?

Well let’s be clear, whilst the amount of local content is being reduced local radio is not being taken away completely. Heart will still give us 18 Regional Stations and of those all will have a local Breakfast, Afternoon DriveTime show and a weekend breakfast show.

Further to that those stations that aren’t owned by Global Radio and GMG are sticking slightly more rigidly to their original promise of local performance.

The changes will result in more ‘networked programming’ , however. This is where ‘less local radio’ should reap rewards in the form of large audiences, particularly for commercial radio. The Big top 40 is a networked show that runs across 145 local stations and still reaches more adults than the top 40 countdown on BBC Radio One.

Networked programming allows commercial radio to secure national big name talent and deliver it to listeners on a local level.

Costs of local radio should be reduced and, once we are out of the current economic situation, commercial radio should be able to use this money to invest in better programming.

It is also worth noting that there are ways to use regional radio on a local level that we have been employing for a little while: My colleagues within markettiers4dc will talk to you about local newsrooms which all feed into regional hubs. In Sound Creative we are able to employ local transmitters for pre-recorded trails to drive listeners to an event or make listeners aware of a localised message. Even with national commercial station Classic FM we have placed trails on the London only transmitter to drive footfall and traffic to the website of a London only store.

So is the demise of local radio such a bad thing?

We may get better programming and commercial radio should get stronger. The markettiers4dc Group may have to work harder to secure effective localised coverage, something we are not adverse to.

I feel most for kids waking up in the morning when there is the slightest hint of snow on the ground, however. You see 210 FM was changed to Heart Berkshire and this station has subsequently merged with what was Fox FM (now Heart Oxfordshire) to make Heart Thames Valley and now has to cover an area twice the size of what it used to. I know from experience how agonising the wait was before the breakfast show presenters told me if my school was cancelled. Now there will be at least twice as many schools to go through.

Taken from this month's issue of Onward.

Oh the irony. I’ve been asked to write an article on how we are integrating social media into our business, and like the people who brought us Twitter, my Onward editor has limited my word count!

I’ll therefore spare the statistics as I think we all now know just how much social media is taking over the consumer media diet and instead, I’ll get straight onto where we see a new opportunity for brands to embrace two areas of the markettiers4dc group business that we have so much passion about, Broadcast and Research.

No matter which social network you happen to favour, the one consistency in this increasingly important space, is that people like to share their opinions in a live environment, creating discussion and debate. So it’s quite handy that we have a research agency called Opinion Matters and a TV studio that allows us to create live broadcast content for people who are engaged online to talk about.

Welcome to Social Media TV research.

Monitoring discussion within social media about your brand and knowing when to respond, or when to just listen, has become a key part of the ongoing communications mix. But finding out about conversations on the likes of Twitter, Facebook etc is a reactive process. So how beneficial would it be to embrace the technology that consumers enjoy, i.e., the live conversation, but be proactive by inviting them to join in with a live debate. This whilst all the while engaged by the other aspect of online that they enjoy doing - watching video, now made a daily experience for most of us.

Opinion Matters Live! (OMLive!) is a service that is now coming into its own. It gives clients the chance to replace the age old tactic of traipsing up and down the country in numerous viewing facilities and hotel rooms organising focus groups. Instead, in one evening, they can invite a group of screened individuals to watch, what is in effect, a live online TV show; broadcast from our studio, with the participants answering quantitative and qualitative questions that appear on their screen during the broadcast. The results of those questions are analysed immediately and can be viewed by brand observers anywhere in the world as they too can take part online. At the same time, viewers can join in an ongoing debate in a moderated discussion board that sits on the same page.

This is exactly what The Blue Door did for their software client that wanted feedback for a new product launch in May. We invited 30 respondents, predominantly parents, from across the UK to log on and join us for a 40min live show with the objective of getting feedback about potential new advertising creatives and website design pre-launch.

At the end of the session, we asked our live panel for their feedback on what it was like to take part in the process.

The response was tremendous –
here’s what some of them said about the event:

“Hi, I’m new to this and really enjoying this format”
“Hi - Just to say I love this way of research - works really well for me - do invite me if you do it again!”
“Enjoyng it, very interesting giving live opinions”

Take it from someone who was sat in the studio gallery watching these responses come through, this is a fantastic and exciting way for a brand to embrace Social Media . . . and we even allow our live participants to tell us what they think in more than 140 characters!

For more information on OMLive! go to: http://bit.ly/tvresearch

NMA tweeted this story this morning http://www.nma.co.uk/third-of-radio-listening-now-via-web/3015851.article

Nearly a third (31%) of radio listeners tune in via the internet, according to the latest Rajar figures.
Of that percentage, 29% of people claim they listen live, up 2% from November last year, and 25% use listen again services, also a 2% rise.

The results, which covered listening via mobile for the first time, showed 1.4m people have downloaded a radio app; 20% of smartphone users, with 53% of them claiming they use the app at least once a week.

The results also showed 16% of the 1,083 people surveyed downloaded podcasts.

The Rajar Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services (MIDAS 6) was carried out last month by Ipsos MORI.

For more, follow the link to NMA's website

So, 16 years after we first opened our studio doors, whilst we've embraced TV, online and social media in our full broadcast offering, it's always encouraging to see research that confirms what we said all those years ago when we started banging the drum for radio PR.

Since those early days of our business, despite the launch of 24 hour news channels, and the growth of the online news distribution, more people still trust radio news (66% or radio listeners) compared to news websites (58 per cent of internet users) and TV news output (54 per cent of TV viewers). These latest findings are from Ofcom’s latest Media Literacy reports, which reveal the UK’s media consumption habits and attitudes.

More details can be found at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumer/2010/05/uk-internet-users-becoming-more-security-conscious/

So, after a weekend of yet more conjecture having woken up on Friday to the news that no single party had won the election and that the exit poles appeared to have got it right, communication experts have begun to dissect the campaigns to look at where it went right or, more worryingly for some, where it went wrong and what lessons there are to be learned.

But what can we in the communications industry learn or, more to the point, be reminded of from this campaign?

As with many brands and organisations, the UK's political parties have tried to engage with an audience, build a community and deliver a call to action to ‘buy’ their brand i.e. to vote for them. One could argue that, collectively, they have done a very good job. Turnout was up and there were queues outside the ‘shops’ / polling stations of people keen to 'buy' one of them.

We’ve seen traditional marketing tactics deployed including above-the-line advertising. There has been print media editorial with some newspapers switching allegiances, point-of-sale with local sampling teams and broadcast, but what happened to Social Media?

It was only a few months ago that we were being told that this was the election where Social Media would take its place in influencing the political shape of the country in the same way perhaps Barack Obama’s campaign did in the US. However for me, with a vested and subjective interest, I will have to stand in the corner and raise my hand for the power of broadcast and how this media has, once again, shown its strength to influence.

For the first time we have had the Leader Debates, if we can describe them as such. I would argue they were more influential in mobilising an audience than the traditional TV ad of the party political broadcast. We can also analyse the debates themselves and the personal performances of the ‘brand spokespersons’ and draw conclusions and analogies to what we deal with day to day. There is no doubt they were effective in engaging an audience with a call to action to register and vote, but how much influence did each spokesperson have on us the electorate to 'buy' their brand? Nick Clegg most certainly used the opportunity to raise awareness for the Lib Dems and looks set to have a big say in the final outcome if the activity of the last few days is anything to go by.

As we all know, when you are dealing with a powerful media, its great when it goes in your favour but tread careful and be respectful to it, otherwise it can also work against you. One only has to observe Gordon Brown’s ‘gaffgate’ episode to see this in practice.

Rule one as anyone will tell you in broadcast is to assume the mic is live at all times until you are certain its been switched off. I watched with intrigue not only that moment unfold 'live' on television, but also as the TV cameras followed Brown into the radio studio to be interviewed by Jeremy Vine. This is a media which can mobilise itself very quickly and whilst being made aware of the recording and realising the severity of his comments, Brown importantly also realised the influence of broadcast media.

So whilst no one party can claim an outright victory, I hereby declare Broadcast the winner and a timely reminder of its power to influence.

It was only a few months ago that the conversation amongst commentators and marketing professionals was all about how this year's General Election was going to be the first influenced by social media, following the model of success used by Barack Obama in the USA.

However whilst one will acknowledge that yes social media is most definitely influencing our daily lives and those of customers and audiences, the election itself has also provided a stark reminder of the true power of traditional broadcast and in particular TV.

Whilst as an agency we have undertaken WebTV debates with the three main party leaders with excellent response, I do need to acknowledge the overwhelming power of the live TV debates. Nick who? a few months ago to now a genuine candidate who could yet have a big say in the final decision as to who is Prime Minister. What has interested me amongst all the goings on is the way the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg have mobilized the youth vote. Have they relied on social media; the media of choice for this age group?

As an observer with an interest in both media and politics I have been intrigued to see how they have used traditional methods to encourage young people to both register to vote and then show an interest. Was it Facebook & Twitter encouraging young people to vote or Nick Clegg . . . or was it the media playout i.e. the Live TV debates and his performance in front of camera? My view would be Social Media most certainly helped promote and bring it to the attention of many, but is was the performance and campaigning messages of Nick Clegg on TV that has potentially mobilized their audience to register and vote.

As I write this we are about to witness the second of the Live TV debates, and observers and commentators alike will analyze the performances once more and the tactics of each candidate to try and gauge what impact it has had on peoples choice of vote. At this point it would be good to remember we should be voting for our local MP and policy as technically we do not cross the box for who we want as Prime Minister.

So if we were to draw an analogy from the election to the world of commerce, does a strong orator and communicator automatically make a good leader ahead of their actual leadership or management skills. Is Richard Branson a better leader than Michael O’Leary?

One thing is for certain, the election has reminded us of how a strong interview on television can still have a huge influence on the masses.