The Big Interview – Talksport

Calum Macaulay, Managing Director of talkSPORT and Sport magazine, discusses plans for talkSPORT as it prepares itself for the first ever British and Irish Lions Tour to be broadcast exclusively on commercial radio…

talkSPORT has seen a bit of a restructure this year, what changes have been made?

Absolutely right – we have a new look team in place and we’ve appointed Adam Mills as our new Sales Director, who will start with us shortly, as well as Liam Fisher as Programme Director. Liam’s been with us for 13 years and it’s always good to promote from within where we can. He knows the production, the talent, and talkSPORT inside-out so it’s been a seamless transition to help the continuity of the whole station.

As a station we’ve been consistent in recent times around the 3 million listen figure, so now it’s about pushing forward. That’ll come through driving our live rights, and obviously the Lions Tour will be a big part of that. 

The station saw record audiences last year, what do you think the growth is down to, live rights? 

It’s a combination of a number of things; the live rights certainly had an impact. We acquired two Premier League packages in 2010, and that brought new listeners. But we’ve also improved the quality of the line-up, particularly the on-air talent with  people like Darren Gough, Richard Keys and Andy Gray, and again that helps build the audience.  It is the overall effect of top class sports rights combined with great talent that will drive our business 

This summer will see the Lions Tour broadcast exclusively on commercial radio for the first time this year, how big a coup is that for the station?

Yes it was a massive coup for us. We’ve got a strong heritage in rugby. If you go back to the Rugby World Cup in 2007 we did a series of about 25 shows with David Campese and Will Carling which featured coverage and updates of the competition, so it was the first time we had really covered the World Cup comprehensively and in its entirety.  

In 2011, we had exclusive broadcast commentary for the Rugby World Cup, and again I think we did that brilliantly. It was a massive thing for us commercially and we attracted brands that we wouldn’t normally have been on the radar for, such as Dove for Men, Land Rover and O2, so it was a big success for us in a commercial sense. 

Rugby brings in an upmarket ABC1 male audience and the job for us, and for Liam as Programme Director, is to ensure they stick around. 

We’ve also been broadcasting the Full Contact rugby show every Sunday night, plus live commentary of the Aviva Premiership. It’s a chance to offer talkSPORT’s unique take on rugby, and it’s generating a strong legacy for us within the sport. 

Getting the Lions on commercial radio is a great coup for us and we hope it will pay dividends, both commercially, and through audience figures.

So what have you got lined up for the Lions Tour itself?

We have live commentary of every match, and a brilliant  team lined up including  Brian Moore, Shane Williams, David Campese, Sir Ian McGeechan and Michael Lynagh.

In terms of coverage itself I love the idea of real gritty, ‘front-row’ rugby. For example pitting Moore and Campese head-to-head makes for passionate and unique radio, which I think makes the experience different from anywhere else.

We’ve also moved on in terms of our social media and digital strategy too, so this year it’ll be a real multi-platform experience for the listener. There’s not just the radio content now – we’ll have a videographer following the team around, reporting from Australia, bringing back content for clients and our own site, and we’ll use Twitter to drive engagement with the shows, previews, reviews and really pulling the whole thing together. We’ll be on radio, in print through Sport magazine, online, on mobile, digitally through our Sport iPAD and in social media 

One problem, traditionally, with sport action in Australia is the time difference. Obviously it was a similar figure for the Rugby World Cup in 2011, which talkSPORT covered, is it a concern this time around?

The time difference actually works well for radio. The games will be broadcast mid to late mornings in the UK so we will be building up to the games as people are heading to work or going about their business at the weekends and it’s something people can just switch on in bed or in the car at the weekend.

It’ll really feel like a Lions domination for the 3-4 weeks around the tour. We’ll be with them from the second they land to the second they leave, throughout the mid-week games and the Test matches. 

You backed the Community Programme Award at this year’s BT Sport Industry Award – which showcases a number of programmes using sport to make a difference in the community. How does talkSPORT share that ethos? 

We’ve always felt that the radio station should be familiar and accessible to everyone, just as sport should be. That is the way we run the station, and that is the way presenters are trained – to invite people in. That is why we got involved in the community award; people working tirelessly at community level often go unnoticed, and ahead of the BT Sport Industry Awards we ran a series of features with the shortlisted entrants  to get them that recognition and that platform. 

Many of our presenters did not come from privileged backgrounds, and it was the grassroots system that got them to the pinnacle of their career, so in a way it is part of us trying to put back something into the community.