‘Getting paid to listen to the radio is great’

8:45am Tuesday 15th July 2008

MEETINGS on the beach and bringing back one of the Seventies' biggest names are two of the ways a radio station's managing director is embracing the old and the new to drive forward her business.

Since November last year, Sally Aitchison has had overall responsibility for Bauer Radio's portfolio of stations in the North-East and Cumbria.

The name Bauer Radio might not be instantly recognisable, but only a small minority of people in the North-East will not be familiar with at least one of its brands, Metro Radio, TFM Radio and two Magic stations. The private equity German company bought the radio assets of plc Emap and installed the 43-year-old as managing director for the region.

It was the culmination of 25 years hard work by Sally, who started her career as a receptionist, at what is now TFM, aged 18.

She said: "I have always been a believer in goal-setting. I have had clear goals and set them down.

"Having said that, I did not have this particular career path in mind from the word go."

The married mother-of-two's early career was in sales. She started selling advertising for the radio station, then spent several years as a field sales director, then sales director at TFM, before becoming managing director there and then managing director at Metro eight years ago.

Her new role is a wide remit and she spends time every week at each station, but she believes the efforts of her staff are what make the role manageable.

Sally said: "I don't find it difficult.

That's because we have great people. Our people know you come to work and should have fun and enjoy it, and we want the environment to be one where it is a great place to work, but they are still very serious and driven about what we do.

"Nobody here is clock-watching, it is about the output. We need to give people the space to come up with great ideas, we are an ideasdriven business.

"We have taken staff to the beach for meetings so they are not sitting looking at four walls in a meeting room.

"It is all part of our strategy. We recently took staff at Metro to the bingo and the TFM staff went on the Tees Princess. We all went to Dublin for two days, it was workfocused but fun, and got the people who don't normally work together bonding together."

So when she is looking to employ staff, what is Sally is looking for?

She said: "I will always employ attitudes over skills, because you can always train people to have the right skills, you can't train them to have a good attitude."

Having worked her way up in different roles, she believes work experience is vital for youngsters coming into the industry.

She said: "An advantage for us with work experience is that you get to know them and their attitudes."

Like television, there are glamorous images attached to working in radio, but Sally pointed out a lot of hard work went on behind the scenes.

"I think it can come as a shock because radio is the theatre of the mind," she said.

"You paint pictures in your head of what it is you are hearing.

"The reality for people coming in is different. This is a commercial, profitable business. It is about running a slick operation."

One of the challenges for any radio station is keeping up with the changing tastes and ages of listeners.

TFM and Metro are aimed at a younger audience than Magic, for example. With the number of radio stations out there, how does an MD go about holding the audience's attention?

Sally said: "The key to that is making sure that before you change something, you ask your customers.

"When we wanted to identify what we needed to do with Magic as a brand, we did a lot of research.

"Listeners wanted a radio station playing Sixties and Seventies music, and that gave us the idea to bring Dave Lee Travis in.

"He is a big character and, for people aged 45 plus, they were listening to him when he had 15 million listeners on Radio One. Now we have him on air every Saturday and Sunday morning."

Like all media businesses, Metro and TFM are also having to extend its traditional business to include websites and podcasts.

So how have her radio stations met the challenge? "The trick is to have a strong team that you trust and are capable with regard to the new products," Sally said.

"You have to almost change the way you react as a business. You cannot bring in people with knowledge of the existing business - you need people with new ideas. We have brought in some younger, more digitally-savvy people."

The radio group is also aware of its corporate responsibilities to the community, having raised thousands of pounds for children in the area it serves through its charity Cash for Kids, of which Sally is chairwoman. All the money raised stays in the region and 87p from every £1 goes to the charity.

Sally, who lives with her music producer husband, John, and children, Catherine, 13 and Christopher, ten, on Teesside, could be forgiven for wanting to turn off the radio when she gets home.

But she said: "I can't switch off - one of my biggest enjoyments in life is music. Listening to the radio is a pleasure and to get paid for doing it is great."

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