Recently I was part of a team chairing press conferences for artists at the Bigchurchdayout events in Leicestershire and West Sussex. It’s the second year of the event and the second year we invited members of the media to press conferences for main stage artists. Having conducted a number of them now, it’s very telling the number of Christian ‘Journalists’ that, unfortunately struggle to know how to work in this environment. So based on experiences of some people I’ve worked with, here’s some advice on how to get the best out of a press conference.

1)    Do your own work

A number of people at the press conferences speculated about getting copies of the press conference. In certain situations, mainly hard news, press conferences are pooled so that one person records the audio and shares it across a number of different media outlets. However, for something like a festival, if you apply for a press pass, it is expected that you have the resources to do your job.

2)    Don’t go with your autograph book.

You will have been given a press pass on the strength that you working for a media company. It is unprofessional to hassle artists for personal photographs or autographs before or after the press conference – it also disrupts their schedule. If you want to tell Israel Houghton how much you love his music or ask Tim Hughes for advice on Worship Leading book a slot at the meet and greet.

3)    Turn up on time.

Better still, turn up early! If you are late to a press conference and you can’t slip in on the back row discretely don’t go in at all, it can disrupt the flow of the press conference and interrupt recordings.

4)    Make sure you’ve done your research

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make in press conferences at music festivals is that they don’t do their research. When you’re going to a press conference you have to think about the wider audience not just your own work, you’ll get much more interesting material. It gets a bit boring when every year a bible organization asks every artist the same question ‘Which version of the bible do you use to help you when you write?’ or when the Latin American press say ‘Our audience love you, are you going to record anything in Spanish?’  When Hillsong United made a rare appearance in the UK this year they were asked by the media ‘How did you get to become so big?’ and ‘How do you cope away from your family’ but they missed the big story that the band were about to star in film about social justice to be screened in cinemas nationwide.

5)    Network and make yourself heard.

Make sure when you ask a question that you identify who you are and who you are working for (if you work for one single organization). It’s important because then the artist might tailor your question to your audience if they’re aware of your publication. If they don’t know you it might be a good opportunity for you to make a new contact. Also, make sure you get to know the other press and media at the event. When you network with people within the media, especially as a freelance journalist, the possibilities can be endless.

Hopefully this short ‘How to’ has given you some encouragement and confidence to go and get some great interviews with music artists during the festival season.

Premier Christian radio recently reviewed the film on their Breakfast show ‘Inspirational Breakfast’ presented by John Pantry and Esther Higham.

In this audio they have a film reviewer, the film maker Mark Miller, an independent Christian film maker and a contributer from the Bible Society Luke Walton.

I have to say that i found Mark Miller’s contribution the most interesting. Although horror movies aren’t one of my favourite genres it has made me more open minded about going to see it.

Although it was a debate that needed to be had, I’m a bit dubious about the credability of it. Mark Miller, the film maker, was the only person not to be interviewed live and all the other contributers were arguing against the film including the presenters who came across unnaturally biased for British broadcasting and at points judgemental.

Well, if you’ve seen the film i’d like to hear your thoughts. Have a listen to the interview on Premier radio at http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={C55513E6-F43F-45C5-A0E5-40891F9B3E4D}

[Interview with Mark Miller starts around 16:30]

Incidently, It’s a credit to the work of Premier Christian Radio that they are regularly pulling in high profile interviews and airing the challenging issues occuring in society.

The new news is that after a brief respite, Christian Music Topping the UK Charts are back supporting the debut single from Bebe Vox called ‘All this time’.

It’s completly different to the Delirious? track that reached No. 4 in the charts and the facebook campaign are supporting it for completly different reasons. I think it’s a great song whether the people get behind the facebook campaign or not! Check out the video to ‘All this time’ by Bebe vox here

Flame FM was set up in 2000 and had 14 licences over a period of seven years. In December the station were granted a five year Community radio license and broadcast on 1521 MW. In March the station will re-launch their web streaming of the radio station from their website www.flameradio.org

Monday

From Burglary to fundraising – Paul Fitzpatrick – Head of fundraising at the Church Army – talks about how God changed his life in a dramatic way after hearing a TWR-UK programme. B:TWR 5.40pm, 9.40pm www.twr.org.uk, sky digital 0138 Freesat 790

Tuesday

Good Afternoon – Paul Wooland presents Hope FM’s afternoon magazine programme. Here’s some of the features on his show;

• 14.15: Soap Dish – A catch up of all that is going on in your favourite Soap’s.
• 14.45: Memory Lane – A song and some memories from way back when.
• 15.00: 3 at 3 with a cup of tea – Time to sit back with a cuppa and three soothing tracks back to back.
• 15.15: Movie News – A review and news of wha’s coming to a screen near you.
• 15.30: Reality Check: X Factor, B.G.T, Strictly, Celebrity – all the latest from the world of reality TV.
• 16.15: Featured Artist.

B: 2 – 5pm Hope FM 90.1 – Bournemouth, www.hopefm.com

Wednesday

Premier Tonight – Cindy Kent presents the UK’s biggest Christian talk show to which you set the agenda ‘it’s your life, your story, your conversation’. B: Premier Christian radio 11pm – 1am www.premier.org.uk DAB radio

Thursday

Rimmerama – On Thursday night’s programme Mike Rimmer has Manchester girl group TBC live in the studio he’ll also have the usual features “Sing us six” and the last two tracks from his “Six of the best”. To contact the programme email mike.rimmer@crossrhythms.co.uk B: Cross Rhythms City 101.8fm – Stoke-on- Trent, www.crossrhythms.co.uk

Friday

Heart for Haiti – The Christian music and media industry’s response to the Haitian earthquake takes place on Friday, broadcast across eight Christian radio stations across England and Scotland from Revival radio in Scotland to Hope FM in Bournemouth, with prayer, worship and music from BlushUK and Yfriday. B: 7.30pm Alive Radio 107.3FM in Dumfries; Revival 100.8FM in Cumbernauld; Branch 101.8FM in Dewsbury; Hope 90.1FM in Bournemouth; Cross Rhythms Plymouth 96.3FM; Cross Rhythms Teesside 107.1FM and Cross Rhythms City Radio 101.8FM in Stoke-on-Trent; UCB DAB network.

Saturday

Independents’ Day – Mike Rimmer plays you Independent music and tells you how to get hold of it. This week’s featured album is the concept album ‘The Time Project’ featuring Adrian Plass and Mal Pope among others. B: Cross Rhythms network www.crossrhythms.co.uk 11pm

Sunday

Profile Special – Mike Rimmer profiles different Christian artists and plays music from their albums. This week he has legendary soul singer Eddie Holman who’s hit “Hey there lonely girl” got to number four in the UK singles charts in 1974. Mike will be playing music from his latest gospel album ‘Love Story’. B: Cross Rhythms City 101.8fm – Stoke-on-Trent, www.crossrhythms.co.uk

Premier Radio had mixed success according to the latest ratings from Industry research body RAJAR, who release audience figures for UK radio stations every three months. The stats for Premier – the only Christian radio station registered with RAJAR – show that their audience figures dropped by 30,000 from 164.000 to 136.000 between the third and fourth quarter of last year. This seems an unlikely result considering that it was in the third quarter that Premier radio was launched on Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) nationally allowing access to a far bigger audience. It’s hard to qualify the figures as RAJAR’s method of measuring audiences (giving random members of the public a pen and paper and telling them to write down what they listen to and how long they listen for) is very dodgy especially for radio stations with such small niche as Premier. Although having said that, the RAJAR results suggest that the number of hours people listened to the station per week rose from seven to 16 per week. From my experience Christian’s love Christian radio and are loyal to it, so if Bob in Bolton is used to listening to premier in the evening on his satellite television set but he can now listen on his DAB radio his listening hours are bound to increase.

In other RAJAR news the use of DAB radio is slowly increasing which will be a welcome sign to Christian radio stations as it is quickly becoming the best way to have a Christian radio station that is wide reaching. You can now listen to Premier Christian radio, Premier Gospel, United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) UK, UCB Inspirational and UCB Gospel on DAB radio. Trans World Radio are also soon to launch their station on DAB in the north west.

The first time i discovered Premier Christian Radio was probably around
2001 when I went on an evangelism mission around the East end of London.
It was all our friend in London listened to on his car stereo
as it crackled in and out on it’s MW frequency depending on how tall the office blog was that you were driving past at the time.. The great thing about Premier is they have always been one of the Christian media companies that are at the forefront of multi-platform media, because they have had so much
competition in the market and were only afforded a Medium Wave slot
they quickly made the most of the internet and started broadcasting
around the world. As the years passed they started utilising all possible
platforms including Satalite radio channels.

But, hold on! You have to go back over 10 years before the birth of Premier radio long before all this technology and DAB was concieved and the
Internet was in mass circulation and even before i was born, the foundations for Christian radio were being built. Here are two people I suggest were founding members of Christian radio in the UK. Tony Cummings (Cross Rhythms Music Editor), Chris Cole (Former CEO – Cross Rhythms Radio, Regional Director – God TV),

Chris Cole started the routes of Cross Rhythms radio in the mid 1980′s by presenting a Christian radio programme on Plymouth Sound. At this time the Communications act in Britain meant that the BBC and Commercial radio stations were legally required to provide religious broadcasting within their schedules, but there was no oppertunity for religious radio stations to exist in their own right.

Whilst all this was going on there was a man named Tony Cummings who had dropped out of school at the age of 16 with no qualifications, had set up his own black music fanzine until he became a Christian in 1980 and transferred his passion for the industry into the Christian sector. After a few years writing for Buzz magazine. In 1990 Tony launched Cross Rhythms magazine which was bought out by Chris Cole’s marketing company the following year. Also in 1991 Cross Rhythms took over the Umberleigh Rock Gospel Festival based down south which became a reputable summer festival for unsigned british Christian artists who had a ministry to nurture.
In 1998 Cross Rhythms went into partnership with United Christian Broadcasters (UCB), known for their hugely succesful daily devotional ‘The Word for Today’, to become a satalite baseed radio station

It’s 2002 in the Christian media timeline and personally I’ve started getting my own community radio gigs and i’m desperately trying to follow in the footsteps of these great media pioneers. In the Christian media scene Cross Rhythms are granted their own licence to broadcast as a Community radio station in Stoke-on-Trent and i go for a week’s work experience to get a feel for radio in 2004.

By now community radio is thriving and Christian radio is getting bigger and bigger year by year. Cross Rhthyms have a vision to see 10 community stations within the UK and build to toward that number by adding community radio stations in Plymouth, Teeside and Coventry to their network. Down in London Premier, who are still on the crackly medium wave that i discovered in 2001 succesfully bid for a DAB licence in the city. UCB lost out in the bid for a licence but have, in the last few years gained a number of local DAB licences around the north of England and expanded their output to a number of different niche stations at a cost of over £7 million per year.

The future of UK Christian radio.

The future looks good. For years Premier Christian radio have had a loyal audience and attracted big advertisers to support their work. They’ve raised the £650,000 needed to broadcast on DAB for a year and no doubt within the year they’ll pick up more followers who will also want to support the cause. But, that all depends on whether they can keep up the quality of programming and make it accesible to a wider UK audience. Early signs show that they are more creative, their music policy is broader and they are going to be a popular choice with Christians and non-Christians around the country.

Elsewhere around the country, Christian community radio stations still exist and are still being created although there is now a shift away from having ‘Christian radio stations’ to radio stations with a Christian ethos such as Alive Radio in Dumfries.

Personally, looking back to those Sunday Mornings hoping for something better, I feel that that has been acheived and there isn’t much more new as industry professionals that we can do. Maybe the aim now is to stop trying to saturate the market and getting one ahead of each other but support the people with the biggest influence whether it be Premier Radio’s national output or our local Christian community station.

This week’s featured artist is: Sherri Youngward

Sherri Youngward is an American roots acoustic artist. She became a Christian when she was 18 and has recorded nine albums since 1997 including the Christmas album “The Sky can Still remember”, a beautiful mix of acoustic songs, some traditional, some original. The album that we’re featuring this week though is her 2004 recording “The words that you left me”.

Read the Cross Rhythms Review

Go to Sherri Youngward’s website,. http://www.sherriyoungward.com

Location: Dumfries, Scotland this is a group of churches broadcasting on aliveradio.net

Vision: To launch a 24 hour station early in 2009 after having produced restricted radio broadcasts over the last three years.

Impact: There’s currently no official measure of how successful the station are, but to have been granted a full time licence and have been working at it for three years from scratch means that there they must be a team of promising and committed broadcasters.

To find out more go to http://www.aliveradio.net

Email: mail@aliveradio.net

We’ve also got a Youtube channel which we hope to keep uploading stuff to aswell so have a look at that and become a subscriber if your on youtube yourself http://www.youtube.com/rimmerama

Here’s info on what’s coming up this week,