We’re celebrating 1 million hits

This week Ken Garner analyses the first show: Sunset’s Mike Shaft at breakfast-time.

All stations are invited to send us further 1-hour cassettes of programmes to analyse, c/o Radio & Music, Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane, London. EC1R 3AU
By Ken Garner

Breakfast at Sunset

REPRINT OF KEN GARNER’S ARTICLE IN
RADIO & MUSIC MAGAZINE, DATED 6 – 19 DECEMBER 1989.
Please note the photos and Jingles are new additions.

The arrival on air of Sunset Radio in Manchester on Sunday 22nd October was, naturally, significant. More revealing still was the fact that Britain’s first incremental came on air when it said it would, and staffed with all but one of the star presenters and newcomers that founder Mike Shaft wanted. “And the one we didn’t get may be coming later anyway,” he says.

From the soul scoops of Greg Edwards for mid mornings and the luring of Richard over from Red Rose (Sunday evenings), through Lainey Dee and Lee Brown (afternoons), to news reporters and community affairs producers, the enthusiasm Shaft brought to the project must have fired all of them with a sense of team purpose; listening to any output, or even just phoning them up, you feel that 23 New Mount Street is, quite legally, wired.

“It’s really going wonderfully well,” says Shaft. Advertising especially has now picked up well (fourth week) after a slow start.” Sunset’s news desk is finally to get an IRN feed, the PA wire has arrived (if only after the launch) and the station is talking to Satellite Media Services.

The community language slots (6-9pm) are proving a daily editing challenge for the producers. Shaft says the pressure of the first few weeks and months will reap invaluable rewards in the future, as a self-educated production team passes on its skills to their local contributors.

What about the daytime music format? A jesting query down the phone about ‘any day-parting?’ produced an incredulous chuckle from Shaft. “We’re new. The format’s the same through the day.” From 7am – 7pm each hour has 7 play-listed records, made up of 4 of the top selling club records; 2 spanking new releases, club growers or import LP tracks (for example); and oldie – a soul hit that has been around for quite a few weeks.

The other records (between 5 and 7 of them) are the presenters choices: oldies, current hits, or, more likely, hot new imports. “You have to understand that our presenters are the kind who are down at the import shop every morning buying twelve-inches. No longer does the Manchester fan have to wait for a once-a-week soul show – s/he can hear a track from, say the new Luther Vandross LP, the day after a pre-release white label arrives from America on the plane.”

In the week of our conversation, (from Monday 20 Nov), shaft had just put “the best track” from the new Lisa Stansfield LP on the playlist. It can’t be many radio stations that come on air with a jingle package sung by someone destined to have a number one within two weeks. (Listen to Sunset’s opening Jingle sung by Lisa HERE)

This particular edition of Shaft’s own breakfast show went out on the second real day of broadcasting. As Shaft admits, in the first week, in order to establish familiarity quickly, the proposed format was not strictly applied, and presenters found their feet with slightly more familiar music. From week two onwards, harder house and dance sounds appeared in the playlist, whereas, as we see here, in week one things sounded a touch softer.

Nevertheless, it is perhaps a sign of Shaft’s intuitive grasp of what he’s about that this hour, coincidentally, almost matches the proposed format. New releases here from Regina Belle, Stansfield, Will Downing and the Temptations sit with the two chart soul hits (Al Green, Womack and Brown) and a few familiar oldies (Benson, Baker, DC Lee, Mills)

But what is most startling here is the absence of the traditional breakfast fare. No anniversaries, incessant headlines, financial news, school phone-ins, quizzes, gushing ‘weathergirls’, snippets from tabloids, running-joke-nicked-from-last-night’s-telly… you name it, Shaft’s dumped it.

All there is, is the music, the ads, jingles (Listen to another Sunset Jingle here) and occasional trails, and Shaft’s brief voiceover links (average length 20 secs: astonishingly short for voiceovers). “Yes, that’s it absolutely,” says Shaft. “If people want competitions and all that old prattle they can tune in somewhere else”. The news is radically siphoned into one 15-minute morning bulletin at 9am. The effect is to create a warm, rich show, which consequently, by virtue of its understatement, aspires to the cool.

If I were either of Shaft’s previous employers, at Piccadilly or BBC Manchester (GMR), I’d be awaiting my next audience figures with more than a little trepidation.