I realised that- appallingly- I hadn't listened to any female DJ's. I think this was because I'm trying to steer clear of being to mainstream and the ones I know of- Jo Whiley, Sarah Cox are mainstream,. However I think I'm going to broaden my horizons a bit an so expect a review of Sara Cox later. I also really need some commercial stations.
SO, let me introduce you to Sunta Templeton. Her show is on Sundays, split into two, hour sections either side of the Xfm's live hour. This is the first commercial station I've listened too, and so unlike the others , there are a lot of adverts, and that means Sunta doesn't speak as much as the other stations.
To be horribly honest I don't really mind. I just do not like her voice; and herein lies one of the problems with radio. Whatever good things people have to say, if you have an irritating voice it;s going to put people off.
The problem with it is , she sounds like she';s actively trying to be cool. She does sound enthusiastic, which is definitely a plus point- but i wouldn't be surprised if she's speaks RP when she isn't on air!
XFM is a commercial station,so there are lots and lots of adverts which really irritates me, and which is why I don't listen to it normally. In my opinion it wrecks the flow of the show. However it does give the station more opportunity's for branding. There are drops saying 'This is Xfm' and and 'Sunta' so you are never unsure who you are listening too.
It is a station that Broadcasts in and from London so you can't get it on FM, but you can on DAB and Online. The output of the station has changed since the digital revolution - before it used to be very London centred, but it is less so now, for fear of isolating other listeners.
Sunta also plugs the stations website a lot, which because that is how a lot of the audience listen, means that there website is very active.
According to Rajar, XFM reaches just 2% of it's target audience, which is a lot less than achieved by fellow London radio station, Capital Fm at 17%. I think this is due to XFm having more of an anti-mainstream output, and also Capital Fm are more established (They have been broadcasting since 1973, whereas XFm have been since 1997)
However,basically all of the London Radio Stations are owned by the capital group, so they do share a lot of their audiences.
There is no bed music in Sunta's show, but you don't really notice as her links are very short so her producers probably thing there isn't much point. She does talk nicely into the intros of songs, and rarely crashes the vocal. There is a three way ration here of adverts, speech and music, I would say it is about 20:10:70. You could very easily be listening to her show for a good twenty minutes before your realise there is actually a presenter. I think this just wrecks the identity, that the branded drops try to build up.
There is also very little audience interaction, which again de-personalises the show.
I don't know if Sunta's show is really appropriate for XFM, there seems to be too many mainstream songs for Xfm's promise of playing non-mainstream tracks. It also doesn't really cater to the whole 15-34 target audience age bracket; there are no older songs played, and a lot of the music is just contemporary and 'Too Cool For School' type music.
I didn't like it. For me too enjoy a show that has adverts, it needs to be brilliant, funny and have excellent, different music. It failed on all of those accounts. Sunta presents so little I'm surprised she gets payed. There are no special points, no features at all. The playlist is stale and often boring.
No good, in my opinion.
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