Broadcast Media Advice

Radio is an effective way to promote your learning events and activities. Many families will listen to the radio during the school run and employees may listen at work or whilst commuting.

There are a number of different ways to work with your local radio station, beyond simply sending in a release. Remember that writing a release for radio is different to a release for the print media. Whereas, papers will be looking for visually-appealing stories, radio stations will be looking to receive a release that will grab the listeners' ear!

• Community and What's On Boards. Many radio stations will read out a selection of the events taking place in their local area. Send your local station a couple of lines (you can often do this online) about your event, with a number or website for further information.
• Send a straight-forward press release about your event. The release should only be about one page in length and include the "what, where, when, why and who". Listen to the regular news bulletins of your station to get a feel for the style and content of the news.
• Put forward a local personality. An event organiser or a local individual, for example - who would be happy to be interviewed about your story. Interviews are usually pre-recorded and the interviewer will be able to forewarn you about the sorts of questions they will ask. This also means that you can have edited out anything you don't want included!
• Competition time. Consider running a competition linked to your event or project to get some extra coverage. Ask a local business to donate a prize and run a radio-friendly quiz. The radio station itself might like to consider offering a tour round its studios as a prize.
• Coming to you live. Local radio stations will broadcast live from your event if you have something pretty exciting going on! Many stations have their own mobile broadcasting units and promotional vehicles. For example, the GWR Group have a fleet of 'Black Thunder' cars.
• Community Action Desk. BBC Radio stations have 'Community Action Desks' manned by a team whose remit is to promote lifelong learning in the community. To find out more about this service, visit  www.csv.org.uk.