Kiss Insight

RICKIE AND MELVIN INTERVIEW 04 July 2008

The breakfast show boys on getting up stupidly early, social media, the evolution of Kiss and what makes the audience tick

So tell us how your days starts… 

Rickie: My alarm clock goes off at about 4.40. I leave it ringing until about 4.45. I get up at about 4.55; shower, wash and do all that good stuff. I jump in my taxi about 5.20 and get here for about 5:35; then we’re on air at 6.00.

Melvin: Me, I wake up at 4.30. Put on the radio, have a little dance, have a shower. Get changed, get in the cab about 5.00, get into work around 5.20, look through the papers and blogs then we start the show at 6.00.

How would you describe your show to someone who hasn’t heard it?

Melvin: It’s like all your mates are on the radio, either coming out of your car stereo, or in your living room, or in your shower, or your bathroom, and then playing the best in R&B, hip-hop and dance.

Rickie: I think you can hear the fact that Melvin and myself have been friends for the last 10 years.

Melvin: Unfortunately. Ha ha…

Rickie: Yeah, yeah, I’ve tried to lose the kid but he keeps coming back…

Melvin: I’m a fast runner!

How do you think Kiss has evolved over the years?

Melvin: I think initially it was really underground. Then it became more commercial, and now it’s an amalgamation of the two. So it’s mainstream in the daytime, where we’ve got everyone who’s really lively, and at the same time we’ve got the best specialist DJs, be it drum ‘n’ bass, R&B or hip-hop. So currently we’ve got a combination of the two periods the station has been through, which is exactly how it should be.

What’s your own Kisstory?

Melvin: My family was really cheap and wouldn’t buy records, so we used to listen to Kiss all of the time! And do you remember when you used to make your own little albums and press record and play on the tape machine? That was me with (former Kiss DJ) Steve Jackson back in the day.

Rickie: Yeah, I used to listen to Kiss on the bus and in the classroom with all my mates. The teachers would be confiscating our little radios!

And what’s your relationship with the specialist guys?

Melvin: We’re mad passionate about music anyway, but the specialist guys feed back all the biggest tracks to our team. The lucky thing about Kiss is that we are like a big, extended family, so we can call them up and see what’s going on. We can call up someone like EZ and find out what’s going on in his world.

Describe your relationship with the audience…

Melvin: People feel really comfortable around us, which shows that our audience are very similar to us. They see us as approachable, as we’re almost mirroring them, so yeah I think we’re very much reflecting our listeners.

Rickie: To be honest, if we weren’t on the station as presenters and DJs we’d be listening anyway.

What makes the Kiss audience tick?

Rickie: Music’s the thing that binds everyone together.

Melvin: Good music and being at the forefront of what’s fresh and new. They’re a pretty open and liberal bunch.

Here the breakfast boys discuss content on their show... 

What are the hot topics with your audience?

Rickie: Our audience loves anything that polarises males and females, particularly talking about relationships – they’ll go crazy for that all day long. And nostalgia is popular - we did a talking point the other day about first work experience jobs and the listeners loved that as everybody’s been on work experience at some point in their lives and can relate to it. That’s it really - finding the topics which everyone can relate to.

Does the industry understand the Kiss audience?

Rickie: I think advertisers at the moment might still have a preconception that it’s kind of like the Kiss of old, the Bam Bam and Streetboy period. But I don’t think it’s like that at all anymore. I think it attracts a diverse mix, a cross section of really switched on people.

Melvin: Thanks to us, yes. Ha ha!

Kiss is about online media now as much as conventional media – how is this changing things?

Rickie: You’ve got to start thinking about things differently. It means there’s a different pace to what you do and you start building a different relationship with the audience.

Melvin: A better relationship. There’s more to it.

Do you use social media?

Rickie: We’re into a lot of blogs at the moment, things like Hattie Collins and Concrete Loop. With newspapers a lot of stories will happen on a Tuesday and you won’t see it reported until maybe Wednesday or Thursday. Doing the breakfast show it’s important to be as up to speed as possible - then when the audience see it in the papers the following day it shows you’re ahead of the wave.

Melvin: Also, papers have to be really careful with regards to libel laws whereas online, they’ll write something and post it right away.

Rickie: They give it to you straight.

Melvin: We can always edit stuff and we’ve got loads of little code words, which the listeners now know. We can say a rude word in code. For instance  -jabberwocky. Do you know what jabberwocky means?

Um, no…

Melvin: Listen to the show!!! Six to nine, Monday to Friday, people!!!

Here's the Group Programming Director of Kiss, Andy Roberts, explaining the musical philosophy behind the Kiss playlist.