Kiss Insight

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDY ROBERTS 28 July 2008

Our award winning Head Of Programming on tasking risks and the changing face, and sound, of Kiss.

Firstly, well done on your latest award (UK programmer of the year at the 2008 Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards). The judges mentioned risks that had paid off at the station. Can you expand on what these were?

It’s funny, my guys entered me for it and I didn’t know. It would feel a bit wrong to enter myself but it’s nice to be acknowledged in terms of commercial radio. They felt I had taken risks in the last period – putting unknowns on the breakfast show and not being afraid of changing things on a day to day basis. The risk thing fits in to Kiss culture; it’s basically the ‘don’t stand still’ proposition.

What have been the changes in style over the past year?

I think we changed about 80% of the London schedule and we have also been building the other two stations, both in talent and music terms. There are a lot of changes that have been used to match people’s moods to their radio habits. It’s all about suiting the mindset.

How do you keep track of all the music across the shows?

We have presenters out and about doing the right things within the scene and getting access to tunes really upfront. So it’s all about keeping one ear on the specialists and at the same time doing the day-to-day mainstream radio programming, incorporating the tracks that I feel are relevant within that.

Where do you think the big leaps have been made at Kiss? Across both the mainstream and specialist shows?

I think there are two tiers. The Logan Samas of this world, where he has the only official grime show on radio, which is one extreme. And then on the other hand we have Friday night Kiss, where we have a very credible show that is the market leading radio show in London, so it’s currently beating Pete Tong. It’s all about not being afraid of playing five hours of bassline, through to getting Mark Ronson doing a take over.

Tell us about your career at Kiss as this is your second stint at the station?

It’s funny, as I first came down to Kiss in 2000 and I made it really commercial - mainly due to the commercial demands of the business. At that time Capital had a large part of the young audience so we had to pull all of them over before we could make it credible again. I know the early listeners would have seen this as sacrilege but we doubled the numbers overnight and then tripled them. It had to be done, as Capital was such a powerhouse. This time round it’s been more of a conscious effort to get a balance and link between the mainstream audience and the specialist, which I think we currently have.

There is a legal requirement to deliver 35 hours of specialist radio but we are currently delivering over 50 hours. I see the value in the specialists. The current Kiss format is so wide, and there are so many different genres, that we have been using our website, Total Kiss, to bring more experiences to listeners, because we can’t actually fit them all on the FM station.

What is the lifespan of a record at Kiss? Let’s talk through one of those that went from the underground to the charts...

If you want to use Wiley’s ‘Rolex’ as an example, I think that is one of those tracks that was knocking around the specialists and then it broke through. It would have been supported by Logan Sama initially, and then when I looked to see what music was going on there I realised that we could benefit from championing and owning the record. We first put it on the playlist on February 12 and it got high rotation - and it’s still on the B list now, getting six or seven plays a day. There are certain records that you know will be around for a long time and that is one of them. With Kiss we balance the disposability of music with those will stand the test of time and ultimately become Kisstory records.

What about your personal taste in music?

I have always liked dance, hip hop and R&B but I have also built Kerrang! and other radio stations, so my taste in music is quite varied.  To be honest it’s quite good not getting caught up in a specific scene. I know that if I was too involved in a certain genre that I could be influenced in negative ways and I can be more objective like this. There are things I play at home that I know I can’t play on the radio, as at the end of the day you have to manage the business end.

What next?

It’s all about not standing still. Dance music has never really gone away, but it’s filling the Top Ten across the genres now, which is great. We are busier than ever and dance music seems to have staked its place as a genre to be here forever. All good news for Kiss.