Research- Smooth Radio

Smooth Radio plays mainly in six areas in the UK, a local one being Smooth Radio 100.4fm in the northwest playing in the Manchester and Merseyside area. It has been part of the Smooth brand of stations since 1st March 2004, the station is also available online.
Smooth radio's slogan is 'Love Life. Love Music.' The stations first air date was the 1st September 1994 appealing to audiences over 50 years old with an easy listening style of music.
The station originally played mainly jazz music, and in 2004 began to play more modern music through the day. This relates to the style of radio station our group wants to achieve as we want modern music to attract a youthful audience. Smooth steered away from this style as there was a still a jazz themed output in evenings, and so later compromised with its own unique soul music based format. It proposed an easy listening music service mixed with speech for the over 50's, coupled with an improved local news service.
Here as an example of the music smooth can be associated with, we can see from this live performance in the studio of ex-boy band 'Blue' member, Lee Ryan;



The show also includes various interviews, recently featuring Alicia Keys and Paloma Faith.










Presenters on the show include the winner of 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here' in 2002, Tony Blackburn, and English record producer Pete Waterman.










Because of the target audience of our station, presenters such as there would not work well with he output of the station. Instead younger presenters will be used in order to make the station relate better to the audience.
By Becky Owens.