Hang the DJ

Martin Wright meets Chantal Cook, co-founder of Passion for the Planet

Out there in digital radio land, a wander through the welter of Planet Rock and Easy FM soundalikes can induce a disappointing sense that it’s all more choice, less quality. Until suddenly the rousing chords of Rock the Casbah give way to a voice taking animatedly about a breakthrough in wave power that could revolutionise the future for renewables. You’ve tuned to Passion – no programmes, no DJs, just “interesting stuff in three-to-five-minute bursts surrounded by the planet’s best music”.

“A mix of music, perky messages, and some frankly bizarre stuff”

So what does that pitch mean in practice? Well, everything from a burst of Rai, a squeal of Goldfrapp,and a breath of Kate Rusby – interspersed with grim warnings on biofuels and coral bleaching, perky tales of the benefits of cod liver oil, and some frankly bizarre stuff on empathetic outbreaks of morning sickness among men with pregnant wives…

It all seems to have struck a chord, in more ways than one. The Times named Passion for the Planet as one of its “five best digital” stations. The Daily Telegraph likes it, too – “a genuinely new concept in radio”. Its programming appeals to the advertiser-friendly ABC1 group and – despite the ‘alternative’ content – its 70,000 listenership divides almost equally between male and female.

Passion is the baby of Chantal Cook, producer and broadcaster, who worked her trade through the ’90s on everything from Virgin to BBC local radio, while feeling increasingly frustrated that her main interests – environment, alternative health – just couldn’t get a look in. These were the wilderness years for green issues, when your average local radio producer thought tackling climate change meant turning down the studio air con.

So along with a group of fellow travellers, Cook launched an alternative strand on Canterbury-based CTFM. It proved to be something of “a testing ground”for what eventually became Passion. “I thought, ‘these are the things I’m interested in – is it just me, or will other people like them too?’ And it turned out to be really, really popular…”.

Moving on to setting up an English language service in Switzerland, she feared she was marking time. “I’d always planned to have my own radio station by 35, and that was fast approaching. And I thought, ‘what am I doing jumping around from station to station – I should really be doing this properly!’”

Meanwhile, the dawn of digital radio was opening up a brave new world for specialised, niche broadcasters. Suddenly you didn’t have to adopt the ‘Smashie and Nicey-style’ lowest common denominator pitch in an effort to secure a precious slice of airwaves. Cook spotted the potential in 1998, while launching four Europe-wide stations for WRN. “That opened my eyes to what the future of radio was going to be like. So while the rest of the industry was saying, ‘this is never going to happen, it’s never going to work’, I was there in the thick of it saying, ‘Well actually, I think it will.’”

So she left WRN, hooked up with CTFM colleague Kenny Stevens, and set about finding investment and winning a licence. Most digital licences are awarded on a regional basis to consortia made up of a mix of stations. Passion is part of the DRG group, which also includes Gaydar and the Ministry of Sound. They aimed high to start with, pitching for the London licence. They faced two rival groups, “so there were lots of petitions and letter-writing and getting people to write letters for us” before they won out in 2001. That was a springboard to winning other licences in Bristol, Devon, Peterborough and Essex, among others.

Finding sufficient investment wasn’t easy – but it was mitigated by the fact that costs can be kept to a minimum.

Passion broadcasts from a small office (and tiny studio) in an unprepossessing business park at the end of the District Line in deepest Wimbledon. Cook says the station is now “just about breaking even, which is in line with our forecasts”, and with the digital signal spreading wider each year, the prospects for expansion look promising. They’ve now launched a Passion Club, bringing together listeners for real life events such as birdwatching expeditions and chocolate tastings, as well as offering them discounts on everything from radios to advertising.

Passion isn’t to everyone’s taste, of course. It promises that “you won’t get… preached at, chanting, or tips on knitting your own muesli”, but it still sails close to the edge of wackiness on occasion; soft Californian accents extolling the virtues of chakra balancing might well put the odd listener in touch with their inner cynic. Still, try anything alternative, and you always risk ridicule. “Some people will buy into it”, says Cook, “while others will sit there and think, ‘I don’t believe that’ – or even‘that almost makes me angry, it’s so ridiculous!’. But go back 30 years and the greenhouse effect was completely fringe science – now it’s absolutely mainstream. All we ask is people listen with an open mind.”

And whatever the interviews or musical mix, there’s never any danger of a particularly melodic intro being drowned out by Smashie yelling: ‘Don’t touch that dial, news is next, right after this from Morcheeba!’

Martin Wright is Editor (at large) of Green Futures.

28 June 2008

Martin Wright

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