How Nolan and the BBC have distorted our democracy.

As we are seeing around the world, democracy is a fragile. The biggest threat in the US and the rest of the Western World comes from the media. We know about Cambridge Analytica in the US Election, the influence of Russia through manipulating social media in the UK and US. The growth of right wing shock jocks and new stations like GB News that have a clear right wing agenda.

In Northern Ireland The Nolan Show on BBC is distorting ours.

I worked in advertising for forty years. It is all about influencing people, changing their behaviour, promoting one brand or product over another. There is literally hundreds of billions spent every year to motivate and on occasion manipulate our behaviour. Yet most people will claim that advertising doesn’t work on them. Why? Because they don’t understand how it works. Advertising does not make people leap from the sofa when they see or hear a 30 second spot. What it does affect is the choices made when you are in the market for a product or service, be that lifting a particular bar of chocolate while paying for petrol, selecting a brand of clothing, choosing a restaurant, buying a car or going to a shop.

I influenced people to choose of Crazy Prices over Dunnes and Wellworths, dekko in preference to Creations, Tayto over Walkers, Peugeot over Renault and other car brands, Bud over Millar. I have worked for companies making coleslaw, producing ready meals, packaged veg, clothes and a lot more.

The common factor for all those businesses is that at least 75% of their budget was spent on buying the media space. On TV, on radio, in the press, and on poster sites. While producing ads for Northern Ireland Tourist Board our media team were spending over £1.5 million to get more people to take their holidays in Northern Ireland. The return on investment was 11:1. For every £1 spent £11 were returned. Advertising works.

The influence of the media is both overt and unnoticed. People don’t listen to radio ads, they hear them while doing other things. TV ads were accepted rather than liked, which is why so much time and money was spent on the creative work, to entertain and place memories in the minds of people not trying to remember.

The most powerful element of a campaign is repetition, so that people cannot avoid the message, and it gets into their semi-conscious thoughts with out them making a clear decision to remember. Say the same thing over and over and you will first of all recall the brand name, which is already influencing your thinking, and then the rest of the message, which may be about price, quality, convenience, range or more. It is playing on psychological norms of ordinary people. We like things, we like shopping, going places, eating well, travelling, comfort, luxury, getting value, being clever with our money. We are human!

One of the key factors in buying media is share of voice. This is the level of visibility you have in comparison with competitors. If you are advertising Ford, you want to know how much to spend so that you can be at least as visible as your main competitor, or how much it will cost to get your ad seen more often. Why? because frequency alone is not the measure, it is frequency in the market.

So what has that to do with the BBC and the Nolan Show?

Most people have the radio on as a secondary media. They are occupied with other things. In the bathroom a man is taking care to not cut himself shaving. In the car, drivers are doing the most dangerous activity they will undertake that day. In the kitchen making a cup of tea, cooking, tasting and more. They are hearing most of the time, not listening. We will all have our attention spiked by hearing something that is of interest to us, on that day.

The Nolan Show is the anchor programme for Radio Ulster. In scheduling the morning shows are the most important as people will stay on a station rather than change. It is out of date thinking, as we now have voice activated devices and can play our own music or podcasts, but it still has a role in keeping the car and kitchen listener. It is why the morning show DJs are so important to commercial stations, with Chris Evans getting millions to present Virgin Radio’s Breakfast Show. He brings in people who stay and they are what advertisers want, people.

Nolan built his reputation on Citybeat and was then bought by the BBC. Over the years the show has grown. All because of Stephen? Well he is an able broadcaster, but remember, the BBC cross promotes all their shows. No other radio show gets advertised on BBC NI television. No other anchor has multiple shows promoting him as a brand on the BBC. And the BBC itself is a trusted brand, which adds value to their promotions. They go out of their way to try to prevent any commercial mentions of products as they realise their power. Not so with Nolan.

Rajar, the radio ratings system is rubbish. It is a panel of people recording their listening in diaries. But they are the only ratings we have and are used to set the rate card for commercial stations, and for the Nolan Show to claim it is the biggest show in the country.

Funded by our payment of the licence fee, the BBC should reflect society. It has a responsibility to all people in the country. But across the UK there are issues over impartiality happening more frequently, seen on news and current affairs, such as Question Time and the Politics Show.

The Nolan Show.

Over the past four years that I have been paying attention, the presence of the MLA Jim Allister has demonstrated a disturbing bias towards the hard right loyalist view in Northern Ireland. Allister is an MLA with just over 6000 first preference votes in the last Assembly election, he is the only elected representative of his TUV party. Despite this he is by far the most frequent ‘guest’ on the Nolan Show. His minority political view is given hours of airtime. In February 2021 he was on four days in a row, the 18th, 19th, 22nd and 23rd, with a weekend in between. I know, as I had called the then Director of BBC NI Peter Johnson to complain, on the 17th. See what a difference that made!

The share of voice for hard line Unionism is way above the competitors, to a level where it is so dominant that the other parties may as well give up. An appearance here or there will make no difference, just like if you see one ad for Vauxhall and have already seen hundreds for Ford, it is not going to change your behaviour.

This is advertising for a politician. Taking the explanation of how advertising works, it has all the attributes of frequency and visibility. The only thing missing is that it is being handed to Allister for free. For some reason.

If we take the cost of commercial airtime, we are looking at £100,000’s worth of time, paid for by us. Producing a BBC programme costs a lot of money. The Nolan Show costs start with paying the presenter, who earns a minimum of £400,000 a year from the BBC, which is £7500 a week. which is £1500 per working day.

Allister has a supporting cast, with the same agenda. Jamie Bryson does not even have the credentials of being elected, or employed by a news organisation. He is a self made man. Yet here he is again and again on Nolan, selling the same political message despite having been rejected by voters when he did stand for public office. He is not rejected by Nolan.

Jim Wells is in and out of the DUP like a meerkat popping in and out of a hole. Yet he is never in or out of Nolan, he is always in. Same agenda with a sprig of creationism thrown in, he is there to push the DUP furthest right mantras. We don’t actually need to hear him, he is so predictable. Jim has said nothing new ever, even accidentally.

And if you were thinking that’s enough hard line Unionist spokespeople, not a bit of it. Here comes Ben Lowry, using the old Gerry Adams trick of trying to look like a university lecturer. He is the editor of the News Letter, which has always been Unionist, but used to be middle ground Unionist. With a circulation that relies totally on the rural protestant community, financially supported by the specialist Farming Life, Ben gets to talk with his calm and collected voice the same hard right nonsense that the others in this cabal are fixated on.

We have an additional factor at play. Celebrity. No one would have recognised these people if they knocked their doors until the Nolan Show and Nolan Live gave them airtime. And being on TV and the radio has an impact on how people react to you. Look at the culture of our times. People who appeared on reality shows with no discernible talent are now famous, for being on TV. Not for any talent, just for becoming famous. People recognise celebrities and will approach them, talk to them, and then tell their friends and family. When it comes to voting, that makes a difference. Swing voters will put their x beside a name simply because the feel they know that person, and don’t know the others. Distorting democracy.

Not for one second am I saying that people are stupid. I fall for advertising and being influenced as much as the next person, and I know how it works. But the people who tune in because they want to know what is happening here, in our country, province or whatever you want to call it, are being sold a pup. They want to listen to the politics of Northern Ireland or the Six Counties. They want debate and hard questions asked, but they get a totally one sided programme.

The outcome is there to be seen. Allister’s poll ratings are rising. Just like when Jim Megaw promoted Crazy Prices and more people came. I would be told that local ads were terrible, but they still worked. There is no other explanation, because there is no other media that is giving him the opportunity to sell his bitter messaging. Would people know about him outside his constituency without Nolan? Would other media now look on him as a ‘national’ figure without the brand building on Nolan? Is it frequency or the message? Who would know the message without Nolan? Why would so many people be convinced by such a one sided interpretation of the Protocol without Allister and Bryson on Nolan? Why did Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson move from being relatively happy to work with the Protocol to total rejection? Would it have happened without the Nolan ad campaigns.

Do you know the leader of the Green Party? It had the same number of votes!

Your BBC is not open to sharing data, so we cannot get the actual information from about the number of times a person is on. They claim not to keep records. Records? A tick in a diary would do. You do think that they would be a lot more likely to share the information about who has been on and how often if there was not an issue.

This is distortion of democracy.

Our democracy, in a country that only needs a flag to be flown to create real violence. Where people are being frightened for their identity needlessly by a man who wants power and sees this as the way to achieve it.

The Nolan Show needs management, control and to be even handed. It needs to be under the current affairs and news management, not entertainment, so that controls are in place. It is our BBC, this is our democracy, and both need protection.