Paul Chantler
Paul Chantler (born 12 October 1959) is a radio programming consultant based in the United Kingdom. He has been involved in the radio industry for 25 years as a journalist, presenter, producer and programmer.
He is currently senior partner at United Radio in London and works with clients including GMG Radio, Absolute Radio, Emap Radio, UTV Radio, Premier Christian Radio and the RadioCentre in the UK, Communicorp in Ireland and Europe, and Radio City in India. He has also worked for Macquarie in Australia and Emmis in the USA. His most recent major assignments have included working for GMG Radio on their Smooth Radio brand as well as work on projects with radio groups in India.
Paul is co-author with Peter Stewart of the textbook Essential Radio Journalism published in June 2009 by A&C Black. The Foreword is written by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News who started his career in radio. Essential Radio Journalism started life in 1992 as a book called Local Radio Journalism, co-authored by Sim Harris. Its successor Basic Radio Journalism,[1] was published by Focal Press (a division of Elsevier) in 2002. It became a best-seller and was translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.
Paul's latest book, Hang The DJ - A radio presenter's guide to the law, co-written with Paul Hollins, was published in 2011.
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[edit] Career
Paul started his career in local newspapers in Kent (Kent and Sussex Courier, Kent Messenger, Kent Evening Post) before joining Invicta Radio as a journalist and news presenter in 1984. During his four years at Invicta, he also became the presenter of the station’s lunchtime show and regularly broadcast roadshows from around the Kent coast resorts.
After leaving Invicta, he joined Southern FM in Brighton as news editor and helped launch the new East Sussex service from Eastbourne.
He was then recruited to the BBC working as breakfast show presenter for the new station in Swindon, BBC Wiltshire Sound, where he was the first voice on air at the station’s launch in 1989.
Paul then went into radio management, firstly as head of news at the Chiltern Radio Group. He became group programme director in 1991, just as the group expanded into owning 11 stations. During his time at Chiltern, Paul helped launch one of the UK’s first regional stations, Galaxy Radio, covering Bristol and South Wales where he became managing director. Galaxy's format was groundbreaking in the UK mixing mainstream old and new dance music, playing Motown next to contemporary dance hits. In its first year, the station achieved a weekly reach of 13%, at the time the highest ever launch audience figure for a regional radio station. Paul was also a founder and managing director of Network News, a small-scale rival to IRN.
During his time at Chiltern, Paul ran a management company called Pop Vox which represented a number of TV presenters including Stuart Miles from BBC TV's Blue Peter, Mark Franklin of Top Of The Pops and Chris Jarvis of Children's BBC.
He left Chiltern in 1996 and became group programme director of the Essex Radio Group. During his four years at Essex, he was responsible for the audience success of flagship station Essex FM, the highly-praised anti-drugs roadshow for schools called 2 Smart 4 Drugs, and the launch of the East of England regional dance station Vibe FM.
In 1997, he was named UK Commercial Radio Programmer of the Year and in 1999 won the UK Commercial Radio Social Action Award.[2]
Former editor of The Sun newspaper Kelvin MacKenzie headhunted Paul to become group programme director of The Wireless Group in 2000. Apart from running the group’s 18 local stations, Paul was also programme director of national speech station talkSPORT.
Two years later he started his own radio programming consultancy business. During this time, he undertook interim management assignments for Hallam FM in Sheffield, Metro Radio in Newcastle upon Tyne and Century FM in North West England as well as numerous projects for radio groups in the UK, Europe and Asia.
In 2005, Paul joined international programming consultancy United Radio as Senior Partner and a director, where he worked on various projects both in the UK and worldwide including Radio City in India, Radio Flash in Poland and Zip FM in Lithuania.
He was a shareholder and non-executive director of Planet Broadcasting Co Ltd, the company which owns and operates KCFM, the radio station for Hull which started broadcasting on 1 August 2007. KCFM was acquired by the Lincs FM Group on 17 June 2009.
Paul worked on an exclusive nine-month assignment with GMG Radio as full-time Programme Consultant to Smooth Radio London in 2008. The following year, he was appointed Acting Programme Director of Smooth Radio East Midlands in Nottingham on an interim basis.
He was invited to give the keynote speech at the inaugural conference of the Association of Radio Operators of India in New Delhi in November 2009 and has written a number of articles for the Indian media about the importance of training and the benefits of news and talk programming.
In the last few years, Paul has worked as a programming consultant for a number of radio stations and groups including 4FM, Ireland's multi-city station; Fire Radio in Bournemouth; Planet Rock, the UK's classic rock station; and the Indian radio group of 17 stations, My-FM. He has become an expert on media law and has conducted legal seminars for presenters and journalists at a number of UK radio stations and groups including Absolute Radio, Real Radio, Smooth Radio, Jack FM and BFBS.
Other ventures include a successful iPhone app featuring show prep for radio presenters and producers called Radio Talk Topics and a company called Radio Ideas Bank - an online database of creative ideas for radio contests and promotions.
[edit] Lakesiders
In 1997, Paul was one of the characters featured in the TV docu-soap Lakesiders, shown on BBC One. The programme featured his often fractious working relationship with Essex FM breakfast DJ Martin Day. Lakesiders was scheduled after EastEnders and was watched by a regular audience of up to 10 million viewers. A new series, called Return To Lakesiders featuring Paul and Martin, was shown on BBC Two on 18th, 19 and 22 August 2008.[3]
Paul appeared in a similar role, featuring very similar arguments and relationships with the presenters, in the version of the show centered around the MetroCentre called Trouble in Store which aired on BBC1 in 2005.
