BBC Radio 2 breakfast presenter Scott Mills told Nik Goodman at Radio Days Europe 25, “ I loved working in commercial radio and credit it for teaching me how to play music well, proper jockeying with flow ‘tight and right’.”
Scott also dreamed of working for the BBC and after sending demos to them for 6 years he got his opportunity. For 24 years he presented different shifts on BBC radio 1 which targeted the youth audience playing pop music and discussing popular culture with the audience and guests.
“The secret of staying relevant at BBC1 was loving every minute,” said Scott. “Pop was cool again and I stayed in touch with music trends and popular culture. I worked hard at knowing what young people were talking about.”
Earlier this year Scott moved to BBC Radio 2 as presenter of the flagship Breakfast Show. The show’s philosophy and style is to blend lighthearted fun, listener interaction, and a focus on music, often incorporating quirky experiments and games. “Ben Cooper encouraged me to let my personality show so I’ve been working at this while presenting a slick show.”
Scott’s top tips for show success:
- Prep is important. “Always have timeless content to go with if nothing interesting or entertaining is happening. We have an idea’s box of emails to delve into.”
- Creativity and engagement. “Bring clips to life by the way talk about them. If you do a good set up you intrigue your audience.”
- Be aware that successful ideas for another market may not work for your show. ” One idea I’d never try again I borrowed from Kyle and Jackie O’s breakfast show was ‘Confessions of an Uber driver’. This didn’t translate well, as their Australian audience shared so many details which made great listening while the best I got was a taxi driver talking about how a passenger was sick in his cab.”
- Use a weekly story arc. “My producer, Elenor gave us updates on her getting to know the building’s cat when she moved into her new flat. Cats can be indifferent so Elenor set about trying to win this one over with suggestions from listeners.”
- The informal chat. “Set up the opportunity for two people to just have a chat and then listen to what they’re willing to give away”.
6. Lean into the interview. “My best example came from a recent interview with Harrison Ford when it was clear that I wasn’t going to get much involvement. I talked to him about his coffee instead and used his reluctance to engage the audience. This interview got 4.1 views on insta.”
7. Listeners and interaction. “One way to engage listeners is through show promos using their name, town they’re from, and favourite song as you lead into playing the song.
8. Flow. “Interviewer pace, progression, intro, outro and construction needs to be good.”
9. Link breakfast and drive. “Shows need to be linked so it genuinely feels like a family. We recently ran a campaign asking our listeners to unite Sarah Cox’s drive show with the breakfast show and do better than our suggestion,’Rise with Mills, shine with Cox’. As a result listeners made many suggestions on the drive show that were then discussed and played on Breakfast.”
10. You’re never bigger than your station. “Remember that you’re here by the grace of your station.”
“Finally, treat everyone the same and be generous. You’re the conductor let others speak,” said Scott.
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