The Hot Hits gets hotter: new site is up

MCM’s Sam Thompson walks us through The Hot Hits makeover

MCM Media has relaunched their pop culture brand as the The Hot Hits with it’s upgraded website now online and fullyb functional after a few teething issues. 

Gone is the tag line, “live from LA,” although MCM’s Content Director, Sam Thompson says, Every time within the radio show you’ll will still hear ‘The Hot Hits Live from LA,’ but for consistency with the dotcom and the mobile and the apps, we are referring to it as the Hot Hits.”

With the beta site unveiling a fresh look and feel across its online and radio platforms, there’ll be a new mobile site and app, a new gaming section, an upgraded video player and better social media integration. The radio show, hosted by Andrew Günsberg and Natalia Perez will air across the Today Network at 2pm on Sunday as usual with Optus, the exclusive sponsor. The show is currently broadcast on 62 stations across Australia.

Sam Thompson says that the online and social media aspects of the show are critical, ‘There is constant tweeting and Facebook about the show encouraging people to keep listening – here’s what’s happening in 15 minutes time and here’s what’s on the show.’ And then we are constantly hooking back from the radio show to the website, ‘here’s part of the interview but if you want to hear the rest of it, go to thehothits.com and you can watch the full interview. It’s about cross promoting all of the platforms that we have.”

hothitslogo_165A lot revolves around the new app. Nielsen has reported an explosion in Mobile web usage in the past year. Says Thompson, “The fast growing youth audience, talking mobile pages viewed, reached over 300 million in August. This is where our listeners are – where our consumers are consuming media. So we need to be on it.”

Sam Thompson’s background is predominately radio, starting at Austereo full time in 1991.  But even before that she worked since 1985 at SAFM. She recalls, “In those days they had the FM shop and I was driving Black Thunders with P plates because you were allowed to back then.”

Thompson finally got a full-time job on the in-house research team at SA-FM. From Adelaide, she moved to Brisbane’s B105 for 18 months, then to Canberra when the Austereo stations were FM104.7 and 2CA. From there to 2Day-FM, back up to B105, and then to Fox in Melbourne. “In 1997 I was Promotions and Marketing Director at Fox, when Brian Ford was the Content Manager and then, I think, in 2003 I went to Nova and I was there from 2003 till last year.”

With that depth of radio experience, Thompson is a natural for the Content Director’s role at a program syndicator such as MCM. Often, radio stations can be much more picky about content and production values from outside organisations than they are with their own material. But Thompson says that because of the collaborative nature of their relationship with the networks they get very few complaints, “We’ve got really supportive partners. Our shows at the moment run right across Southern Cross Austereo and ARN.

We work closely with them and we know that for them weekend programming isn’t their absolute priority. What they do know from us is that we invest a lot of time and resources in creating premium high quality radio shows, and we get some great results. I talk to them all regularly and get their feedback on how the shows are going and make changes. Some we will do together some we will do on our own.”

The resources required to produce just four hours of a multi-platformed syndicated show is substantial. There are at least nine people working on the Hot Hits both here and in Los Angeles. Says Thompson, “What you have to remember, though, is that that content is also used for other shows like the Hoyts Insider. Our key is getting that great A-list content and then amplifying that content across all of our shows and all of our platforms.

“So, what you might see is content from a red carpet or movie junket used within the Hot Hits radio show. But then you can also watch it on the dot com. And subject to who it is, we might even use it in Take 40 as well and on the Take 40 website. And it might be used on the Hoyts Insider movie show. So, it may be nine people, but it is nine people contributing to all of our brands and everything that we do as well.”

 BTW. This weekend Sam Thompson is getting married.  Congratulations from all of us here at radioinfo!