Inside...TalkSPORT

campaignlive.co.uk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 08:00AM

The office has seen a major revamp to house the restructured sales teams and a new global service, Calum Macaulay writes.

Calum Macaulay: '2013 could be our biggest year yet'

It is a daunting but exciting challenge to take control of the world’s largest sports radio station and the UK’s biggest sports magazine. I started as the managing director at the beginning of the year but, luckily, I know the team – having worked within UTV for a number of years, most recently as the director of our local music stations.

The atmosphere at talkSPORT is pretty unique. Everyone in the building loves sport and there is amazing passion and commitment to create top-class output on air, online and in print. Undoubtedly, this has helped to create a station with more than three million listeners every week. We attract some huge names from the sporting world and it’s not unusual to come across the England manager, Freddie Flintoff or Kenny Dalglish (King Kenny, to give him his proper title) in the green room when you go to make a cup of tea.

We’ve just realigned the sales teams to an agency-focused set-up. Our partnerships with brands and agencies are increasingly across multiple platforms, which is unsurprising when you look at the reach that we can achieve across radio, print, online, mobile and social media.

We’ve had the builders in for the past month, revamping the sales floor, expanding the ground floor and adding an additional area for filming and digital output. For the start of this season, we built a new international broadcast centre for our global service, talkSPORT Live. The station broadcasts every Premier League match live worldwide in English, Spanish and Mandarin – so you can imagine the electric atmosphere in the studios on a busy Saturday.

We’re building up our commercial team for talkSPORT Live and gearing up for our exclusive coverage of the forthcoming British and Irish Lions tour to Australia. 2012 was a big year of sport for us, but 2013 could be our biggest year yet.

Calum Macaulay is the managing director of talkSPORT and Sport magazine

  Tenure: Since August 2012 (launch of talkSPORT Live). Responsibilities: Drive talkSPORT’s international service, which delivers live Premier League, FA Cup and Capital One Cup commentary in English, Mandarin and Spanish. What gets you up
in the morning? My kids. Loves: Cooking, taking pictures, learning new languages, my three children."

  Tenure: Since July 2006. Responsibilities: Making sure it’s the best magazine it can be, both editorially and commercially. What gets you up in the morning? I get to talk about sport all day and have a brilliant job playing around with words and pictures, but the truthful answer is the kids jumping on me. Loves: Spending time with my family, playing golf, horse racing, drinking wine.

  Tenure: 15 months, during which we had the Euros and the Olympics – not a bad first year! Responsibilities: Managing the commercial teams. What gets you up in the morning? Making breakfast for the kids, of course. Loves: Watching Berbatov score for Fulham at Craven Cottage, where my son and I are both season ticket holders.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk