Time 107.5 FM boss Mark Dover talks about life on air

Time 107.5 FM serves Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and part of Grays in Essex. The signal also reaches partly into central London.

At a Keep it Local event at Havering Town Hall, station manager Mark Dover spoke to this paper about the station’s music choice and what happens when things go wrong on air.

Time 107.5 averages around 30,000 listeners each day, according to Mark, although he said it is not the number of listeners that the station prides itself on but for how long these listeners stay for.

Mark Dover is the station manager at Time 107.5 (Image: Time 107.5) The latest quarterly RAJAR statistics for radio stations show Time 107.5’s listeners tune in for an average of 12.4 hours a day – one of the highest in the country.

He said: “I think its because we do radio like it used to be – radio with personality and not playing the same old songs you hear every day.

“It’s all about the music we play and the local content we provide – news, events and supporting local businesses with advertising.”

Mark explained that the demographic of listeners are of an older age which influences the music chosen by the station – often playing songs from the 1960s through to the early 2000s.

Mark says Time 107.5 does radio ‘like it used to be’ (Image: Time 107.5) “We play thousands of different songs whereas other stations will literally rotate a couple hundred and you end up hearing the same song every day.

“We give people a chance to go ‘wow I haven’t heard this for years’.”

Mark also explained that there is “a lot more to life on air than people might think” such as researching news, organising playlists and not fumbling your words when live.

“The music is pre-selected for the presenters largely but not everything that is scheduled gets played,” he said.

“The presenters uniquely have a bit of freedom to change some of it so there are instances where listeners can be interactive with us to manipulate the playlist and that helps us to sound so different – we’ll play music that the major stations won’t.

Mark said presenters get a bit of freedom to manipulate the music played when on air (Image: Time 107.5) “We do have technical issues probably more often than we’d like because computers aren’t fool proof – a lot of stations have issues, we’re not unique with that.

“Also, we’re only human. Sometimes we make mistakes or even come a bit too close to swearing by accident.

“Largely, we’re an experienced team and we’re not bad at our jobs.”

Time 107.5, based in Romford, plays all day, every day of the week but presenters are not needed overnight thanks to modern technology. 

Mark explained that presenters are often live from around 6am to 8pm and 11pm on Fridays.

He also said one of his favourite segments is the ‘be a good egg’ appeal where the station asks for listeners to donate money to be put towards underprivileged children in the broadcast area.