Frédéric Antelme: the man behind France’s Radio Nova

0:12Frédéric Antelme:Hello and welcome to The Monocle Weekly. I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco and today we head to Paris to speak with Frédéric Antelme, managing director of one of France's most distinguished radio stations, Radio Nova. I've paid a visit to their headquarters to hear more from Frederic.

0:37Frédéric Antelme:Frederic Antelm, managing director for Radio Nova, I'm a huge fan. Frederic, for those who maybe didn't come across Radio Nova from outside France, how would you describe the ethos of the radio and the brand itself? Well, it's a radio station that was created in 1981 by a visionary French person called Jean-François Bizeau, who was at the heart of counterculture and underground cultures. He already had a press magazine called Actuelle, which was pretty influential among writers, scenes, and readers, but it was very alternative. And he wanted to create a radio station that would expose cultures, music, different ways of thinking that were not addressed in the mainstream.

1:23And I think back in 1981, when Nova was created, the whole FM radio scene was starting to emerge. and a lot of the radio stations were copying top 40 radio stations in the US and there was not so many places you could access music and alternative music and talking heads and all that stuff. So he wanted to do a station that would have all this music that was not exposed. And then throughout the years, this vibe sort of went through the station for 40 years, making a lot of emerging artists and genres. I mean, Radio Nova was the first radio station to play a rap. Then it was the first to really drive and build French rap.

2:09Then it went through different scenes, electronic music, the French touch scene. So it's been years and years of emerging music and genres that went through this radio station. And the thing is, it was not only alternative music. It was also alternative people and ways of, well, looking at culture and politics and the world. And so there was a lot of show. There were a lot of shows across the years and a very long line of many talents that are today influential in writing, in acting, in doing movies have started or have gone through Nova at a certain point. and fast forward 40 years later or 45 years later Nova is still an alternative thinking radio station it's not exactly the same as it was because the times have changed I mean access to music has evolved so much I mean back in the days you had to travel the world or go many places to find music today accessibility of music has changed which means that radio stations And this is what's quite complicated for radio stations today to still maintain reach and new listeners.

3:21Because, I mean, it's talking about music stations, but well, because it has changed. And so Nova, it was always a small radio station. It grew, it grew influentially. We're also doing a lot of compilations in the years 2000. But gradually it was going down in the number of listeners. And then back in 2023, we changed a bit the way of doing things. And so there's several things we changed. The first thing is in the music mix, we approach things a bit differently. Whereas for years, Nova was playing music that would only be played on Nova, which had the problem of being a very specialized radio station.

4:04And economically, it wasn't working. So we went into a more open approach, accessible approach, was trying not to change the quality of the music. And saying, because for years it was like many stage alternative stations would not play any song that would be popular, would play sometimes not the singles, but another track from the album. We did change that a bit to bring more accessibility to the radio station. and we also saw that it's not because that track is popular on Spotify that it's not a good track and that we can't play it. So we play a bit more of a mix between things which are still pretty cool music.

4:46Kendrick Lamar does billions of streams but still plays on Nova, which maybe for a few years wouldn't have happened. So we now have a broader mix of these kinds of music, which I think still makes it a really good station and has helped the radio station grow back up.

5:03Frédéric Antelme:I think an example, I don't know if I'm right, but there's a vinyl there, Soleil Blair by Luisa, which suddenly became a huge hit in France, right? It was a huge hit. When it started, it was not a huge hit. But a few years ago, when it would have reached the charts and gone over to mainstream, no one would have stopped playing it because it's too popular. And this is what we changed. We continued playing it even though it became popular. and so let's put it like that the music now is i think a bit more connected to what happens in general because when maybe 20 years ago people used to define themselves with i listen to music you don't listen to it has changed a bit when you see the people i don't know 20 years old are listening to really old music new music alternative mainstream this whole thing of i'm better than that because i don't listen to that has disappeared and you can listen to really popular rap underground alternative music fleaford mac or whatever in the same playlist because of how many people discover music today through tech talks through tv shows through series through euphoria whatever and so i think this is what we adapted in the way of seeing music that it wasn't about any more playing things that nobody knows it's just trying to fit to the zeitgeist and this is what we try to do it's interesting that from what i've been reading as well in this age of Spotify and kind of social streaming services.

6:31Frédéric Antelme:But your listeners went up. So that's quite interesting, right? Yeah. So this is, I think, it's a mix of several parameters. The first thing is what I've described on the music, bringing more openness to it. We also worked a lot on social media and on imaging and marketing. I don't think marketing is a word that cannot be associated with good quality stuff. So we redid the whole visual design we really tried to make it more contemporary to. And the third parameter is which is connected to the shows we do. We did a big move in 2024 when we hired a host from public radio in France called France Inter, who's a comedian, politically driven comedian, who had just left France Inter in a very big, it was a bit of a scandal there.

7:22And we hired him and started a show with him and his ex-friends from that rather radio station on Nova in September 2024. And this kind of started the new era of this radio station because he's very popular and brought a lot of new listeners with him when he came to the radio station. And they also brought kind of an imprint that we put through the radio station, which would be considered as very irreverent, which was always the tone of Nova. Not in that form. It was less political beforehand. It was more about being funny and intellectual and a bit of a spirit there. This spirit is a bit more irreverent, politically incorrect.

8:09And they have started, I would say, a new phenomenon. And the show is extremely popular. It's called La Dernière. And he's called Guillaume Maurice. And he came along with Juliette Arnaud, Pierre-Emmanuel Barret and Émeric Lomprin. And they've helped grow the station really quickly. And we've done many other shows. They've helped us also reinvest in the station after years of difficulties and hire new people, reinvest in the morning show, which is funny in a market where actually radio stations tend to decline. the radio nova is done we've done at least four times we're four times bigger than we used to be two years ago it's like we used to have 350 000 listeners now we're going to have a million 500 or something like that what's the size of the operation like how many stations do you have how many people work here so we have one radius station is where we are now it's in paris and we send through france on 30 fm frequencies and then there's the ab plus but in france it's still a small small portion of people who are equipped and able to listen to radio on the ab plus and then we really over invested on digital so podcasts videos youtube everything is cut out subtitled vertical horizontal and really quickly after the show so this kind of exponential content has helped driving the reach and when it comes to the amount of people it's about let's say on the weekly so like daily shows plus people here every day it's like so do people and if you put everybody who works on the shows videos cutting and all it's maybe but that's a lot of people who work once per week.

10:00It's maybe in total 80 people. It's a fairly small activity on a daily basis but in general it's become a bigger thing. And so we've been really working a lot on the comedians and basically what it brought is we've become a very irreverent station, comedy-driven station about politics and the world that's around us and all this with the music. It makes it a kind of a hybrid radio station between a public station, very content, but like talk-based, mixed with a more music, traditional radio format. It's kind of a weird thing with running here, but it works. Yeah, it works because maybe we found it's original, doesn't look like anything else.

10:49It's probably French, I guess, somehow. It's a bit weird. I can't really, because, you know, radio has been also so formatted along these years. And so when I started here, I thought, how do we recreate something that, because when I started radio, well, when I decided or started to work in radio, it's because radio was exciting. Things were happening. It was creative. All the talents wanted to go to work in radio. And that's where you started before you went to TV is basically the, and then fast forward 30 years later, you've got people going on Twitch and YouTube and nobody, no talent wants to work in radio anymore.

11:28It can't only be because audio is boring. So I was truly, we're really trying to think, how can we really make audio exciting again, like it used to be 30 years ago? So we just do things that nobody does anymore. We just started doing talk radio again. We took call-ins and stuff like that, which didn't happen so much anymore, at least in France.

11:51Frédéric Antelme:musically i saw you have kind of different channels as well hip-hop reggae electro how does that work you can go on your website and listen yeah so we've got a we've got an app where you've got the main station plus six web radios or sub channels which are all programmed from three programmers uh here nova comes from a tradition of diggers and rare groove finders i didn't even know what a rare groove is it's like these white labels that were really used to do samples on electronic music and rap and people who were just digging music and they come from this this time and it's quite interesting because i'm more of a format radio person and i guess it's it's the combination of people who just listen to find music that they like out of any business consideration uh they just listen to music and then pick songs and then we all together get together and say okay we'll take these two songs nobody's ever heard about then we take one that's maybe a bit more on a major label and we try to do that mix like that and they do the same for the web radios it's just playing a mix of old songs or today's songs you never heard about plus some more familiar songs to kind of level out the accessibility of the of the radio station for me radio novos to a place of discovery discover many cool bands there.

13:15Frédéric Antelme:And just looking ahead to the summer, I wonder what's the importance of big events for you, big festivals? Because I know you're part of a group that helps to organize some of those festivals. So tell us about that connection. And I think summer is quite a big season for you guys as well. We've got several things. So first of all, yeah, and you said it, we've got festivals in the group. And one of the two big ones is one is We Love Green, which is in June and Radio Nova is presenting the event too. So we'll have a studio on the ground doing interviews, sending or playing the live while they're on stage.

13:50And so we're going to have a big activation there. Then we are going to also relaunch because Nova went through long years of traditions of custom live events. So something called Les Nues Zébrées, which was cult for French or Parisians, at least it was very Parisian at the time. So we're going to start those again. They're named called Les Nuits Nova. We're doing one of the 29th of May at La Guétardirique in Paris. Still line up, still TBC, but it's coming up. And then during the summer, we're also going to launch a radio feed, which only exists in the summer, which is called Nova La Plage, Nova the Beach.

14:31and we do a summer cocktail version of Nova with a lot of beach music, I mean, in the sense of more jazzy slash yacht rock slash electronic mix of tracks which are going to run on the radio. And then we're going to do some DJ sets also around Paris under that brand. We're releasing a vinyl called Nova La Plage coming out in June too. Because we also did a lot, We do a lot of vinyls. We released actually a quite cool Christmas album called Santa Nova in December. So we have quite a lot of activity on the vinyl and events side. We've just rebuilt here a little mini booth I can show you on the way out.

15:18There's a little place where we can do podcasts, but we can also record live music with little mini bands. It's quite small, but we're really bringing back the music and yeah, alternative music into Radio Nova. Fantastic. Final question.

15:34Frédéric Antelme:What are you listening to at the moment? Oh, wow. I didn't prepare that one. I like Leisure very much. It's a band which I really like. And I have been listening to Tom Misch's last album, which I love very much. To his English, actually, by the way. That was Frederick and Telm, their managing director for Radio Nova. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and the show was edited by Jack Dewars. Thank you for listening.