Radio calls for guarantees from Digital Britain

The commercial radio industry is calling on the Government to reserve the currently unused capacity on the second national digital radio multiplex for future radio services.


As part of several demands linked to Lord Carter's interim Digital Britain report, the commercial radio sector also wants the Government to guarantee FM radio licences until beyond switchover, expected to occur no earlier than 2015 at the earliest. By doing so, it believes its future would be more secure, in turn allowing for more certainty to invest into digital radio.

Currently, FM licences are only renewed for those companies that commit to renewing their digital radio licences. The radio industry believes linking digital radio to FM licences damages its ability to raise finance to support digital growth. Without the certainty their FM licences will be rolled over, the industry argues that it limits their ability to raise finance for digital expansion.

According to a senior industry figure, the commercial radio industry will make a total of five requests to government in light of Carter's report. It wants public investment to ensure DAB coverage is extended to mirror FM coverage. It wants pressure to be exerted on car manufacturers to include DAB tuners in all cars. It wants the Government to guarantee FM radio licences until beyond switchover. And it wants more freedom for stations to broadcast the same show across individual stations.

Finally, it wants the Government to reserve the unused capacity on the second national digital radio multiplex for future radio services. Channel 4-backed 4Digital Group, the consortium that won the licence for Digital Two in 2007, handed its licence back to Ofcom on 30 January.

Richard Eyre, former chairman of GCap Media, said: "The industry needs to get the dialogue right and convince the Government what's in it for the public. It needs to stop saying it needs relief from costs. Carter has set a high hurdle for the industry to find arguments for digital radio that exhibit public interest qualities."

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Capital retains London breakfast leadership

95.8 Capital FM's breakfast show held on to the prized mantle of most popular London breakfast radio show in Q4 2008, edging towards the one million listener mark, according to today's Rajar figures. However, Bauer Radio's Magic 105.4 remains the most listened to station in London overall - a position it has held for eight consecutive quarters.


Magic 105.4 posted an average weekly reach of 1.99m in the last quarter of 2008, up 5.9% on the previous quarter and up 1.9% year on year. It scooped a 6% share of the London audience.

Mark Story, managing director of national brands at Bauer Media, told Media Week: "We are thrilled with Magic's performance, holding the top spot in London for the last two years - eight consecutive quarters. Our breakfast shows in London (Magic and Kiss) have both performed well and we hope to build on this. We believe our localness is the core driver for people to listen to our stations."

Global Radio-owned 95.8 Capital FM's breakfast show was up from 942,000 listeners in Q4 2007 to 981,000 in Q4 2008. Another Global Radio station, Heart 106.2, maintained its second position in the London breakfast sector with 868,000 listeners, up 100,000 from the previous quarter.

Magic 105.4's breakfast show, whose presenter Neil Fox has just signed a new deal until 2012, was in at third place with 813,000 listeners, which was flat on the year but up 80,000 on the previous quarter.

Overall, Global Radio's Heart 106.2 came in second to Magic as the most listened to station in the capital with 1.79m listeners, occupying 5% share of the London audience. Its audience was up marginally on the quarter but down 2.6% year on year.

95.8 Capital came in third with 1.62 million listeners, up 7.1% year on year, with a 4.8% share of the London market. Kiss held on to its fourth position with 1.58m listeners, up 3.1% on the quarter and up 10.5% year on year.

Speech radio station LBC 97.3 also retained its position, coming in fifth with 630,000 listeners down 2.6% on the quarter and down 1.9% year on year. The Global Radio-owned station accounted for a 3.6% share of the capital's market

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Heart rebrand for 12 more Global stations

Global Radio will rebrand a further 12 former GCap radio stations as Heart on Monday, 23 March.

An advertising campaign will support the roll-out, which is the second phase of the national expansion of the Heart brand, following the rebranding of nine other former GCap stations in the Anglia region on 5 January.

The 12 stations are: GWR Wiltshire, GWR Bristol, GWR Bath, Gemini FM in Torbay and Exeter, Plymouth Sound, Orchard FM, Lantern FM, South Hams Radio, Fox FM in Oxford, Severn Sound and 2-Ten FM in Reading.

The majority of Heart's day parts are networked, apart from local breakfast shows from 6am to 10am and local afternoon programmes from 1pm to 7pm.

The 21 stations join the original Heart stations in London, Birmingham and Nottingham. A further nine GCap stations are due to rebrand this year.

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Riley is frontrunner in race to buy Global's Midlands assets

Former Chrysalis Radio chief executive Phil Riley is being tipped to win the £30m race to acquire Global Radio's five Midlands stations.

It is understood that Riley is part of a consortium bidding for Global Radio's West Midlands assets BRMB, Mercia, Wyvern, Beacon and its East Midlands station Heart 106. The bidding is now in its second round with a group asset price tag believed to be approximately £30m.

Global Radio is selling the assets as a single package. Other known bidders include Bauer Media, headed by Dee Ford, radio group managing director, and Premier Digital Broadcasting. Guardian Media Group dropped out of the running and never submitted a formal bid.

Riley has emerged as the favourite to win the race as it is thought likely he would keep the stations' national sales contracts with Global Radio. A senior radio figure said: "Riley is well placed to take this operation over and would probably leave the national sales contracts with Global.

"I would be surprised if Global sold the stations to Bauer, although BRMB would be a sensible addition to [Bauer's] Big City Network, as [Global Radio] wouldn't want to help increase the foothold of its biggest competitor."

Both Riley and Global Radio declined to comment.

In August, the Office of Fair Trading made the sale of the stations a condition of its approval for Global's £375m acquisition of GCap Media. Most of GCap's 71 local UK stations do not compete with Global.

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Virgin Radio silenced in UK as Absolute Radio debuts

After 15 years and five months of continuous broadcasting, Virgin Radio ceased operations at 7.45am today (Monday) and officially became Absolute Radio.


Announced with a medley of classic rock and pop music on Christian O'Connell's Breakfast Show, the relaunch follows the station's £53.2m acquisition by Times of India owner TIML Golden Square in May.

Absolute Radio will continue to be based in London's Golden Square and will broadcast across all Virgin Radio's old frequencies, including medium wave and DAB nationwide, and on 105.8 FM in the capital.

The rebranded station is also available on Virgin Media (channel 915), Freeview (channel 727), Tiscali TV (channel 620) and Sky Digital (channel 0107 National/0202 London) and the free-to-air service Freesat (channel 724). Its new Indian owners will be able to listen to the radio station via satellite, cable or through the internet.

The rebrand has been supported by a £5m advertising campaign, which plays off its new slogan "Discover real music". The marketing push has been handled by its newly appointed creative agency, Albion.

Sony Ericsson is the exclusive launch sponsor for today, but the station claims to be "essentially commercial free". It is thought to be the first time an advertiser has bought 24 hours' worth of inventory to support a broadcaster's launch.

Existing sponsors such as Sky will still be prominent on the station, but there will be no spot ads throughout the day.

The Virgin Radio brand will continue to broadcast in other markets around the world under the control of Sir Richard Branson's company. Last month, Virgin Radio made its first foray into North America by re-branding Mix 99.9 in Toronto as Virgin Radio 999. Virgin Radio operations also exist in France and Italy.

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Channel 4 scales down digital radio plans as cost cuts bite

Channel 4 is scaling back its digital radio plans, with only one of three of its originally planned stations, E4 Radio, now confirmed for launch.

As the broadcaster deals with the pressures of a declining TV ad market and uncertainty over its future public funding, Channel 4 Radio is the latest area of its business to face cutbacks.

Last week, the company announced plans to axe 150 jobs to save £100m over this year and in 2009.

Channel 4 conceded that it is scaling back its investment in radio "in line with its proposal to reduce its cost base by £100m in the next two years". A spokesman said it is focusing digital radio investment on E4 Radio, "which we believe represents the quickest prospect of a commercial return from radio".

Chief executive Andy Duncan told Media Week: "We are now looking at a more staggered plan and deferring stations. The focus in the short term is E4 Radio, but we are involved in industry-wide chats about the future of digital radio."

The admission comes just days before an industry-wide summit, aimed at mapping out the future of digital radio in the UK. At the meeting, Global Radio's group chief executive Ashley Tabor and 4DG group chairman Nathalie Schwarz are expected to finally sign a deal that will merge the operations of the UK's two digital radio multiplexes - Digital One and 4DG.

Channel 4 insisted the role of Bob Shennan, the broadcaster's director of radio and former BBC Radio Five Live executive, remains unchanged, despite the mothballing of its planned speech radio station.

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Global Radio rebrands the bulk of its One Network under Heart banner

Global Radio is to rebrand the majority of its One Network stations into a network of Heart-branded stations.

Thirty stations will be rebranded as Heart, including GWR, Invicta, Fox, Essex and Gemini.

One Network stations that will not be part of the Heart rebrand are Capital 95.8, Mercury, Red Dragon, Trent, Ram, Ten-17 and Leicester Sound. These stations will be folded into the Hit Music Network.

The move is a key part of Global Radio group chief executive Ashley Tabor's plan to simplify Global Radio's offering to advertisers by focusing on seven main brands: LBC, Galaxy and Choice, Classic FM, Gold AM, Xfm and the Hit Music Network.

Tabor admitted that "most clients don't know what buying the One Network means", adding that the stations are "a rag-bag collection of local stations and clients need the message to be simplified. The problem is the world's moved on and these stations haven't".

Referring to the decision to rebrand its One Network stations as Heart offerings, Tabor said that clients "know what they are buying when they get Heart".

Through the rebrand, which will take between 12 and 18 months to complete, Tabor wants to create a nationwide network allowing radio listeners to listen to the Heart network even if they are moving across the country, akin to the model that already exists for BBC Radio.

Tabor added: "The networked shows can be heard across all the stations, but slots such as breakfast and drive time will differ depending on where you are in the country."

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Absolute listeners offered opportunity to influence playlist

Absolute radio plans to hand listeners an insight into how its weekly playlist is decided, as well as having the chance to voice an opinion on the music that is played, ahead of its rebrand from Virgin Radio later this month.

Absolute’s weekly playlist meetings are to be opened to the public by allowing one passionate music fan each week to sit in on the meetings and debate the song selection with programmers and DJs.

The concept is the idea of Virgin Radio DJ Ben Jones, who hosts the Most Wanted programme on the station.

Virgin Radio is being rebranded following its acquisition by Times of India from SMG in June, in a £53m deal.

Times of India has decided on the new name, instead of continuing to license the Virgin brand from owner Virgin Enterprises.

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Global Radio retains national airtime sales contract for GMG

GMG has confirmed it is set to continue its current national airtime sales contract under Global Radio for the Real, Century, Smooth and Rock Radio brands, following the merger of Global Radio and GCap Media.


GMG Radio will continue to sell its own sponsorship and promotions nationally and locally, as well as regional and local sales for all of its stations.

Don Thomson, chief operating officer at Global Radio, said: "Global Radio is delighted to continue this long-standing relationship with GMG. Together, the sales proposition for advertisers is hugely beneficial."

The news comes in the week Global poached Adrian Stewart, former programme director of Bauer Media's Magic 105.4, to take the same role at Heart 106.2.

Stewart was the second person poached from Magic in the past few weeks.

Liz Parkin is leaving her position as Magic's commercial programming director, to become head of commercial programming for the whole of the Heart network.

Source: Media Week

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Global earmarks extra £10m for marketing, programming

Global Radio is to invest approximately a further £10m in marketing and programming over the next two years.

Sources close to the company have revealed that the money has been generated from savings made from the process of integrating GCap into Global's business, and will be extra money on top of existing marketing and programming budgets.

Media Week has learned that the portion spent on marketing will be targeted on building the presence of the company's brands, such as Galaxy and Heart, concentrating particularly on stations where the brand has recently been extended, such as Xfm Scotland's rebrand to Galaxy.

The additional programming budget will be allocated across GCap and Global stations, controlled by Richard Park, group executive director and director of broadcasting at Global Radio.

He will focus on developing and increasing the value of the group's networked programmes and doing the same with the breakfast and drive-time shows in the regions.

It is also understood that Global Radio will have completed its move into GCap's offices in Leicester Square before the end of this year.
All Global's studios, which used to broadcast LBC 97.3, Heart and Galaxy, will be moved over from Bramley Road before the end of December, according to insiders.

It is understood that more space will have been freed up in the Leicester Square offices, owing to the relocating of central departments, such as traffic and finance, to GCap's offices in Reading. Around 36 employees could face redundancy as a result of the relocation of the traffic and finance departments.

Source: Media Week

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