Jazz FM sales contract goes to First Radio Sales

The national airtime sales contract for Jazz FM has been awarded to First Radio Sales, the sales outfit owned by UTV and The Local Radio Company, the group behind the station's relaunch in October.

Jazz FM will go live on 6 October on DAB in London, the North West, the West Midlands and Glasgow, as well as parts of eastern Scotland and south Wales.

The population in the areas Jazz FM will reach totals more than 24 million and the station will also be available on jazzfm.com, through Sky and on the BBC and ITV venture Freesat.

Jazz FM was set up in 1990 with Richard Wheatly as chief executive and was sold in 2002 to GMG Radio for more than £40m. In 2004, Wheatly set up TLRC.

The station was subsequently turned into Smooth Radio by GMG Radio last year. And, spotting a gap in the market, for a jazz station after the demise of GCap Media’s theJazz, GMG made a licensing agreement with TLRC to manage a new version of Jazz FM, which will air on spare DAB spectrum owned by GMG.

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Talksport revenue increase helps boost profits at UTV

Talksport-owner UTV Radio has enjoyed a 15% increase in revenues for the first half of 2008, up £4.9m to £36.4m year on year, with its UK stations showing 5% revenue growth.

The radio division in Great Britain saw revenue increase from £23.7m in 2007 to £25m in 2008, despite a 3% fall in the UK radio market overall.
Revenues at flagship station Talksport rose by 18% to £12.1m, up from £10.2m in the January to June 2007 period, although local radio income dropped 5% to £12.9m. Operating profits in the GB radio division were up by 15% to £5.4m.

Radio revenue in Ireland was up by 47% to £11.4m, with like-for-like revenue growth of 24%, to £9.6m. New Belfast radio station, U105, saw its losses fall by £100,000 to £300,000, while losses at the company's Edinburgh station, Talk 107, also fell by a third to £600,000, in line with UTV's plan to break even by the end of 2009.

An overview of UTV in its entirety showed group turnover of £62m in the first half of 2008, up 8% year on year, with pre-tax profits up 12% to £10.4m.
As well as radio in the UK and Ireland, UTV runs an arm of the ITV television network in Northern Ireland and has just strengthened its position in the digital domain with the acquisition of Tibus, an Irish website development company.

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4Digital Group set to launch first radio station next April

4Digital Group, the planned digital radio operator, is set to sign a deal to launch the first of its planned nine radio stations next April via established digital radio operator Digital One.

Faced with an Ofcom-imposed deadline of 22 August to detail its plans, added to the fact that transmission operator Arqiva has not yet signed up to supply the requisite infrastructure, 4Digital Group is expected to agree a deal that would allow its stations to launch via Digital One, which hosts just three stations:TalkSport, Virgin Radio and Classic FM.

Despite some opposition to the idea from within the 4Digital Group board, it is thought that Digital One will provide unused capacity for some of the planned stations, which include E4 Radio and Pure 4 radio.

The deal could see GCap - which is still operated as a separate entity while it awaits OFT approval for its merger with Global Radio - and Arqiva, which own a 63% and 37% stake in Digital One respectively, relinquish some of their share in Digital One to 4Digital Group shareholders, which include Bauer Media, UBC Media, UTV and BSkyB.

A source close to the companies involved said Digital One and 4Digital Group were "close to a deal", but that it depended on approval from Arqiva.

"4Digital has done a good deal by using its position as licensee of the second multiplex to negotiate with Digital One," said the source. "Equally, Digital One would never survive against 4Digital Group, so they had to do a deal, and this is the best deal they could have done."

But an Ofcom spokesman stressed any change to Digital One, such as its ownership or the radio services it carries, will require the consent of the regulator.

Channel 4, Arqiva, Global Radio and Digital One all declined to comment.

Media Week 19 August

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Galaxy branches out with e-zine for young women

Galaxy, the Global Radio brand serving Manchester, Yorkshire, Birmingham and the North-East of England, is launching an e-zine called Galaxy Life.

The first issue will be released tomorrow (Wednesday) and will be sent to the 340,000 Galaxy VIP members who have signed up to their local Galaxy website.

It will be published quarterly and can be downloaded via the Galaxy website, but will also have its own domain name - Galaxymagazine.co.uk. The title is aimed at women aged between 20 and 29.

The content is centred on lifestyle, fashion, music, showbiz interviews and competitions. The magazine has also partnered with website beautyandthedirt.co.uk to provide fashion, style and beauty content.

Nicola Thomson, Global Radio director of marketing, said: "The magazine is a brilliant way to intereact with our listeners. Of course, we would consider rolling more e-zines out for our other brands, but there are no immediate plans to do so."

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Radio sales teams face claims of discounting

Agencies are claiming that some radio sales teams are handing out larger discounts than usual as an incentive to clients to keep their ad spend within radio.

National advertisers' radio ad spend is predicted to be down by 12% year on year in Q2, as the credit crunch takes its toll on advertisers' and consumers' confidence.

Amanda Barrett, radio engagement specialist at Universal McCann, said: "The market isn't flying right now, so sales teams have to come up with more incentives to get clients onboard."

John McGeough, GCap Media trading and business devolvement director, denied GCap is engaged in such practices, adding: "We have a reasonably fixed supply in radio and giving anything away really cheap right now would take away the integrity of our sales proposition."

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Key 103 wins Manchester United commentary rights

Key 103, the Bauer Media-owned Manchester radio station, has secured the radio commentary rights for coverage of Manchester United's games.

The station, which forms part of Bauer Media's Big City Network, will be the official "commentary partner of Manchester United" for the next three years. Key 103 will maintain its commentary arrangement with with Manchester City.

Mickey Thomas, a former Manchester United player, will be commentating on United, while Andy Hinchcliffe, a former Manchester City player, will be heading Key 103's City coverage.

Key 103 will provide listeners with the show, Total Football, on weekends with pre-match build up, commentary and post-match analysis on Talking Football. All live commentary during the week will be broadcast on Magic 1152.

Online activity will include updates, podcasts and live web chat with Thomas and Hinchcliffe every Friday lunchtime.

Earlier this year, Bauer Media unveiled plans to spend £10m on a major marketing campaign on its northern stations, known collectively as the Big City Network, as well its dance music radio station, Kiss.

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ITV2 to get new look

ITV is overhauling the appearance of ITV2, with a new logo and interstitials.

The revamp, on 20 August, will coincide with the channel's unveiling of its autumn schedule, with a celebrity talent campaign featuring Holly Willoughby, Jack Osbourne and Coleen McLoughlin.

An ITV spokesman said ITV2's viewers most closely associated the lime green colour of the channel's idents with the channel. "What works is the colour green, so we will be keeping that," she said.

ITV2's share of total TV viewing was 1.9% for June. In the week ending 13 July, ITV2 attracted a daily reach of 3.4 million, or 6.7%. ITV2's top rating programmes are currently films, America's Got Talent, Katie and Peter, and The Next Chapter,

Meanwhile, ITV is expected to change digital channels ITV3 and ITV4 to improve the differentiation between each of the brands. ITV3 and ITV4 are expected to get their new looks next year.

Rupert Howell, managing director, ITV brand and commercial, told Media Week last month there was "more potential" for changes to ITV3 and ITV4, as they were less well defined than ITV1 and ITV2.

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BT Vision gains 68,000 customers in Q2

BT has announced that it signed up 68,000 customers to its pay-TV service BT Vision during the three months to 30 June.

The company, which launched the IPTV service commercially last summer, ended June with 282,000 BT Vision customers.

More than 80% of the new 68,000 customers signed up to one or more subscription packages, referred to by BT as the "subscription attachment rate".
The 80% figure is significant for BT. While customers can sign up to BT Vision without actually taking a monthly subscription, to make the service profitable, BT needs customers to take out regular subscriptions.

The announcement of the figures comes as BT pushes ahead with the development of a targeted advertising platform for BT Vision.

The system aims to deliver personalised ads to consumers, and step up BT's competitiveness against cable and satellite providers.

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Virgin airs new ad break styles

Virgin Radio is launching a new ad break format consisting of just five advertisers instead of the usual seven.

Each of the advertisers will have category exclusivity in the break – for example, if an airline was to take one of the five slots, it would be the only airline brand featured in the ad break.

There will be five of these ad breaks throughout the day.

The special format break will be topped and tailed by a piece of production highlighting the deals available for Virgin Radio listeners in the upcoming ad break.

The initiative is the first key move by Chris Goldson, who was promoted to commercial content director at Virgin Radio last week.

The £53m sale of Virgin Radio from SMG to TIML Golden Square completed on 30 June. The company is working on the launch of an entirely new radio brand to replace the Virgin name, backed by £15m.

Media Week 29-Jul-08

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The Radio Advertising Bureau is doubling the number of campaigns its quantitative research tool RadioGauge will analyse this summer.

The tool, which launched in January this year, provides national radio advertisers with access to free research to quantify the effectiveness of their campaigns. It is available to those advertisers who spend £350,000 or more.

From January onwards, RadioGauge was measuring three campaigns every two weeks, but it will now double that amount from now until September, giving an additional 36 campaigns the opportunity to have their effectiveness measured.

Mark Barber, director of planning at RadioCentre, is heading the project and noted that the aim of the project is to create a measurement system that can become "the gold standard" for measuring radio campaign effectiveness.

He said: "Before RadioGauge, there were many systems that measured TV's effectiveness for advertisers, but not for radio, as it was considered costly and not used that much by clients. We are now changing that and had excellent feedback from agencies and clients, which is why we are extending the project."

Barber added: "Historically, advertisers would use the medium once and then not return, largely because of two factors: accountability and creativity. And even when the advertisers used radio and the campaign failed to have the desired effect, they simply blamed the medium as opposed to analysing possible other problems."

Ford and Specsavers are among the brands that took part in the first wave of RadioGauge. The extension of the project will begin with immediate effect and slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

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