The Destruction of Local Radio - The Final Phase

So Global Radio have announced that the remaining legacy stations in their group, as well as the 'Galaxy' network are to become 'Capital'   This will leave the company with 2 quasi-national networks (Heart and Capital) and is maybe the final nail in the coffin for local commercial radio.


It is, of course, just a back door way of getting national commercial music radio in the UK.  After the commercials were originally denied a 'pop' music station back in the days when the licences for Classic and (eventually) Virgin were offered, the commercial sector has been trying every method under the sun to get national stations to 'compete' with the BBC.  This is just the latest attempt.  Will it succeed?  Well, I really don't know, despite the vocal opposition to the 'Heart'ification by Global in the last year, nothing has happened, and it doesn't appear that stations have been deserted by listeners in their droves.  So I guess that's why Global now feels able to proceed.

But a few random points:

"Capital" was (and still is) a fantastic brand name for a music station covering the capital of this country (ie London). It did what it said in the brand.  Capital (Oldham) doesn't have the same appeal and just sounds plain stupid.

"Heart" again was a superb brand for the Heart of the UK (The Midlands) and the Heart of London - again extending it to 'Heart Sussex' sounds plain daft.

I doubt whether quality and diversity wise the new networks will be able to compete with the BBC.  They insist on filling the schedules with 'personalities' who know little about radio and are really just names.  If you look at Radio 1 and 2, Chris Moyles, Ken Bruce, Chris Evans, Jeremy Vine etc are all radio people.  They know all about the medium and how to exploit it.  On the Heart/Capital side you have the likes of Jason Donovan (actor/singer), Emma Bunton (singer) etc.. all great in their field, but not radio presenters.  

So all the people in the local areas formerly served by the legacy stations will be disenfranchised and effectively have nothing local, looking at local issues, making people feel special because they live in 'Sutton' or 'Barnoldswick' and get their names and towns mentioned regularly.  And of course local advertising will become more expensive and out of reach and will advertisers want to spend the rapidly dwindling money to use a station that rarely acknowledges its service area on air?  We'll see.

All this should mean that the small number of true independents left in 'ILR' should be able to CAPITALise (sorry!) on this, and the third sector, Community radio, start to fill the void.  From all the negativity, maybe something better will emerge.  

We've had a holday

Before anyone says, 'but you're on a perpetual holiday', I'll just smile sweetly and knowingly...

We took a trip a couple of weeks back, up to East Anglia (Colchester to be precise) to get away from the hustle and bustle of radio presenting and to kind of mark the end of summer and start of Autumn. We stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights and just enjoyed some 'us' time. Eating out, not having to wash up and going to places we wouldn't normally go.

For me, one highlight was a visit to Colchester Zoo, which is in the middle of nowhere, is big with plenty of space and has the most amazing and quite happy looking animals, like this fellow.

The food there was good value and there was plenty to see. We spent about 6 hours and still hadn't seen everything. Unlike my last visit to the Zoo in London which was done in less than 2 hours and you needed a mortgage to get a cup of coffee and a small slice of cake. The animals were mixed up in some cases, like in their natural habitat, for example, Zebras with Giraffes, Ostriches and a Rhino. Of course our friend on the right wasn't mixed with the above as the collection wouldn't last 5 minutes!

If you'd like to see all the pictures I took at the zoo, you can go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffrogers/sets/72157622423620937/

Back home now, certainly have felt refreshed and have been enjoying my radio shows even more. My birthday's up and coming soon, so looking forward to having plenty of alcohol and curry.... (Talking of food, had the hottest hot Pepperoni pizza tonight from the Pizza place near the radio station, it was dee-lic-ious)

Currently watching an old 'Mock the Week' on 'Dave', and thinking about bed.