Heart is coming... to the North and Scotland?

I’m not sure there is a “pesky issue” of Heart North Wales. Should Global be successful, it clearly makes sense for those stations to be sold, or perhaps flipped to Capital.

The Smooth point is interesting. The question is whether Global might sell Gold, its DAB and AM service, which aims for the same age audience: and then perhaps a new suitor might be able to take the Smooth and Gold brands and merge those?

A merger of Smooth and Gold would, in some places, mean that the AM frequencies are simply handed back to Ofcom – something Global has already begun doing. FM is significantly cheaper to broadcast on than AM; and since AM masts in many places are nearing end of life, it would be unlikely that anyone would want to buy an AM network for fear of the uncertain future of AM and the potential costs they might open themselves up to.

I have often thought that Gold would do incredibly well in London with an FM frequency. If Gold is a predominantly FM and DAB network, with potentially some AM frequencies continuing in some places, I suspect that service would do very well indeed. The question is whether Global might do that deal and sell the Gold service to someone else – again, of course (Gold was owned by UBC for a while in the mid 2000s.)

Global has only handed back AM licences were it was obliged to do so by Ofcom.

In the case of South East Devon due to ownership rules.

In the case of Crawley & Reigate due to no longer being supported by a relevant DAB service.

I think there is still life in the AM band for Global yet. They have a wide portfolio of brands that don’t have quasi-national coverage, such as LBC, LBC News, Choice, The Arrow and Chill, it is perhaps not impossible to see these spring up in locations we have not seen them before.

Global roll out the best brand for the job. Be it one they started with (Heart) or one they inherited (Capital). I’d wonder if Smooth would be better received on the Gold AM’s than the other way around. RAJAR seems to suggest so, although it’s not a fair comparison. However, I wonder now that the baby boomers are getting older that Smooth probably has less negative connotations than Gold.

The proof will be in the pudding. Maybe a Christmas Pudding as nothing has been confirmed, and even when it is, there is still the completion of the sale to be done!!

I’m not sure there’s any life in the AM band for anyone apart from talkSPORT and BBC Radio 5 Live, to be honest.

The LBC brand has coverage on the old MXR multiplexes – after a fashion: whenever I listen, it appears to be a dreadful-sounding unprocessed version of LBC 97.3 being broadcast through a damp sock down a telephone line via the Ukraine on Skype. As you’re aware, it fulfills a licence condition for the MXR multiplexes, and probably isn’t there by choice. (I think the same is the case for The Arrow and Chill – they certainly used to be the nominated DAB services for FMers like Chiltern – but that might not still be true).

LBC News 1152 is a great listen, as I’ve said before, though I’d rather they renamed it simply LBC News Extra and promoted it on 97.3 as a red-button service. (“Over on LBC News Extra we’ve the London Mayor’s Question Time – but here on LBC 97.3…”) – and, crucially, they need to sell airtime on the two LBCs as one station. But the “L” stands for “London” for a reason.

Yes, there are some notable successes on AM: Manchester’s Magic 1152 has posted consistent figures since 2002, for example: but that’s not necessarily the overall experience of most AM broadcasters. Mostly we’re seeing them networked or automated.

Gold’s audience figures significantly buck the trend – though that graph shows total Gold network, which includes an increasing amount of DAB coverage. I think it would be difficult to argue that Gold wouldn’t benefit from a move to FM, however.

In terms of Choice – great for London, maybe Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham; but I’d argue it’s a minority interest elsewhere, and certainly I’d doubt that Choice in North Devon would have a large audience.

As an engineer, you can still get AM transmitters on the market brand new. It’s just wether they can afford install new ones to replace the old ones.

I understand Chill and The Arrow are used to renew analogue Heart licences in Dunstable and Bedford.

As for GMG’s portfolio, London has lacked a real oldies FM station in the spirit of WCBS-FM in New York and K-Earth in Los Angeles with Smooth’s wishy washy format, so a move for Gold to 102.2 by handing in 1548 is a no-brainer, although Global may have to sell Choice, Xfm or LBC to meet competition rules.

In Manchester, Real XS could be rebranded The Arrow with no real change to it’s presentation or format as both stations play classic and soft rock.

As for Real itself, Heart is the only way forward, if you’ve listened, the station has changed it’s demographic to attract the same 30 something female as Heart, although with a hybrid of Capital’s CHR and Heart’s Hot AC playlisting.

So you’re suggesting that Heart North Wales becomes Capital, and Real North Wales in turn becomes Heart? Which could always be marketed on the existing Heart as a frequency change, I guess.

It would be the logical thing to do, I reckon – but Global deliberately didn’t do that in the East Midlands as it would be “too confusing”.

Even though there will be competition issues to clear, if this happens it is going to be the biggest game-changer since the acquisition of GCap.

One interesting point has been raised on DigitalSpy: that if Global was to take Smooth Radio 70s off D1 and put Heart on instead, the way would be paved for the regional stations in London, West Midlands, Manchester, North West, North East and Yorkshire to go national. The former One Network stations (or merged “clusters” to be more specific) would still have to do local shows, however.

Actually… there’s no such thing as Real North Wales. It’s Real Wales – i.e. it covers all of Wales; and there’s no Heart available in the rather more prosperous South Wales (with the exception, naturally, of DAB and of Heart Bristol). I would suspect the format would work well.

You’d then have Capital South Wales (from Cardiff); Capital North Wales (the old Heart North Wales stations); and Heart Wales (from London/Cardiff). There’d still be a requirement to do some local programming for Heart Wales, as is the case for Smooth Scotland and Gold Wales (and hence why they’re separate in Media UK’s directory).

The DigitalSpy point fails to recognise that Global Radio’s income is both national and local: and by putting Heart nationwide on DAB, they’d potentially kill their local ad revenue. The crafty thing about both Capital and Heart is that they’re national brands with local advertising. It’s something that Smooth didn’t necessarily realise – or perhaps they did, but were banking for DAB not to be a success.

I love these speculative discussions. Only in the radio industry.

My observation is that Global does not have a soft AC format with which to challenge Magic.

Therefore, should this deal go through, isn’t Smooth just what they need?

As an engineer, you can still get AM transmitters on the market brand new. It’s just wether they can afford install new ones to replace the old ones.

Peter: I was careful to use the phrase “masts”, not “transmitters”. Most of the transmitters are fairly new – less than 20 years old. The masts themselves, however – the big chunks of metal tied into the ground – are significantly older, and it is these that are coming up to end of life, as I understand it.