Heart FM have announced that they're merging up a load of their stations so thirty-three will become fifteen. A few other Global owned stations will also merge into the fifteen new ones.
One report, somewhat exaggerated in my opinion, says that two hundred jobs could go.
The biggest merger appears to be in Devon, where five existing stations become one.
The only (tiny) quid pro quo appears to be a few more local news bulletins.
Heart FM Changes
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Nick Harvey
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Sad news indeed. They're reducing the number of stations from 33 to 15 and moving many to "supersites", playing on the investement in new studio equipment rather than the reduction in the number of premises. The email to staff makes it clear that where a station is to co-site with another there will just be one programme output, rather than two following the changes. According to http://radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.6026 the sites closing are "Bangor, Barnstaple, Bedford, Birkenhead, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Colchester, Crawley, Ipswich, Northampton, Oxford, Plymouth, South Hams, Taunton and Torquay. Dunstable will also close once a new broadcast centre in Milton Keynes is complete."
Many of these sites are 'heritage' broadcasting centres - 2CR studios in Bournemouth for example, which houses 2 on-air studios and 3 or 4 very nice commercial production studios along with the news room and production/sales office.
The other change in the email is that all local programming on the MW Gold stations is to be dropped from Monday. Admittedly this is currently only one programme a day (and AIUI it's recorded in many stations) but it's local nonetheless.
To me it was obvious that this was the plan when they rebranded local stations to Heart. It really does seem to be the end of ILR as a concept.
Many of these sites are 'heritage' broadcasting centres - 2CR studios in Bournemouth for example, which houses 2 on-air studios and 3 or 4 very nice commercial production studios along with the news room and production/sales office.
The other change in the email is that all local programming on the MW Gold stations is to be dropped from Monday. Admittedly this is currently only one programme a day (and AIUI it's recorded in many stations) but it's local nonetheless.
To me it was obvious that this was the plan when they rebranded local stations to Heart. It really does seem to be the end of ILR as a concept.
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Nick Harvey
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Indeed.deejay wrote:Many of these sites are 'heritage' broadcasting centres - 2CR studios in Bournemouth for example.
I remember 2CR opening and all the problems getting the studios through the IBA soundproofing tests because the radio station was so close to the train station.
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Inspector Sands
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Before they became Heart they most were networked for most of the day as part of GWR and for years before that they were very tightly formatted nationally.barcode wrote:Heart only had live local programming on each of the station twice a day at:
* Breakfast
* Drive-time
With everything else network, hardly what you could call local operations.
They've not really been 'local' for 15 or more years
No wonder real radio keeps its figures up, in Scotland it all local and in England/wales its local for 14 hours of the day weekdays , with only the evening show and night show network.Inspector Sands wrote:Before they became Heart they most were networked for most of the day as part of GWR and for years before that they were very tightly formatted nationally.barcode wrote:Heart only had live local programming on each of the station twice a day at:
* Breakfast
* Drive-time
With everything else network, hardly what you could call local operations.
They've not really been 'local' for 15 or more years
It'll be a shame to see what was once Radio Orwell turn into 'Heart East Anglia', and to see the few local presenters go. When were the radio stations that turned to Heart last truly local? Isn't BBC Radio Suffolk mostly from Norfolk, or so I hear?
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Nick Harvey
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October 1985 could be seen as the beginning of the end, with the merger of Wiltshire Radio and Radio West to become GWR.
That produced the first instances of a single programme going out to two different areas, but with different commercials in each area.
That used to be great fun, with two stacks of cart machines, side by side. The Wiltshire commercials went in the left hand stack, the Bristol ones in the right. If there was no cart in the right hand stack, the commercial in the same position in the left hand stack was for 'network' and played to both areas.
If the (commercial) traffic department buggered up the timings, all sorts of things went wrong, usually resulting in Bristol crashing into a Wiltshire commercial half way through.
Nothing digital and no automation in those days; it was all down to the presenter pressing the right buttons at the right time.
That produced the first instances of a single programme going out to two different areas, but with different commercials in each area.
That used to be great fun, with two stacks of cart machines, side by side. The Wiltshire commercials went in the left hand stack, the Bristol ones in the right. If there was no cart in the right hand stack, the commercial in the same position in the left hand stack was for 'network' and played to both areas.
If the (commercial) traffic department buggered up the timings, all sorts of things went wrong, usually resulting in Bristol crashing into a Wiltshire commercial half way through.
Nothing digital and no automation in those days; it was all down to the presenter pressing the right buttons at the right time.