RIP Plymouth Sound...

[cwathen]

...and South Hams, Gemini, GWR, and in total 29 long and well established brand names in the name of progress.

Tomorrow will be the last day of Plymouth Sound (and many other GCAP stations) before a daft rebranding exercise which will see them all renamed to 'Heart <insert nearest major town/city>', leaving at the same time next to no locally produced programming on these stations.

Considering that these stations are allready largely automated from server and have large amounts of network programming, I can see no business case to destroy such a large number of long established brand names other than some guy in London thought it was a good idea (probably wheeling out the old chestnuts of 'coherency' and 'synergy' in the process).

So, tomorrow we wave goodbye to these stations which have been a staple part of radio for so long.

It remains to be seen whether or not this rebranding is a good idea.

[Nini]

Well, if we take ITV who underwent the same consolidation of a network with localised content and brought it under a single homogeneous brand we could guess at it being a signifigant failure for Global.

[Nick Harvey]

some guy in London

I think he goes by the name of Charles Allen.

Yes, the same guy who got rid of the local names in ITV.

Oh, and he likes hearts on his idents too!

[Inspector Sands]

The business case in having a network of stations with the same name is obvious - easier to advertise to the public and market to advertisers. On the more practical on-air side of things it makes networking (which all these stations have done for well over a decade) a lot easier.

However the change to Heart won't be a straight forward as they'd like - GWR had a yellow card from Ofcom last week for changing their playlist too far away from contemporary hits with concerns about other stations.

[Inspector Sands]

some guy in London

I think he goes by the name of Charles Allen.

He's Chairman of Global and therefore probably nothing to do with him

[cwathen]

The business case in having a network of stations with the same name is obvious - easier to advertise to the public and market to advertisers. On the more practical on-air side of things it makes networking (which all these stations have done for well over a decade) a lot easier.

If you are starting up a whole new network of radio stations with local output then I'd agree with you. But to take brand names which are long established and recognised in their patch and replace them all with a new, completely unknown brand is pointless.

At least with ITV you were dealing with stations covering large (in comparison to ILR) areas and also 'ITV' was ALWAYS there as an overall name for the network, making it easier to brand as one. Whilst ILR stations operate on considerably smaller patches, being recognised by people living in a single city or a couple of towns as being 'their' station and on top of that there has never been any kind of secondary national brand name for ILR which the masses can identify with, so taking away an established brand is taking away the ONLY brand which people identify with.

GCAP will now undoubtedly spend a small fortune up and down the country marketing their new unified brand name so people know what it is. What's the point of doing that when they could have just left the existing names intact (even if they did push through with the programming cuts) and not have to do this?

This is also a somewhat hypocritical policy, in that GCAP has identified a small number of so called 'heritage' brands which they feel important to retain - completely missing the point that the argument for keeping these applies equally as strongly as the argument for keeping all of the 29 brands they are are killing off. As I said in my first post, only someone in London could draw the conclusion that Capital FM is an absolutely untoucheable brand name which must be preserved, but Plymouth Sound and GWR don't matter and can happily be rebranded to Heart FM. It's a bit like when the BBC in London decided in London that all regional news should look exactly the same - except in London itself where it apparently made sense for it to look different.

A single brand was an obvious idea, but given closer examination should have been realised as something which could do more harm than good, and at best maintain only the status quo rather than realise any actual cost savings or increase profits.

It will be interesting to see how many people in Plymouth listening on DAB flick through their station list tomorrow, skip straight past 'Heart', and wonder what's happened to Plymouth Sound...before switching over to Pirate FM which has slightly crapper music but at least is something they've heard of.

[DAS]

It's a bit like when the BBC in London decided in London that all regional news should look exactly the same - except in London itself where it apparently made sense for it to look different.

Although with BBC London, or BBC LDN as it was at the time, I could understand the mentality behind it. This was the first real attempt at exploring the whole "tri-media" thing. LDN was a brand in itself and was a tool to re-establish BBC local news in London which had been suffering, get the old GLR back on track, and set up the model for the BBC Where I Live websites. And I think to a certain extent it was fairly successful. And a few years down the line, BBC London News is back to being a carbon copy of the rest of the regions.

I struggle to get my head round the Heart decision. On paper the reasons are obvious - networking, unified branding, lower costs and all the rest. It's true to say that history and heritage alone cannot prevent change. But I find it difficult resisting the temptation of comparing Global and ITV. The fact is local groups can target their own audiences far more effectively. This is the one key defining factor in a "local" station. Killing off the heritage stations will allow their smaller rivals to cash in on the local thing, which I suppose is not a bad thing in itself, but is sad to see. Radio is changing, yes, but who decided we are no longer permitted our own local stations?

I present the RAJARs for my (former) choice of listening, Invicta FM: http://www.mediauk.com/radio/rajar/111/invicta-fm. (I know Capital FM/Capital Radio London/Capital/Capital 95.8/95.8 Capital FM's figures don't support this particular argument, but do have a look at their figures too, they are just funny).

To be fair, I think my main annoyance is the fact they have ditched all these fantastic names for the limp biscuit of a wet lettuce station that is Heart.

Toby Anstis.

That advert summarises all that's wrong with the world.

[Inspector Sands]

If you are starting up a whole new network of radio stations with local output then I'd agree with you. But to take brand names which are long established and recognised in their patch and replace them all with a new, completely unknown brand is pointless.

No it's not, they have to market them to the national advertising agencies who don't know or care about the local names. It makes selling the stations much easier which is what commercial radio is for - playing adverts

It makes the networking a lot easier and more coherent to the listener too, the presenter can actually mention the name of the station now!

At least with ITV you were dealing with stations covering large (in comparison to ILR) areas and also 'ITV' was ALWAYS there as an overall name for the network, making it easier to brand as one.

Both GWR and Capital had been doing just that for years - their stations were grouped into networks with a generic name. It obviously wasn't that successful. Global have been reducing the number of networks they have so they just have Heart, Hit Music, Galaxy, Gold etc: http://www.thisisglobal.com/radio/

This is also a somewhat hypocritical policy, in that GCAP has identified a small number of so called 'heritage' brands which they feel important to retain - completely missing the point that the argument for keeping these applies equally as strongly as the argument for keeping all of the 29 brands they are are killing off. As I said in my first post, only someone in London could draw the conclusion that Capital FM is an absolutely untoucheable brand name which must be preserved, but Plymouth Sound and GWR don't matter and can happily be rebranded to Heart FM.

That's not hypocritical at all, it's quite a logical which stations are changing and which aren't. Those that aren't changing are the ones that cover an area which already has a Heart. They wouldn't rename Capital no matter how good it's name was because there's already a Heart in london. The same with the East Midlands stations. The ones in the West Midlands also compete with Heart but are being sold off

The only station AIUI that isn't in a Heart patch and is retaining it's name is Red Dragon, I suspect that's more political than anything else

[Inspector Sands]

I struggle to get my head round the Heart decision. On paper the reasons are obvious - networking, unified branding, lower costs and all the rest. It's true to say that history and heritage alone cannot prevent change. But I find it difficult resisting the temptation of comparing Global and ITV. The fact is local groups can target their own audiences far more effectively. This is the one key defining factor in a "local" station.

But the stations that are being changed will be no less local then they are already. Many have had networking for long periods every day for years and before that they were GWR clone stations playing the same music as their neighbour.

They've not been 'local' for ages and will be no less local with just a different name

To be fair, I think my main annoyance is the fact they have ditched all these fantastic names for the limp biscuit of a wet lettuce station that is Heart.

That's the one thing that will be the failure of the stations if anything - the change of format. With the drift to a Heart playlist there will certainly be a big audience churn as it's a more female friendly format. The problem is that in many areas there is now no contemporary hit station to go to so those being turned off by the Heart format will have no-where to go except Radio 1

[DAS]

I struggle to get my head round the Heart decision. On paper the reasons are obvious - networking, unified branding, lower costs and all the rest. It's true to say that history and heritage alone cannot prevent change. But I find it difficult resisting the temptation of comparing Global and ITV. The fact is local groups can target their own audiences far more effectively. This is the one key defining factor in a "local" station.

But the stations that are being changed will be no less local then they are already. Many have had networking for long periods every day for years and before that they were GWR clone stations playing the same music as their neighbour.

They've not been 'local' for ages and will be no less local with just a different name

Very true. But you and I share more knowledge about how these radio stations actually operate. My dear mummy wouldn't know the ins and outs of networking. If she hears Essex FM she knows it's her local station, regardless of whether the twit is in Southend or Bristol. I still remember the shock when I said I'd heard the Graham Torrington episode my uncle was talking about. As far as he was concerned, Torrington was a show local to him because it was on GWR. I had to explain how I was listening to Torrington on Essex FM.

I think we've come to terms with the fact that local radio will be networked, but the presence of local brands held a "veneer" of localness. That station was still local but happened to "dip in" to networked programming. We're now in a new phase where the average Joe knows they are listening to a national brand. The only difference is the frequency they listen to it on and that a couple of shows have a voice in their area (almost an "opt out").

In reality, of course there is no real change in how the shows have been networked just because the names have changed to one. I think superficially though Global have lost a tool in relating to local audiences by removing the heritage names. To me, "Heart" says "Toby Anstis is here, stay away". It's easier to tune away when I don't have the reliable brand I used to listen to 10, 20, 30 years ago. Maybe I'm wrong?

[nwtv2003]

I think we've come to terms with the fact that local radio will be networked, but the presence of local brands held a "veneer" of localness. That station was still local but happened to "dip in" to networked programming.

This is the view that the Bauer Group takes with it's stations, although they all have the same logos, share the same Networked programmes and often have the same styles of competitions, they've still retained the Local names, although from listening to In-Demand they do often say it's being broadcast on the Big City Network, which is the only time you ever hear that name. Although I do say it can be annoying when you hear something like In-Demand being broadcast on Key 103, Radio City and Rock FM all at the same time.

Luckily up here we haven't seen any 'heritage' brands disappear across the Manchester/Liverpool airwaves, Key, City and Rock are all long standing ILR's. Global run Galaxy and XFM (which is a pretty damn good service) in Manchester, hopefully we won't be getting Heart anytime soon.