AM/FM #10 — April 1993

News from the UK Radio Industry. Edited by Stephen Hebditch.

Virgin Announce DJ Line-Up

Virgin Radio have announced more details of their deejay line-up. Chris Evans is to take his GLR programme to the new station with the intention of keeping many of the current features of the Saturday morning show intact during the transfer. Former Capital FM deejay Russ Williams will present the breakfast show with Richard Skinner (ex GLR / Radio One) on mornings, Mitchell Johnson (ex Radio Shoestring, Capital FM) on early afternoons and Tommy Vance (ex GLR / Radio One) on afternoon drivetimes.

Other presenters include Jonathan Coleman (ex GLR), Nick Abbott (ex GLR, Virgin FM), Wendy Lloyd (ex GLR, Radio Luxembourg), Kevin Greening (ex GLR), Sandy Beech (ex Atlantic 252), Graham Dene (ex Capital Gold), Dave Fanning (ex RTE 2), Tommy Rivers (ex Laser 558) and veteran DJ Emperor Rosko who will broadcast live from LA. Virgin launches on April 30th on 1215 AM.

More Album Music On One FM

Radio One has announced that it is to phase out its singles format and move towards album music instead. This is the third time in four years that the station has announced plans to moved to an album format. The latest spur is the arrival of the new adult rock formatted Virgin Radio.

The BBC has traditionally moved in to encompass the territory of its new opposition and this latest case is no different. Radio One is to launch a new album chart to go out on Sundays after its traditional singles chart. Virgin will be running an album chart at the same time as the BBC station's singles chart goes out. A Radio One spokesman denied that the new album chart was a spoiler, saying that an album chart had been planned for months.

Other changes at One FM include the dropping of the nightly Mega-Hits chart request show, a new religious slot with born-again Christian Simon Mayo, a new arts programme and a radio version of BBC 2's Dance Energy hosted by Normski.

London Licences Re-Advertised

The Radio Authority has advertised eight Independent Local Radio licences for London. These include those of LBC Newstalk, LBC Talkback, Kiss FM, Melody Radio, Spectrum Radio and Jazz FM together with new licences for 990AM and 1458AM, currently used by GLR. The four neighbourhood licences will be re-advertised once these licences have been awarded, together with a new local licence for East London.

Amongst the new groups applying for a Londonwide licence are the Jasper Carrott and Chris De Burgh backed London Rock Radio, Country and Western station Eagle Radio, an all-sports service led by the chairman of the Sports Council, an AOR station proposed by Celador Productions and Fiction Records backed indie station XFM. XFM have organised an open-air show on Sunday June 13th to encourage support for the station and publicise their licence bid. Amongst the bands already confirmed are Sugar, The Cure and Carter USM.

Independent Radio Wins Copyright Battle

Independent Radio has won its battle against the record companies over increased copyright fees. The stations took their case to the Copyright Tribunal after the record companies wanted to increase payments to a maximum of 20 percent of revenue for the largest Independents. Stations will now pay a maximum of 5 percent of revenue, dropping down to 2 percent for the smallest stations. The new royalty fees are still some of the highest in the world for broadcasters.

New Host For Network Chart Show

David Jensen is to leave the Independent Radio Chart show after five years. He will be replaced by Capital FM's Neil Fox as part of a major relaunch of the programme. The Network Chart is also to have a new sponsor, Pepsi, and will be produced by an Independent production company rather than by Capital Radio as at present. Aired on most major ILR stations around the country, The Network Chart currently has 1.5 million listeners compared with 3.04 million for One FM's Chart Show and will soon face new competition from Virgin AM's album chart.

Breakfast Show Ratings

According to the recently released RAJAR audience figures, Radio One's Simon Mayo Breakfast Show is the most popular radio programme in the UK. Each weekday morning it attracts an audience of 3.49 million people nationwide. In London, Radio Four's Today programme is the most popular breakfast show, with 659,000 listeners. It is closely followed by Chris Tarrant's Capital FM show with 618,000 then One FM's Simon Mayo with 457,000. Next in the list in the new RAJAR audience research figures are Radio Two, Capital Gold, LBC Talkback, Melody FM, LBC Newstalk, Kiss FM, GLR, Radio Three, Radio Five, Jazz FM and Spectrum Radio.

Galaxy Wins West Of England Licence

Bristol pop-dance station Galaxy Radio has won the first regional radio licence. It will give up its city-wide frequency and begin broadcasting to the entire Severn Estuary area when its current licence expires in September 1994. Galaxy is owned by the Chiltern Radio Group.

11 Applicants For North West Licence

Eleven companies have applied for the second regional licence for the North West of England. The majority of applications are for easy listening or adult contemporary formats with one for a speech based station fronted by former boss of Granada Television David Plowright and ex-Piccadilly Radio boss Julian Allitt.

Local Licences

The ILR licence for the North of Scotland has been re-awarded to Aberdeen based Northsound Radio.

Westsound Radio has had its bids unopposed for its FM and AM licences in Ayr, Scotland.

Two groups have applied for the FM licence for Scarborough, All Music Radio and Yorkshire Coast Radio. There were no applicants for the separately advertised licence on AM for the area.

A new licence has been advertised for the Aylesbury area in Buckinghamshire, serving 135,000 adults.

Bits

The BBC has taken four channels on the Astra Satellite for four of its radio services. One FM, Radio Three, Radio Four and the World Service can be found on subcarriers of the UK Gold TV station.

In a poll by Readers Digest, 73 percent of people are against the launch of a 24-hour-a-day news station by BBC Radio. 60 percent were in favour of the BBC taking advertising — a similar number as the last poll on the question in 1988.

BBC National Radio is to appoint its first marketing director. The BBC wants to improve its external advertising and avoid a repeat of the problems with its recent Radio Four poster campaign.

Phillip Whitehead, chairman of the Consumers' Association, has called for a new Broadcasting Consumers Council to increase the general public's involvement in the BBC.

Jonathan Ross's Channel X production company has won a commission to produce a new Radio Five youth programme. Fabulous! will air on Mondays from 10pm to midnight. Other commissions for the same time slot on different days went to MRPR for Hit The North on Wednesdays and Starward for The Way Out on Sundays. The new commissions start in the first week of April.

EMI are to drop making singles for seven artists for a three month trial. Instead they will invest the money that they would have spent on promoting the single on greater album promotion. If successful, EMI will drop singles for all its artists, with the exception of those on its specialist dance labels. Sony have also announced plans to issue promo singles only for some artists.

Charlie Jordan has joined Capital FM from Birmingham's Buzz FM. She is currently hosting The Love Zone and is soon to move to weekend breakfasts.

LBC have introduced a new system allowing listeners to get details of products and services advertised on the station by calling up special fax numbers.

A frequency band for Digital Audio Broadcasting has been allocated in Europe between 223 and 230MHz. There will also be an additional band between 1.45 and 1.49GHz which is likely to be used mainly by France, where the military occupy the other waveband.

Trans World Communications made a pre-tax profit of 1.1 million pounds on a turnover of 12 million in the financial year up to the end of December. Turnover was up 26 percent on the previous year, with profits moving into the black. Trans World owns Piccadilly Radio, Red Rose Radio, Red Dragon Radio and Radio Aire.

TV-am have sold their 50 percent stake in Virgin Radio to the Virgin Group.

The gaming and pools organisations are to be allowed to advertise on TV and radio for the first time. The Government is to change the rules because of the introduction of its new national lottery.