Bauer rebranding 53 stations to The Hits/Greatest Hits

God knows what's going on at The Breeze.

A troll taking advantage of Bauer not squatting on the username, I assume.

So Signal 2 is being renamed 'Greatest Hits Radio Staffordshire and Cheshire'?? That's a bit of a mouthful!! Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

I wonder if any of the Breakfast presenters will sign off in style tomorrow by airing a load of expletives and rant about the new management at Bauer Media, knowing full well that this is their final show so there won't be any comeback? This will be refreshing to hear!!

On air, it'll just be known as Greatest Hits Radio. The longer name only exists for sake of identifying which station is your local station.

As for finishing with a load of expletives, unless they're planning on retiring, they might want to avoid giving the wrong impression for any future employers. Although it would be funny to hear it.

Is anybody planning on recording any bits from the final days?

Will station buildings this weekend erect external new signage & logos to highlight the refreshed branding and names, or hastily cover over the existing ones?

Well the Radio City Tower still has the old logo, and it’s been over a year since the change.

The majority of the buildings they'll be vacating so I imagine they won't bother putting new signs up.

It's not a name that's said on air, the stations are called Greatest Hits Radio. Remember that there won't be any programming for Staffordshire and Cheshire, the one non national programme will be regional* so apart from the news there's nowhere to have a local brand anyway.

Have a look at Radio Player, you'll see stations called 'Heart Devon South Hams' and Capital Yorkshire South and West. They're never called that on air



*presumably either shared with the North West or the west mids? If the former I wonder how that will work as the network programme comes from Manchester I think

EDIT: this answers my question as well as clearing up which stations become which https://radiotoday.co.uk/2020/08/greatest-hits-radio-drivetime-presenters-revealed/

This from the Save Spirit FM Facebook page may interest some of you. They spoke to Bauer's Communications Director, Cat Martin.

My first question to her was why have Bauer taken the decision to do what they've done to each of those stations acquired by them, when these are already highly successful and profitable entities, and that in doing so has upset thousands of people up and down the country.

Her response to this was along the lines of listener habits have changed over the years, with increased listenership on smart speakers, on-line and DAB rapidly increasing. Bauer wants to be one step ahead of their rivals by developing new technologies to help meet these changing trends.

I put it to her that these mediums, albeit DAB, have been a standard feature in the radio industry for many years, and whilst DAB may have its limitations as far as "local" radio is concerned, there is still a market for local radio, whether it be listened to via the conventional radio, or through smart speakers or apps. Whilst she agreed with me on this, she made continued references to their own research which shows there being growing and projected trends for moving to other platforms, including TV's, yet when probing her further as to the availability of these studies, she became unstuck and quickly moved on to another question.

That second question was localness and listener engagement. I used the examples of the listener who made two attempts to report a traffic incident in the Spirit FM TSA earlier today, and of the Yorkshire Coast breakfast presenter who was unable to access the stations Twitter feed or Facebook accounts as Bauer had already redirected these to the GHR accounts. It is claimed that these "subtle" changes to their socials need to be done now rather than on Monday night, simply because of the number of media channels they have to amend, and the time taken to do so. Well, when I told her that I've manage websites and social media channels in the past, and have successfully carried out major changes to each within a short period of time, thereby disagreeing with her claims that this is a long-winded exercise, she fell silent.

Going back to the issue of localness and listener engagement, and Cat again referred to some unsubstantiated research that they have had carried out which suggests that listeners are not particularly concerned about where the presenter is located, but are more interested in the music played, what is happening on their roads, and local news (and in that order). Again, I was not directed to these results, despite asking. I constructively argued these findings, and asked how, particularly with traffic issues, school closures and such like, this will be communicated if there is an incident which happens outside of Drivetime. She struggled to find and answer for this, claiming that these "finer points" have yet to be finalised and communicated to staff, although she did agree to going away and finding this out for me. Whether she does is another matter.

If the choice of music is important, then why ram a repetitive loop of 30 or so songs through our ears every day? Well, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, and if we don't like it, then maybe we should try listening to one of their other brands or family of stations, such as Kiss, Absolute, Magic, or any of the "Big City" stations, is what she said in response. Yes, we can if we want, but these are not local. There is no/very little listener interaction and engagement, and what interaction there is, is often bland and standardised. No. People want local content, which we have now had taken away from us. Yes, there may be community stations popping up, and Bauer may be launching new stations on a regular basis, but not everyone's listening habits take place on smart speakers or apps, so why dictate what we listen to and how we listen to it? She had no answer for this, probably because she knew that I was right in what I was saying.

As hard as I tried, I could not get her to give me a straight answer as to Bauer's definition of "Local" and "Regional". She kept on using the word "Local", but when probing her as to whether she was defining, say, the Spirit FM TSA as "Local", or the new region, the equivalent of which covers the same as ITV's Meridian, as "Local", was like trying to find the winning Lottery numbers!! We may never know the answer to this.

I then turned to the press release, as published in Radio Today earlier this morning, and asked why they have a GHR South and a GHR South Coast. Now, being the Communications Director, you would expect her to have known about this, but instead I just got met with a wall of silence as she tired to construct an answer. She had no idea the article had been released today, saying that this would had been done by their Marketing Department. She also had no idea as to why there are 2 different regions along the south coast. It was however suggested that this may have something to do with the demographics in what will soon be the former Sam FM TSA, and which will be the sole supplier of GHR South Coast. Surely it would had been easier to have just retained the station in its current format.

On the subject of demographics, and why they have chosen to not rebrand Pirate FM (Cornwall) and Lincs FM, and this was based on the research they had carried out which showed the markets, demographics and listenership in these areas was vey much different to other parts of the country, and therefore did not fit into the GHR model. It was then put to Cat as to why only some 180 respondents were received from the so-called consultation period carried out across those affected areas, and why Bauer did not see fit for them to publicise their proposals on each of the affected stations, particularly where Dee Ford has made a number of publicly available statements about the importance and impact of advertising on local radio. Again, Cat struggled to answer this, instead referring me to the company behind the research by suggesting that it would have been down to them, and not Bauer, to decide how to advertise the consultation. I will gladly take this up as a separate issue with the company concerned.

I then asked how they plan on continuing to support local charities and local events, many of who rely on their local radio stations for survival. Bauer do not as yet know how this will work, given there will now only be one presenter in each region, yet my personal view on this is, as I said to Dee Ford in my email to her of 31/07/20, that I very much doubt such events will be physically supported, given the dramatically reduced resources that are now available to access. Whilst Bauer does have it's Cash For Kids charity, this, as the name suggests, is limited to children's charities, which is obviously going to have a massive impact on those who fall outside of this category. Again, Cat struggled to counter-argue this, and seemed to instead wave her little white flag at me.

My final question is one that is probably on everyone's minds at the minute. And that was around the potential failure of the GHR network. I made the point that there are close to 10,000 people who are so far opposed to these changes, and who have already openly stated to re-tuning their dials come the end of this month, and that where listener figures show a steep decline in the brand, would there be any plans to reverse these changes and bring back those stations that we all once knew and loved. She went very quite for at least 30 seconds, this being the longest pause of the conversation so far. It came across as something that they are dreading might actually happen, what with Cat having admitted earlier to having reviewed comments made on both Bauer's Facebook page and the pages of those groups whose messages are publicly available. As yet, there are no answer to this question as they are so confident that it will succeed in much the same way as their other branded stations have. It will be interesting to see what the first round of RAJAR figures show once the rebranding has been complete, and how these compare to those of each of the rebranded stations from the year before. Leave this research to me. I will post my findings once complete.

So, there you have it. Not a particularly good call for Bauer, but one which I hope shows some cracks starting to form even before they've started. This, my friends, is only the start. Next round will be an open letter to OFCOM, the CMA and Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, together with a Parliamentary on-line petition to force the Government to debate the issue of the whole Global/Bauer situation.

People really aren’t as bothered about local radio as you think they are.

BBC Radio Humberside's office still had the old logo up after the 1997 rebrand - and was only taken down when they moved to the new premises at Queens Gardens in 2004. It still remained visible until 2014, as you can see on this Google Street View link. Since the new premises also house Look North, the sign there just says BBC.

For what it's worth, the colour scheme for the pipes is very clever.