Global Radio axes all regional/local breakfast shows

That's interesting - I always thought the old LBC company had its licence taken away because it had become a shambles. When London News Radio took over it still simulcasted in the evenings and there's still a lot of simulcasting on 97.3FM and 1152AM to this day.

There were issues with the company but it was sold to Dame Shirley Porter before the license bid so that might have been a factor, but the main one was the simulcasting. At that time it was 7pm-6am and all weekend.


The company went into receivership between the license loss and it's expiry, partly because of the loss - they abandoned a judicial review and went for the license of what became Talk Radio, didn't get that and gave up shortly afterwards


No, when London Radio took over there was absolutely nothing shared, the two stations were totally seperate on air. For a long time, when it was News Direct on FM and LBC on MW, they had totally different branding and didn't even mention each other.


It was only fairly recently, under Global's ownership, that they got permission to put FM programmes onto their MW outlet too

Worth noting that LBC was acquired by London News Radio (a.k.a. Reuters) before the licence swap as the station was on the verge of going bust. This enabled a much easier changeover at 6am rather than midnight on the 6th October 1994 as the new licensee acquired the LBC studios which were in Hammersmith and many of the existing staff.

So in effect, LBC continued as it was with an 18 month period of using different brands until the brand returned on AM in July 1996 when ITN/GWR became a partner in London News Radio.

Ah, forgive me, I had London Talkback Radio (the LBC AM station) and London Newstalk (the London News Radio station) mixed up. Bit of a confusing few years on those frequencies...

To confuse issues even more, London was dropped from the branding of both London News and London Newstalk, becoming News 97.3 on FM and Newstalk 1152 on AM. When GWR/ITN came on-board, the stations were moved to GiN and became News Direct on FM and LBC on AM.

LBC branding returned to both stations in 2003 (24th Dec 2002 a simulcast of the rolling news format on both frequencies over the festive period) when Chrysalis acquired the stations and the general talk format swapped frequencies with the rolling news station.

Ironically since Global took over, there is once again shared programming on FM and AM with the rolling news station simulcasting FM from 7pm weekdays, 6pm on Saturday and 5pm on Sunday.

To add to the confusion, the company won the licences as 'London News Radio' but after they were bought by Reuters they became just 'London Radio' which was the name of the company when it went to air.


In fact it enabled them to take over 3 days early. The license ended on the 8th (the anniversary of its launch) but the changeover was on the 5th

Yes it must win the award for most names for essentially the same station. FM went:
LBC, Crown FM, LBC Newstalk, London News 97.3, News 97.3, News Direct 97.3, ITN News Direct, LBC 97.3 and now just LBC

MW had fewer: LBC, London Talkback Radio, London Newstalk 1152, Newstalk 1152, LBC 1152, LBC News 1152



I know far too much about LBC....

I think Pulse 2 could give it a run for its money, formerly known as:

Pennine Radio, Classic Gold, Great Yorkshire Gold, Great Yorkshire Radio, 1278 and 1530 AM West Yorkshire, West Yorkshire's Big AM, Pennine's Big AM, West Yorkshire's Classic Gold, Pulse Classic Gold, Pulse 2

It probably won’t be too long before you can add Greatest Hits Radio to that list.

I did some work experience at LBC in the mid-1990s and reading this thread, I suddenly realised that I couldn't actually remember what the station was actually called then, which is a oddly fundamental thing to be unsure about. (Thanks also to this thread, I can also deduce that it as it was some point in late 1996, it was back to being LBC then, with the not-at-all weird thing of Charles Golding, their programme controller, also being the pundit on Budget day.)

Didn't LBC even have sung jingles at one point in the even-later 1990s, or is my mind really playing tricks on me?

I think Pulse 2 could give it a run for its money

Magic 828 nee Radio Aire has that - or are you suggesting a Global - Bauer buy out?

The Pulse should have gone to GCap in the same deal that they acquired its former sister stations Hallam and Viking, but there was an issue with the same company having both the Leeds and Bradford stations. Not sure if that still applies.

Bauer have already purchased the former UTV/Wireless Group (along with Celedor, UKRD, Lincs FM etc) albeit pending an enquiry from the competition authorities.

It was EMAP (Bauer) who acquired Hallam and Viking hence why they are not Heart, Capital or Smooth now. GCap didn’t have much north of the midlands.