It’s a busy time in radio at the moment with Lord Ali making a bid for my employers, Kelvin taking the Wireless Group off the stock market, and now Jazz FM renaming to Smooth FM, and losing all pretence of actually playing any Jazz.
Obviously, I’ll be watching carefully to see what happens were SMG to decide to sell Virgin Radio, but as is the way with these things, it’s out of my hands and my control.
The reason for Kelvin delisting is interesting. Supposedly it’s because the city doesn’t understand how speech radio stations make money – and he finds it hard to get investment as a result. I’m not surprised – speech radio is expensive. Is there more to this?
Finally Jazz FM is a name we’re going to miss. Smooth FM will definitely reign in Magic in London which has just had a storming RAJAR. But it’ll take more than one decent RAJAR to really prove to me that Magic is number 2 in London. But I wonder if they’ll keep doing “Dinner Jazz”, which has been their most successful proper(ish) jazz strand. It’s also noteworthy that they’ll continue to produce an online only jazz radio station playing pure jazz. With good investment, and a great name, they should continue to be one of the largest internet radio broadcasters in the world. It’s just the small task of making money from it…