LBC is a London station. It was set up as London Broadcasting and its mandate is to serve London.
I have nothing against a national talk station however LBC going national will dilute the emphasis on London issues and the influence it carries within the capital.
It is always going to have that disadvantage whatever they change the name to, especially outside England. It is not impossible to imagine competitors playing on it being London Broadcasting ...
I'm presuming they will drop the "97.3" bit from the branding?
I'd be surprised. Richard Park likes frequencies in his station names, and whatever hype there is about appearing on a national DAB multiplex, I expect the bulk of their audience to remain listening on FM and AM in London.
The only problem would be that other regional stations broadcast on 97.3FM, so would LBC be worried about drawing attention to these stations? They'll probably hate to complicate matters by playing different jingles on different platforms, but maybe they'll drop the '97.3' bit from the jingles that play out on the national multiplex. When they were on regional multiplexes and simulcasting the news on AM and FM in London, the news readers used to just say 'LBC' but the presenters kept saying 'LBC 97.3' every five seconds.
The national DAB audience will be very low to begin with. If ever the day comes where it rivals their London audience, I'm sure Richard park will review his options.
At least he has the advantage of having a personality, they are still looking for any trace of personality with Ed Milliband and least said about Ed Balls' personality the better!
Since this is all a pedantic point, LBC was originally an awkward abbreviation of "London BroadCasting", intended as a play on the monopolist 'BBC'. This was soon changed to London Broadcasting Company, but this company closed down in the early 90s. The rights to the name were then sold off to two companies and a court case led to one company being able to use the name "London Broadcasting Company" and the other "LBC" on the condition that it didn't stand for anything. That's the company LBC 97.3 ultimately evolved from. This does put a question mark over LBC 97.3 claiming to be 40 years old, but only people on forums care about that.
"London's Biggest Conversation" and "Leading Britain's Converation" are just strap lines, not official meanings of the letters LBC.
An acronym is an abbreviation that spells a pronounceable word, e.g. radar or laser. LBC doesn't spell a word, it just says "Ell Bee See".
A backronym is where you take a name that isn't a genuine abbreviation and from its letters extrapolate a new name that could have been shortened to make the acronym.
eg Alitalia: “Always Late in Takeoff, Always Late in Arrival.” (alternatively "Aircraft Landing In Toronto, All Luggage In Amsterdam")
Since this is all a pedantic point, LBC was originally an awkward abbreviation of "London BroadCasting", intended as a play on the monopolist 'BBC'. This was soon changed to London Broadcasting Company, but this company closed down in the early 90s. The rights to the name were then sold off to two companies and a court case led to one company being able to use the name "London Broadcasting Company" and the other "LBC" on the condition that it didn't stand for anything. That's the company LBC 97.3 ultimately evolved from. This does put a question mark over LBC 97.3 claiming to be 40 years old, but only people on forums care about that.
"London's Biggest Conversation" and "Leading Britain's Converation" are just strap lines, not official meanings of the letters LBC.
What happened to them? And thanks for explaining all this.
Talk of LBC becoming a national station is just typical Global hype.
After initially worrying and feeling really annoyed at the loss of London's LBC, I think you may be right.
Ian Dale replied to me on Twitter and former LBC Producer Jonathan Perry's comments on his blog thus:
content wise I don't expect to change in any way the way I do my show. There are very few subjects we debate which doesn't have a national aspect and that won't change. We will still have a London focus. We're just opening ourselves up to the rest of the country! London hasn't lost out, but the rest of the country has gained!
Sadly Overnights will probably go back to the utterly tedious coterie of ex-TalkSport callers talking rubbish. :-(
LBC was originally an awkward abbreviation of "London BroadCasting", intended as a play on the monopolist 'BBC'. This was soon changed to London Broadcasting Company, but this company closed down in the early 90s.
Great news, I was sad to loose it when it came off the Regional Multiplexes prior to closing down last summer here in Worcestershire and the frequency (12A) went to the new local MUXCO multiplex.
As for those condescending people in London who think it is for them only we/ I have listened to it for years in the Regions and always found it a good listen and a alternative to BBC R4 in the mornings.
by the time of launch they were definitely identifying the station as the London Broadcasting Company.
Wrong - and nothing in your link says otherwise. The very first words ever spoken on LBC were, "This is London BroadCasting". That's a fact. Search Youtube for the clip, I'm sure someone will have uploaded it somewhere.
Which London issues that LBC have given emphasis to over the last week do you feel wouldn't have been covered whilst being relayed around the UK on DAB?
A quick glance at a typical list of recent topics doesn't show anything that's specific to London. I can't think of any recent LBC output on any LBC show I've heard that wasn't worthy of national broadcast. In fact, LBC hasn't been a local radio station for many, many years.
And thank goodness. BBC London covers all the capital's local cheese competitions, pop-up restaurants that cater for one table at a time, do live outside broadcasts in the rain from dying street markets in the age of the supermarket, etc. And how do their ratings compare to LBC? Despite not having annoying adverts and other constant interruptions, BBC London has never given LBC a run for its money like Radio 2 does for Heart and Capital, Radio 3 does for Classic FM or Five Live does for Talksport.
Talk of LBC becoming a national station is just typical Global hype. The output of the station won't change in any significant way, apart from becoming even more political. They built up LBC into a platform for politicians, waited until an election appeared on the horizon and then pulled the rug from under them by axing LBC from their costly regional DAB slots. Funny how a few months later, Ofcom seem to have decided it's fine for LBC to go onto a national multiplex, and I wonder if it's magically going to cost Global a lot less to do it this time, or whether we'll be hearing a lot more from friendly politicians from February...
Still, FM licences may be for life but DAB slots can be just for Christmas. There's no reason to think LBC will remain permanently on national DAB. Their last 'national' efforts fizzled out, so there's no reason they couldn't quietly drop off of DAB in a few years and revert to being "London's Biggest Conversation".
Any altering of LBC's image to appear more national will amount to nothing more than James O'Brien mentioning Kidderminster a lot more to endear himself to Midlanders, Nick Ferrari mentioning that his mother comes from Leicester and he grew up in Kent, Ian Collins mentioning Northumberland and Kent as often as he did on Talksport, Julia Hartley-Brewer coming out as a Brummie, Nick Abbot mentioning being a Welshman who went to school in Scotland, Duncan Barkes name-dropping all the corners of the country he's worked in over the years and Steve Allen slagging off Blackpool more than he does already.
They'll probably even try to persuade Iain Campbell Dale to wear a kilt and say och aye the noo at least once per show, talk about the best way to give a Brighton pensioner the Glasgow kiss and get Andy McColl to do his travel bulletins over a bed of bagpipes.
I see them all as pretend Londoners convincing the young and impressionable that what they are is what London is. Essex, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Kidderminster, Birmingham but it might as well be the Horsey Shires, Norfolk, Tun Wells, Half Wales Half Scotland, a chateau in France, Clive Bull Land. By contrast, every person in my family tree going back to 1798 was born in London. Mainly Waterloo, Blackfriars and Camberwell. In fact I am the nearest to being an Unlondoner as I was born in Purley. Unlike in the madly territorial, that feels like a significant difference.
The logos at the top shortened this to 417 London Broadcasting (subsequently 261 LBC Radio) but the footer shows the company name as the London Broadcasting Company. I don't think you'll find 'London BroadCasting' anywhere..
The emphasis on 'London Broadcasting Company' also helped to distinguish it from the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Mohamed Al-Fayed ended up owning the "London Broadcasting Company" name. I'm not sure if he ever sold off that 'asset' when he abandoned his radio plans or if it even legally exists anymore. I presume it is otherwise LBC would have started using it since then. They're probably worried that some holding company still has the rights buried in their vaults somewhere, so if they ever used it, they might get sued.
I don't really think what LBC legally stands for is important to anyone outside of a radio forum. Listeners perceive 'LBC' as a brand, not an abbreviation. There are many well-known organisations whose names are abbreviations that people don't know the meaning of. I bet a lot of people don't know what NASA, KGB or AsDa mean, but they're still established brands.
Reuters, or whatever company they wrapped around their London News Radio and London News 97.3 operations, got the 'LBC' brand. That company was eventually sold by Reuters (and the remaining shareholders they'd brought aboard since 1996) to Chrysalis. Their radio operation was in turn bought by Global, who are the current owners of 'LBC'.
Sadly Overnights will probably go back to the utterly tedious coterie of ex-TalkSport callers talking rubbish. :-(
The problem with overnights (and to an extent evening and weekend radio) is that you get far fewer callers, and they're generally of a somewhat lower calibre. Presenters have to fill much more, read more emails and texts. After that, it's a choice between putting no calls to air or talking to morons and nutters. People are tuning in to hear callers, not a presenter talk to himself and read emails.
Take Nick Abbot's recent overnight show about legalising drugs, which attracted the inevitable stream of low hanging 3AM fruit whose arguments were self defeating and they couldn't get their heads around Abbot's simple logic.
In the original franchise document the radio station is described at "London Broadcasting" and as Banjo correctly pointed out the first words broadcast were "This is London Broadcasting". The station eventually became known by the initials LBC: a contraction of "London Broadcasting", the name of the radio station.
The London Broadcasting Company was the owners of LBC and Independent Radio News (IRN) and the similarity in the names is where the confusion arises from. However, The London Broadcasting Company and London Broadcasting were 2 different entities.
I'll look forward to this a little bit as it was a shame to lose it off MXR North West when that multiplex closed, not that I listened hugely, but it's a welcome alternative when hardly any station is putting out anything interesting in the evening, when driving. LBC was only 48kbps on MXR so what do you reckon it will be on D1, 64kbps?
You're probably right that the output isn't so exclusively focused on London that it will matter much going national, but we forget about the impact of networking on people in London, they have national shows too. But when you listen to Heart it sounds like it's from London and almost like a local show for London.
Realistically, Nick Ferrari won't be getting anywhere near 3M listeners. Campbell's show is an established national show on an established national station on AM, Freeview and DAB.
Ferrari is about to re-appear on one minority digital platform whose uptake has already plateaued. He won't be stealing Nicky Campbell's thunder any time soon, any more than he did during the years up until a few months ago when his show was already available to most of the UK on the same DAB radios.
The fanfare of LBC becoming 'the first national talk station' station is as much overly enthusiastic hype as them listing Nick Clegg and Boris Johnson as 'LBC presenters'. It's regular guests like these (and other ex-political presenters from Iain Dale to David Mellor) who are largely responsible for the station's recent successes. LBC knowing this is also why they've given the station such a general political focus in terms of topics throughout the schedule.
I'm sure there's scope to bring what they do to a national audience and pick up more listeners (which is of mutual benefit to both LBC and the politicians who get to use LBC as a campaigning and awareness platform), but until LBC gets a national FM frequency and a slot on Freeview, it's not going to overtake Five Live.
It'll be interesting to see who pops up on LBC closer to the election. Before Clegg and Johnson have to stand down prior to their elections due to the Broadcasting Code, I bet LBC will be working overtime to entice Cameron, Miliband and every other senior politician onto the station. And they may well give LBC a field day by clambering over each other to get on air.
But not originally (again, this is a pedantically semantic argument). The image you've linked to is not the original LBC schedule. Surely you can tell that by the names? Either way, the legalities of the day mean you're wrong. See what I mean about people on radio forums? I wonder how much money Richard Park has made since this thread started, despite him not giving a care.
No more upsetting those listeners from up North as they will be listening even though we shouldn't be living there?
I wonder if he will stay?
Of course he will stay
I've been listening to LBC for twenty odd years now
Born and bred in Manchester but love the station and presenters and proud to be a regular emailer to Steves show
Having met him as most people will tell you he's a nice generous guy who has all the time in the world for his listeners even us oop North
He won't change his style nor would I and his many fans want him to
I don't think the style of the station as a whole will change either and to me the more listeners the better
You won't get a huge northern or anywhere else take over bid
The likes of me and Ritchie from the Wirral didn't leave when DAB went
We brought Internet radios or listen on PCs and apps
There is life outside the capital and as a frequent visitor over many years am like so many others very interested in what Ken Boris and co are up to
Look on the bright side they aren't closing it down
As I and others have said use 1152 and its dab London space For a London exclusive service
The arts theatre etc in the capital have been increasingly neglected for years
A marvellous opportunity to put this right
It was inevitable this would happen
It's apparently not been profitable for many years as I understand it and in common with all radio to survive its got to adapt
There can only be a handful of commercial stations whose output is 100% local
And having several friends who work in BBC local radio don't know of one single station that hasn't got an element of national or network regional programming in their schedule
We have to give It a chance
What else is there ?
Although this country is seriously lacking a nationwide talk station as an alternative to the Guardian loving 5live and I quite welcome the news that we will get LBC back on DAB radios but I certainly don't want to be hearing the opinions of the likes of Boris Johnson all the time.I don't think he would be doing a Tory election campaign any good, as he seems to just despise and run down every great major city outside of his beloved capital with his condescending attitude, which doesn't do even his own party any favours.
But not originally (again, this is a pedantically semantic argument). The image you've linked to is not the original LBC schedule. Surely you can tell that by the names? Either way, the legalities of the day mean you're wrong. See what I mean about people on radio forums? I wonder how much money Richard Park has made since this thread started, despite him not giving a care.
I don't think LBC, as the station name, ever stood for London Broadcasting Company, it originally stood for "London Broadcasting" and later was just 3 letters which stood for nothing. Even the document linked to shows the station name as "London Broadcasting" in the top right corner.
This all makes interesting reading. My understanding was that LBC was "London Broad Casting" and as others have said "LBC" being used to mean differing things over the years, are mainly just straplines.
Who remembers when they were briefly "LBC 97.3 Crown FM" ?
I was disappointed when they disappeared from the West Midlands DAB Mux, so will be happy when they re-appear nationally on DAB.
I presume the current "Birdsong" is their slot??
Comments
I'd be surprised. Richard Park likes frequencies in his station names, and whatever hype there is about appearing on a national DAB multiplex, I expect the bulk of their audience to remain listening on FM and AM in London.
The only problem would be that other regional stations broadcast on 97.3FM, so would LBC be worried about drawing attention to these stations? They'll probably hate to complicate matters by playing different jingles on different platforms, but maybe they'll drop the '97.3' bit from the jingles that play out on the national multiplex. When they were on regional multiplexes and simulcasting the news on AM and FM in London, the news readers used to just say 'LBC' but the presenters kept saying 'LBC 97.3' every five seconds.
The national DAB audience will be very low to begin with. If ever the day comes where it rivals their London audience, I'm sure Richard park will review his options.
What's this got to do with LBC going national?
Do the 2 Eds have a regular slot on LBC?
You're not getting away with that.
It can't be a backronym unless the original name is a word. LBC is just an abbreviation - it doesn't spell anything.
Since this is all a pedantic point, LBC was originally an awkward abbreviation of "London BroadCasting", intended as a play on the monopolist 'BBC'. This was soon changed to London Broadcasting Company, but this company closed down in the early 90s. The rights to the name were then sold off to two companies and a court case led to one company being able to use the name "London Broadcasting Company" and the other "LBC" on the condition that it didn't stand for anything. That's the company LBC 97.3 ultimately evolved from. This does put a question mark over LBC 97.3 claiming to be 40 years old, but only people on forums care about that.
"London's Biggest Conversation" and "Leading Britain's Converation" are just strap lines, not official meanings of the letters LBC.
Off topic we go.
An acronym is an abbreviation that spells a pronounceable word, e.g. radar or laser. LBC doesn't spell a word, it just says "Ell Bee See".
A backronym is where you take a name that isn't a genuine abbreviation and from its letters extrapolate a new name that could have been shortened to make the acronym.
eg Alitalia: “Always Late in Takeoff, Always Late in Arrival.” (alternatively "Aircraft Landing In Toronto, All Luggage In Amsterdam")
What happened to them? And thanks for explaining all this.
After initially worrying and feeling really annoyed at the loss of London's LBC, I think you may be right.
Ian Dale replied to me on Twitter and former LBC Producer Jonathan Perry's comments on his blog thus:
Sadly Overnights will probably go back to the utterly tedious coterie of ex-TalkSport callers talking rubbish. :-(
They may originally have intended to call themselves London BroadCasting, but by the time of launch they were definitely identifying the station as the London Broadcasting Company.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2012/oct/07/commercial-radio-lbc-debut-archive-1973
As for those condescending people in London who think it is for them only we/ I have listened to it for years in the Regions and always found it a good listen and a alternative to BBC R4 in the mornings.
Wrong - and nothing in your link says otherwise. The very first words ever spoken on LBC were, "This is London BroadCasting". That's a fact. Search Youtube for the clip, I'm sure someone will have uploaded it somewhere.
I see them all as pretend Londoners convincing the young and impressionable that what they are is what London is. Essex, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Kidderminster, Birmingham but it might as well be the Horsey Shires, Norfolk, Tun Wells, Half Wales Half Scotland, a chateau in France, Clive Bull Land. By contrast, every person in my family tree going back to 1798 was born in London. Mainly Waterloo, Blackfriars and Camberwell. In fact I am the nearest to being an Unlondoner as I was born in Purley. Unlike in the madly territorial, that feels like a significant difference.
http://www.lbc.co.uk/40-years-of-lbc-memorabilia-14274/view/4289
The logos at the top shortened this to 417 London Broadcasting (subsequently 261 LBC Radio) but the footer shows the company name as the London Broadcasting Company. I don't think you'll find 'London BroadCasting' anywhere..
The emphasis on 'London Broadcasting Company' also helped to distinguish it from the British Broadcasting Corporation.
I don't really think what LBC legally stands for is important to anyone outside of a radio forum. Listeners perceive 'LBC' as a brand, not an abbreviation. There are many well-known organisations whose names are abbreviations that people don't know the meaning of. I bet a lot of people don't know what NASA, KGB or AsDa mean, but they're still established brands.
Reuters, or whatever company they wrapped around their London News Radio and London News 97.3 operations, got the 'LBC' brand. That company was eventually sold by Reuters (and the remaining shareholders they'd brought aboard since 1996) to Chrysalis. Their radio operation was in turn bought by Global, who are the current owners of 'LBC'.
The problem with overnights (and to an extent evening and weekend radio) is that you get far fewer callers, and they're generally of a somewhat lower calibre. Presenters have to fill much more, read more emails and texts. After that, it's a choice between putting no calls to air or talking to morons and nutters. People are tuning in to hear callers, not a presenter talk to himself and read emails.
Take Nick Abbot's recent overnight show about legalising drugs, which attracted the inevitable stream of low hanging 3AM fruit whose arguments were self defeating and they couldn't get their heads around Abbot's simple logic.
In the original franchise document the radio station is described at "London Broadcasting" and as Banjo correctly pointed out the first words broadcast were "This is London Broadcasting". The station eventually became known by the initials LBC: a contraction of "London Broadcasting", the name of the radio station.
The London Broadcasting Company was the owners of LBC and Independent Radio News (IRN) and the similarity in the names is where the confusion arises from. However, The London Broadcasting Company and London Broadcasting were 2 different entities.
Now where did I put my anorak?
You're probably right that the output isn't so exclusively focused on London that it will matter much going national, but we forget about the impact of networking on people in London, they have national shows too. But when you listen to Heart it sounds like it's from London and almost like a local show for London.
Realistically, Nick Ferrari won't be getting anywhere near 3M listeners. Campbell's show is an established national show on an established national station on AM, Freeview and DAB.
Ferrari is about to re-appear on one minority digital platform whose uptake has already plateaued. He won't be stealing Nicky Campbell's thunder any time soon, any more than he did during the years up until a few months ago when his show was already available to most of the UK on the same DAB radios.
The fanfare of LBC becoming 'the first national talk station' station is as much overly enthusiastic hype as them listing Nick Clegg and Boris Johnson as 'LBC presenters'. It's regular guests like these (and other ex-political presenters from Iain Dale to David Mellor) who are largely responsible for the station's recent successes. LBC knowing this is also why they've given the station such a general political focus in terms of topics throughout the schedule.
I'm sure there's scope to bring what they do to a national audience and pick up more listeners (which is of mutual benefit to both LBC and the politicians who get to use LBC as a campaigning and awareness platform), but until LBC gets a national FM frequency and a slot on Freeview, it's not going to overtake Five Live.
It'll be interesting to see who pops up on LBC closer to the election. Before Clegg and Johnson have to stand down prior to their elections due to the Broadcasting Code, I bet LBC will be working overtime to entice Cameron, Miliband and every other senior politician onto the station. And they may well give LBC a field day by clambering over each other to get on air.
But not originally (again, this is a pedantically semantic argument). The image you've linked to is not the original LBC schedule. Surely you can tell that by the names? Either way, the legalities of the day mean you're wrong. See what I mean about people on radio forums? I wonder how much money Richard Park has made since this thread started, despite him not giving a care.
Of course he will stay
I've been listening to LBC for twenty odd years now
Born and bred in Manchester but love the station and presenters and proud to be a regular emailer to Steves show
Having met him as most people will tell you he's a nice generous guy who has all the time in the world for his listeners even us oop North
He won't change his style nor would I and his many fans want him to
I don't think the style of the station as a whole will change either and to me the more listeners the better
You won't get a huge northern or anywhere else take over bid
The likes of me and Ritchie from the Wirral didn't leave when DAB went
We brought Internet radios or listen on PCs and apps
There is life outside the capital and as a frequent visitor over many years am like so many others very interested in what Ken Boris and co are up to
Look on the bright side they aren't closing it down
As I and others have said use 1152 and its dab London space For a London exclusive service
The arts theatre etc in the capital have been increasingly neglected for years
A marvellous opportunity to put this right
It was inevitable this would happen
It's apparently not been profitable for many years as I understand it and in common with all radio to survive its got to adapt
There can only be a handful of commercial stations whose output is 100% local
And having several friends who work in BBC local radio don't know of one single station that hasn't got an element of national or network regional programming in their schedule
We have to give It a chance
What else is there ?
I don't think LBC, as the station name, ever stood for London Broadcasting Company, it originally stood for "London Broadcasting" and later was just 3 letters which stood for nothing. Even the document linked to shows the station name as "London Broadcasting" in the top right corner.
Who remembers when they were briefly "LBC 97.3 Crown FM" ?
I was disappointed when they disappeared from the West Midlands DAB Mux, so will be happy when they re-appear nationally on DAB.
I presume the current "Birdsong" is their slot??