Choice FM to Capital Extra?
nikobatallones
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Tucked away in RadioToday's article on Westwood joining Choice is a report that Global is to rename Choice to Capital Extra.
http://radiotoday.co.uk/2013/09/1xtras-tim-westwood-joins-global-radio/
Interesting and intriguing move. Thoughts?
http://radiotoday.co.uk/2013/09/1xtras-tim-westwood-joins-global-radio/
Interesting and intriguing move. Thoughts?
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There was a blog by James cridland which suggested it but the main point of the blog is that Global are not into brand extensions, also from http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/sep/15/global-radio-bbc-ashley-tabor-digital-radio Looks like the BBC and commercial stations have now agreed to fund roll out local DAB coverage, but will take time.
So it could be Choice FM remains as a London station for a while.
I wonder if they have sorted the quality issue out?
The text of the article has been altered since it was first published. The original text said that "Radio Today understands that Choice is shortly being renamed to Capital Extra".
It's probably true, but they were not meant to reveal this yet hence the swift removal of this line from the website.
At the end of the article there are a number of 'buttons' with one linked to 'Capital Extra'
http://radiotoday.co.uk/tag/capital-extra/
Not really, Radio Today's first articles are notoriously inaccurate most of the time. They seem to have a policy of publishing asap rather than checking for facts, only to remove or edit them later on. In the recent news about Bauer making breakfast producers redundant, they originally claimed it was presenters!
Many of their articles make false claims or just have blatant errors in their first drafts, only to be removed or corrected a few hours later. I'd take anything Radio Today publish with a large pinch of salt until the commenters have had time to correct them.
Radio Goss Twitter posted this last week:
Radio Goss@radiogoss10 Sep
“@JamesCridland: What's Tim Westwood going to do next, I wonder? I bet where he's going next will be extra special.”
What a Capital idea.
My guess is that the news is embargoed until Global officially announce it this week.
The brand extension makes a lot of sense, the BBC have done the same thing with 1Xtra & 4 Extra. I'm sure that 6 Music would have become 2 Extra if the Trust hadn't prevented any changes in their review.
http://whois.net/whois/capitalextra.com
Don't want to be the guy that reads too much into things, but I think this is more of an embargo thing than something not being true at all.
The improved local coverage in 2014 in the memorandum of understanding for a radio DSO if given the go ahead, will ensure the local signals are more stable which they are variable at the moment.
if they get approval they will get 2 80k stations on d1 from Smooth and Smooth 70's, which could be ideally used for a merged stereo Smooth/Gold station, or perhaps a mono Choice renamed Capital extra alongside Smooth? But if it goes ahead the station may be London only initally!
Actually movement in the right direction - good news for people that want to listen to music in stereo.
But will it go down with advertisers? Does Global have plans to rebrand a few exsisting regionals to Extra? (Birmingham ideally?)
It could be that Global are hedging their bets against a time when chart music is much less dominated by Urban than it is today.
They *might* be hoping OFCOM will allow them to further increase the % of non-urban music on Birmingham 102.2 in return for running Capital Extra on DAB. They might even (and this is going into crazy speculation) be planning to put Capital on 105.7 and Capital Extra on 102.2. That would be one hell of a format flip, but stranger things have been allowed.
It would sound a bit silly if Birmingham had Capital Extra without Capital!!
Well don't forget that they have the XS network.. Not ruling that one out (XFM Scotland > Galaxy).
Your idea seems right. But what really surprises me is why didn't they put Craig David onto Choice instead of Capital?
That was my first thought too - roll out Capital 'Extra' on the ex-Galaxy stations, which would give Capital London the ability to move away from the playlist restrictions it currently has.
Is it still possible for Choice to be rebranded as Galaxy FM (as well as reverting a few of the Capitals back?) Just incase if both Capital's weren't broadcasting in the same regions? It's a successful brand. I'm sure Choice's format would fit in nicely (replacing the charty-type playlist that Galaxy used in it's final years.)
I would suspect that Global would sell Capital and Capital Extra to the majority of advertisers as one package. Choice on its own or even as an add-on might not be as attractive as an enlarged Capital package might be?
I would be surprised if that happens. Capital Birmingham is only now expected to include urban music (no minimum requirement) as part of its requirement to be rhythmic based (urban, dance, urban pop and urban dance) - and to also include programmes of specific appeal to listeners of African or Afro-Caribbean origin which Craig David's show now does (and elements of Marvin Humes and Max's show cover). I would say that requirement would be easy enough to meet when urban music becomes less in fashion.
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/capital-FM-Birmingham/statement
They can do up to 5% of non-rhythmic (i.e. non dance or non urban)
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/capital-FM-Scotland/statement
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/radio-ops/sampling/galaxy.pdf
Think that it was Scotland? (previously XFM)