As Heart is very popular and listeners probably don't want it to change a very soft relaunch is probably a good way to go.
The advantage of doing it now is that you;ve got plenty of time to iron out any small problems before Tuesday morning when the station really launches. I doubt they will do but i'd have had Sam & Amy in on Monday to run their breakfast show once before Tuesday morning. Any mistakes made between now and Tuesday don't matter but once listening patterns are back to normal then they must perform.
Sam and Amy are down on the schedule for Monday with a shortened show from 7-10am:
Out of interest, have they done any on air promotion like "Gem is coming", there's nothing on the Heart website about their change from Heart to Gem 106 either which I thought was odd.
Has GEM 106 opt'd out of the Heart Network? Heart 106 website now plays Heart Digital and the stream for 106 on radio feeds plays non-stop party tunes with no jingles, different to that on Heart Digital
Typical Global dirty trick - we could have used the space for something different....
It was going to happen with Heart becoming GEM and with both Leicester Sound and Galaxy becoming Capital it allowed Galaxy to be GLOBALised to Heart and Leicester Sound to be CAPITALised on Monday.
So if you're a DAB listener, you now have the choice between the real Heart which will now have London breakfast and drive, otherwise not much difference, or the station that sounds similar to Heart with it's playlist, but with regional presentation. Hmm.....
Typical Global dirty trick - we could have used the space for something different....
There's been vacant space on the Nottingham and Leicester multiplexs for ages and no-one was interested up until Bauer came along and is about to take the space for Kiss.
It's also highly likely Global have a contract to supply a certain amount of digital services to Now Digital - if they hadn't replaced Galaxy they would paying for space they aren't using - not so much a dirty trick but basic business sense not to waste money on things you aren't using!
Of course it would have been nice to see something like The Arrow or Chill but with Heart having been such a success in the East Midlands it's not a surprise.
Comments
Sam and Amy are down on the schedule for Monday with a shortened show from 7-10am:
http://www.gem106.co.uk/schedule/mon/
Currently playing Heart Club Classics.
I wish Orion the best of luck with Gem 106
Happy New Year
The chimes used are not Big Ben.
Keeping it Heart starting with Take That
Typical Global dirty trick - we could have used the space for something different....
It was going to happen with Heart becoming GEM and with both Leicester Sound and Galaxy becoming Capital it allowed Galaxy to be GLOBALised to Heart and Leicester Sound to be CAPITALised on Monday.
There's been vacant space on the Nottingham and Leicester multiplexs for ages and no-one was interested up until Bauer came along and is about to take the space for Kiss.
It's also highly likely Global have a contract to supply a certain amount of digital services to Now Digital - if they hadn't replaced Galaxy they would paying for space they aren't using - not so much a dirty trick but basic business sense not to waste money on things you aren't using!
Of course it would have been nice to see something like The Arrow or Chill but with Heart having been such a success in the East Midlands it's not a surprise.
The FM RDS is now "Gem 106".
DAB is "Gem 106 EastMids"
Oh yeah thanks for that pointer