It is about as interesting as listening to grass grow.

How much of this survey covers the period after Castle, Garroway etc joined.

Its all rather strange Rad maybe it was on the up. I think the next couple of quarters will be very interesting. I will admit to being critical but I am going to step back now for a few months and see what Q2 brings.

Realistically a week I believe.

I guess it is too early to assess how well Anthony Davis is doing.

The second quarter will therefore be of more interest to me.

There probably isn't a great deal of competition in many parts of the country for a station serving this age group.

Next rajar will be interesting, particularly for the ex Gold AM services.

The signs are that the public prefer this reduced playlist, perhaps Global have got it right after all, from a business prospective.

Well one thing I've learnt for sure since reading this thread/Facebook is that listening to the radio (like taste in music) is very much a subjective thing; there are those that love the recent format, those that will 'tolerate' it and those that will never take to it....that's humans for you!

The signs are that the public prefer this reduced playlist, perhaps Global have got it right after all, from a business prospective.[/quote]

A business and listener satisfaction perspective - in the end the customer is always right - or they stop being customers.

....,and there will be some people who like that, but not a steeply increasing number.

The Breakfast show this morning was unusual. Having seen the playlist, it must be the first time ever that neither Elton or the Carpenters were played in a show on Smooth

That shows Simon Bates breakfast should have stayed.

Bring back Simon Bates! Well at least bring back the Golden Hour

The figures for the new Smooth/ex-Gold services will be interesting to watch. Emap turned their AM stations from Oldies to Easy/Soft AC in the late 1990s/early 2000s and most areas saw big losses but they started from reach in six figures - the figures in the Gold -> Smooth case are a lot smaller.

Sorry to bring the Golden Hour up again, but it was so varied. The years I heard in the Golden Hour spanned from 1966 to 1994. Absolutely fantastic!

I did. If you go back a while I said I bet when global take over the listening figures will go up. My only gripe is how did I know this would happen. Well I can't say as last time I said on here why I got banned maybe for telling the truth. All I will say is the RAJAR figures are up for smooth but believe what you like on that. Well done to Smooth.

RAJAR has and always will have it's critics but it's the only official survey that all players accept and if you're alleging some kind of hanky panky without proof, you're lucky you just got banned from here.

And how do you explain the quarters when a Global station drops in the figures, like Heart last time round... Inefficient fixing?? Better to gracefully concede a skillfull relaunch and direction change for Smooth and park the sour grapes for at least 3 more months

Ever fancied a career in comedy??

Not sure what happened yesterday afternoon/evening at Smooth Northwest but as I was listening at about 15:50 Paul Phear did the usual link into Carlos's show and then the adverts started but in the middle of the adverts about 15:56 the 16:00 news played (Obviously the 16:00 news is automated/recorded in advance) then the news finished and more adverts played then a jingle for the weather but no weather instead more adverts, then the weather was finally read out then more adverts until Carlos's show started at about 16:03.

I'm guessing the link from National to Regional went wrong, I certainly found out that the news for each hour seems to be recorded, well the 16:00 news must be

Have you?

Looking at the hourly rajar graphs for London from Paul Easton Smooth's audience peaked at 9:30AM for the Golden Hour,
http://www.thisisglobal.com/radio/he...udience/#stats
whereas other stations peaked at 8AM, the new local London Smooth breakfast show have a hard job to get the pre 9:30 AM listening increased, but looks like post 9:30 AM is starting to increase.

Assuming Smooth stay on AM.
I keep forgetting about this 70s-90s station. As it has no FM output I wonder if this may go onto AM instead of Smooth?

It will also be interesting to see how the Gold non-presenter format in London compares with the previous.

This rajar London shows Gold increased listeners slightly from 274k to a respectable and viable 304k, but hours per listener fell from 9.6 to 6.9, so share dropped, but has a history of quarter variations, next Rajar will show the effects the latest changes to more automation have made.
But the case for keeping the expensive Gold 97kw AM outlet must be getting harder to justify, especially with increased digital listening in London?

The local AM slots are linked with local DAB and local advertising, so I wouldn't expect a Digital 1 service to appear on those AM frequencies.

I think the AM licences that have become Smooth will stay as that until they close down. I wouldn't be surprised to see the 70s-90s station replace Gold on AM or Gold to morph into that.


Does Capital Xtra carry different local advertising on FM? Local DAB may be a problem in London unless they have a new service, in Nottingham/Derby they can claim from Heart or Xfm on the Nottingham multiplex.

Yes the news is pre recorded. Obviously there was some sort of mash up on the switch over. It's not the first time the news has been played out early.