Bauer rebranding 53 stations to The Hits/Greatest Hits

You younglings today don't know how lucky you are. Hundreds of TV channels and radio stations available at the touch of a button. Back when I was knee-high-to-a-grasshopper, TV didn't wake up until lunchtime, and Radio 4's Morning Sou'West was the closest we got to having a local radio station. Ah yes, I remember it just like it was yesterday... [/humour]

To say a station has ‘history’ just suggests it’s existed for some time and that’s all it means. But to say it has ‘heritage’ suggests during that period of time it has been synonymous with the local area and sustained high profile over a long period time.

No one is saying that it is a ‘heritage station’ which in radio refers to a set list of stations.

But surely you understand there is a difference between saying a brand has ‘heritage’ which isn’t a black and white thing based on dates and is different calling it a ‘heritage station’.

Brands don't have heritage unless they've been around a long long time. The BBC brand has heritage, it's been around for 98 years now, it'll be getting a telegram from the Queen in 2022. Also, "heritage" implies that something has a lot of history. Think "English Heritage" as an example. Pirate FM doesn't have that length and depth of history yet. As a station, and a brand, it's done really well over it's 28 year history. Mike Powell was exceeding clever when he named the station, both as a reference to Cornwall's maritime history, and as a reference to the offshore pirate stations of the 1960s, without whom commercial radio would probably not have happened in this country, or if it had, it wouldn't have been until much later. Pirate FM has become beloved, respected, almost an institution in some ways, but it just doesn't have the amount of history associated with it yet, for the term "heritage" to feel earned, yet. If the brand lasts long enough, it will get there, but not just yet.

But I assume Plymouth Sound would have been regarded a heritage station in 2000 at 25 years would it not? So I assume you would have regarded it as having ‘heritage’ then? So your lack of longevity argument in the case of Pirate FM doesn’t add up.

This is really difficult to articulate to you.

The concept of brand heritage isn’t unique to radio and isn’t something that can be determined by an arbitrary set of dates.

We all know the term ‘heritage station’ has a specific meaning in the industry but the word ‘heritage’ can be used in a much more a descriptive sense which is what London Lite was doing.

But your argument is all over the place now.

The concept of the heritage ILR has been long gone, but there's no reason to use the term heritage to term a radio station that has been around for more than 20 years.

I prefer the term commercial radio (or commercial stations) which define all stations which are licensed by Ofcom which are to make money for profit, these include the original ILR stations licensed by the IBA and those since by The Radio Authority and Ofcom which include regional and small scale (sallie) stations.

I'm guessing you didn't like it or were split. I remind you that it was my experience with two employees at those two stations were, at what happened to be the same conference they were at and I don't want cause drama. The hostility of it all between those two really did shock and upset me.

It just didn’t make any sense.

I'm guessing you mean what I typed. But coincidentally, it didn't make sense at the time either. Imagine how we reacted as student radio colleagues, a smaller than usual group because of the snow day that day. It was sheer unprofessionalism from the one from Yorkshire Coast, in my opinion anyway. And that's why I posted it, because I hate that local radio is about to get reduced to almost 0%, when it just shouldn't!

EDIT: Thank god for BCB and Sable Radio, two community radio stations that I want to go for.

The term "heritage station" really only meant that it was a station originally licenced by the IBA. When the Radio Authority came along in 1991, they began licencing lots of stations, including what became Pirate FM. The IBA had plenty of opprotunity to licence new stations between 1980 and 1991. They didn't do anymore other than the original 40. When the term "heritage station" started being used, I didn't really like it. It made those original stations sound like old fuddy duddies. It just didn't sit well with me.

Another thing you should know is that commercial radio in the UK isn't even as old as I am. I was 6 months old when LBC first went on air in London, and nearly 19 years old when Pirate FM launched. To me, this is not ancient history, this is all stuff that happened in my lifetime.



I understand, and I don't disagree with the concept, just not the execution here. Dictionary.com lists this as a definition for "heritage"...



About the only thing in the UK broadcast media that has that is the BBC. Not something like Pirate FM. The Pirate FM brand has history. The BBC brand has heritage. That's how I see it.

So that was the same type of operation that my nearby-to-hometown station, Radio Wave used to be, before getting owned by UTV.

Yes, Radio Wave was licenced by the Radio Authority in 1992. I think both Wave and Pirate were part of what was known as the Phase 3 licences, after the initial 40 were licenced in 2 seperate phases.

Lincs FM was another in 1992. Filling the gaps where the IBA didn't issue licences for wider counties. CFM was launched in 1993.

Towards the late 90s, sallie licences were launched for small towns or suburban areas of major cities.

I seem to recall that the IBA launched what were known as incremental stations for audiences underserved in 1990. These include Choice, Kiss, Jazz FM and Melody in London and Buzz in Birmingham.