Bauer rebranding 53 stations to The Hits/Greatest Hits

How utterly depressing for presenters and infinitely sad for loyal listeners!

Agree. At least Global gave their outgoing local hosts the chance to say goodbye on air. Yes, it was all a bit awkward, especially for the breakfast hosts generally bumping the drivetime hosts out of a job, but ultimately for most outgoing hosts it's more of an opportunity to sell themselves to potential future employers rather than for revenge, and frankly with the radio market the way it is you probably need to keep those who sacked you sweet as chances are if you are lucky enough to get a role somewhere else they'll probably be bought out in the near future as well.

There's a good reason Foxy didn't get chance to say goodbye and that is what happened with Andy and Louise when they ended up disappearing before there actual end date due to comments on air when they announced they were being pushed. They put through lots of irate callers and said they'd been kicked off. There is audio somewhere...

On the note of the updated jingles for Pulse, Signal and The Wave; yes, they are the jingles Hits Radio have been using since 2018, but they still sound really upbeat and perfectly suited for the station’s output.

It also prevents amazing bits of radio like this:

Forgive me if this is slightly off topic but GHR had a major meltdown just now. The IRN bulletin failed to trigger on the national DAB/online feed and we were treated to the news bed for 2 minutes.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it before.

Easily the best two minutes of Greatest Hits Radio.

That happens on my local station quite frequently overnight when it's automated.

Yesterday was the first time I've listened to Greatest Hits in a while (I only tend to listen in the car and I've not been out much recently!) and they had a nice idea of trying to recreate a festival of live music using live recordings.

It wasn't only GHR but The Hits network and Country Hits too, each one with a 'stage' at the festival. In the bit I heard they were cross promoting the 'coverage' on the other stations. It wasn't that convincing but a nice different form the norm. It did mean that they ended up having clips of Queen on Live Aid introduced by someone who probably presented them in the day - Janice Long

The Hits network had Fleur East and Sarah-Jane Crawford.

I know Baylon Leonard was doing bits for Country Hits. Which was interesting as I'd not heard him since he was on with Danny Baker on BBC London years ago, and also i didn't know they had a country station.

It did make me wonder if they're thinking of any more Hits stations of the 'Hits' name ever takes off? Though I suppose they have a lot of other popular music genres covered by other brands

I was at work (at another radio station!) with the office to myself that day, I remember not getting a lot of work done!