Bauer rebranding 53 stations to The Hits/Greatest Hits

I'm probably in the minority for this but I stopped listening to Magic 105.4 and switched to Radio 4 when Angie Greaves left the station last year. I personally preferred Magic's pre-2017 playlist, and the style of its older presenters compared to the newer ones. I didn't mind the whole "80s/90s" thing at the start, but by 2019 it seemed the number of songs in their playlist had decreased dramatically, they were also cutting some of them so that they were ridiculously short (two examples are the first chorus and second verse in Wouldn't It Be Good being cut; and Lay All Your Love On Me's second verse being cut and the odd applause at the end as well). That being said, I had a quick browse of today's playlist and it seems like they played one or two of (what I consider to be) "classic" Magic songs.

I feel like some of the presenters sound like they're being forced to sound happy, whilst previous presenters sounded "themselves". Nick Snaith sounded much less happy than he used to on Magic In The Morning in my opinion when I switched over. Granted, this could have been because I was starting to get quite bored of the station (seriously, are they contracted to play A Star Is Born and Greatest Showman as much as they do?). I did have a listen to his show today, and thought it was alright though..
One presenter I'll put as an exception to this would be both Lynn Parsons and Paul Hayes. They're both brilliant presenters. Is Paul even human?

But, as Bananas said, as long as people keep listening that's all that matters - especially with the good RAJAR last year.

After Richard Park left Magic and transformed Smooth into the old Magic London format, it was inevitable that Bauer would transform the station from the old Melody/Magic 105.4 easy listening soft AC format into the more poppier AC format they use today.

Smooth has Angie Greaves, Gary Vincent and Paul Phear who provide near enough the same presentation they did on Magic.

The current Magic isn't for me, I last heard it in a cab and there was more talk, less music and faux cheeriness.

There was a thing I heard the other day about the change from Melody to Magic and how that was managed. The music and the format was gradually changed and the name/tagline went through about 5 different variations to transform it slowly from one to the other. Easier to do I suppose with a word that's an adjective like Magic.

The original Melody was quite unique. They weren't DJs but presenters and they were quite formal and just there to read the news and introduce the music, which was quite gentle easy listening. I don't think it even had jingles or any branding elements.

No it didn't. My dad (at the time, the same age I am now ) loved the station, had it on all day.

I remember a billboard advert for Melody with 'no DJs, no chatter, no jingles' etc written around the outside. It was the idea of Lord Hanson who created it as the station he'd like

It had a bad frequency of 104.9 (it had to have a null to the south west because of another station) and changed to the better 105.4, can't remember if that was after it was taken over.

Another advert Melody had on the side of buses in the captial simply said "At last - Radio without the speakers.."

Quite an elevation from his time as a TV Forum member.

Right, anoraks on please.

When the IBA advertised for an 'incremental' ILR service for London, they were inundated with applications. The original allocation of 102.2 was taken by Jazz FM. However, there was such high demand there was industry pressure to offer more slots. There were two frequency allocations in SE England that were untaken. One was 100.0, which would have been Classic FM from Guildford, the other was 104.9 that was to have been BBC Radio Berkshire from High Wycombe. The IBA were handed the two allocations by The Home Office, and Kiss FM and Melody handed licences.

All was good until 1994, when the BBC used a long standing allocation of 104.8 at Burton Down in West Sussex to extend Radio Sussex to that area. This caused interference in south west London to Melody. The problem was also exacerbated by BBC Leicester moving to 104.9 in 1991, from a high power, and high altitude site at Copt Oak. Melody protested, and the then Radio Authority reallocated 105.4 to them, they migrated over (using some clever RDS tricks to auto tune car radio presets). The RA re-advertised 104.9 as a restricted coverage licence for London, with nulls towards Sussex, and the risk in NW London of interference from Leicester. XFM were handed the licence, and launched on Sept 1 1997 (The day after Diana was killed)

In the end the BBC adopted 98.0 for local radio in High Wycombe, but 3CR rather than Berks

This is a bit of a departure from the conversation, but it fits in with the thread topic so I'll throw this in anyway.

I occasionally listen to bits of Free Radio here in Worcester (largely on weekend mornings) and I know that it is basically taking the Hits Radio feed with local news and ads, whilst there is still a local weekday breakfast show (which I think is terrible, but that's for another thread).

The technical quality of Free Radio, and how they manage the networked feed when the station they are using it on has a different name to the 'parent', is just terrible in my opinion. Why don't they just rebrand it as Hits then they can at least start to do the thing in a better way?!

What I mean is the fact that out of any song, they fire in a pre-record of the on-air DJ saying 'This is Free Radio' before the DJ then comes in live with their link. It doesn't sound seamless. The acoustic and inflection matching makes it really clear that the presenter isn't saying 'Free Radio' live and often it's played over the start of the live link.

If I listen for an hour on a weekend morning then I guarantee that I will hear at least two or three links in that time that feature a technical error because of their approach to networking.

I know that all radio stations have a degree of this sort of thing, and I can think of times when Radio 2 have made silly technical cock-ups (accidentally playing a song over the announcement of the death of Martin McGuinness was a biggie because of the added technical complexity of Sara Cox's Danceathon in 2017) and Heart's networking has made an error (as discussed up-thread re Magic and the local news). But for *every link* on your radio station to begin in this sub-standard way must be a new low, surely?! Just rename the station to Hits Radio and then you can have your DJs structure their links in a less formulaic way to avoid them having to hit the pre-recorded ID.

Or am I living in cloud cuckoo land?

You think I ever take it off?


I was just about to say, is High Wycombe even in Berkshire?

I remember the launch of XFM well - of all the days. They even curtailed their test transmissions the day before. They had started with ambient sounds and music weeks earlier and by the 30th were more like the finished station, but then on the 31st the ambience returned. Gary Crowley was the first voice on the station and mentioned the circumstances, dedicating launch day to Diana.

XFM led a big campaign for a license and did the ground work of RSLs to pilot and demonstrate what it would sound like. They even produced a compilation CD called 104.9 as part of that

Back to Melody, if you go to 5'08" of this YouTube video (it should play from that point now Asa has made it work now) there's the closedown of Melody on 104.9

I was going to suggest if you wanted to listen to that station without all the technical issues then you could just listen to Hits Radio instead but it appears the H&W multiplex doesn't carry Hits Radio alongside Free Radio, unlike most other multiplexes with Hits network stations, albeit with Hits Radio in mono and the 'local' station in stereo.

No, it's in Buckinghamshire!