Global Radio axes all regional/local breakfast shows

Yep, it has a passionate listener base too.


Yes, just because they have the word 'rock' in their names doesn't mean they're identical, it's a big genre.

Between Kerrang, Abs Classic, Planet Rock all covering different audiences they have the genre pretty much to themselves. It's a market that Global don't do - Radio X is the nearest they get, though its much broader

What's there to say really, that others haven't said already?

As soon as the regulator said they would allow national breakfast shows on local stations, I knew Global would make this announcement. It wasn't a surprise. I'm sad for the people losing their jobs in this situation.

Having graduated from The Global Academy last year and being mentored by the Head of Digital for Capital and The Big Top 40, it's incredibly sad because the majority of people that I follow on Twitter and are connected with on LinkedIn work across Global's various regions and I was utterly shocked but not surprised by the news.

What's your take on the future of Pirate FM?

It's always played up in its localness, especially since Atlantic FM was replaced with Heart, and it has a fairly unique music offering. It would be a real shame if it ended up as just a networked outlet of Hits or Greatest Hits (the latter musically is probably closer to Pirate). It would especially bad as BBC Radio Cornwall is just so dull and speech based, it's a bit of a contrast to other BBC Local stations


I've always had a bit of a soft spot for UKRD especially Pirate, having spent a lot of time down that way and it's been the soundtrack of many a holiday. And was living up in Surrey way when what became The Eagle regained the old County Sound license. They've always been very locally focused, hope they get treated well


And of course Pirate FM had this great piece of production
https://audioboom.com/posts/737161-pirate-fm-song

When Eagle launched they had the same theme but with different, even more contrived lyrics
https://youtu.be/n34zuA8rAxo

OFCOM have now officially scrapped the three regions in each of Wales and Scotland in favour of one for each nation which up here in Wrexham will truly kill off local broadcasting. It's inevitable now the limited non-London content will ultimately come from Cardiff.

The Pirate FM studios are also the headquarters of UKRD.

I grew up in Cornwall (as you can probably tell from my username) and Pirate FM has been around for as long as I can remember.

The Cornish are very patriotic (especially the Cornish nationalists, which is why you no longer see things like the English Rose or the English Heritage logo on road signs), and any changes to Pirate FM will not go down well, especially considering that there's now no commercial alternative now that Atlantic FM is now Heart.

Last year, Pirate FM changed their logo to an English flag, which I think was for the World Cup, but it caused outrage on social media.

I wasn't living in Cornwall at the time but I remember Pirate FM launching as it was featured on Tomorrow's World. Its studios were very advanced for the time with one of the first automation systems playing out the music. This enabled it to run more economically than other stations and be on air overnight without staff

That's a great little system and way ahead of its time. GWR installed a similar one in the late 80s and that too is on YouTube. Not sure if you could voice track with it, and I doubt it took IRN by itself at night either, but I assume it had a modest hard drive to allow jingle and commercial play out and you could store mix in/out cue points like you can a modern hard disk based system.

I think later on they might well have been one of the first ILRs over here to use the Axia audio over IP backbone - the main advantage of which is eliminating distro amps and Krone frames!

This clip immediately announces it comes from the ‘90s with that show-off transition/animation at the start. The kind of thing CBBC especially loved using.

I think overnight it was just music, called Pirate Gold. They'd have the midnight IRN news, then play their theme tune and I'm pretty sure it was just music overnight (I never listened to it for long after the theme tune!)

Do Global still operate The Arrow, wasn’t that rock?

Is Chill on as well too? Why do Global keep these stations going?

That's a very good question at the moment. There's a lot happening right now in Cornwall's media industry and there is very little that is even somewhat clear.

The one thing I feel confident about is that we'll see the closure of Pirate 70s and Pirate 80s, and maybe incorporating some of Pirate 80s local content into the Cornwall multiplex feed of Greatest Hits Radio.

Greatest Hits Radio is already available down here on DAB, and is already in a super competitive battle for the Oldies audience in Cornwall. You have Gold, who have been on DAB here since the multiplex opened; Pirate 80s, which replaced Pirate 70s, which replaced Pirate Oldies; Greatest Hits Radio, which launched in Cornwall and Nationally on January 7th, and Goldmine, a locally owned and operated Oldies station featuring shows from the original Pirate FM presentation team of Roger Day, Duncan Warren and Tony James, which launched on January 1st. Pirate 70s is still going, but online only.

The obvious play here is to incorporate Pirate 70s and Pirate 80s into Greatest Hits Radio, so that Greatest Hits Radio has local news and travel for Cornwall.

As for Pirate FM itself, I don't think flipping that to Greatest Hits Radio would be a good decision, as it would gift Heart and community radio the 25-44 demographic, and if I'm reading Bauer's strategy correctly, with their recent introduction of Scala Radio now competing with Classic FM and Radio 3 for the classical listeners' attention, they want to compete directly with Global, and flipping Pirate FM to GHR would be a bad move, as it would alienate the 25-44 part of Pirate FM's audience.

It's worth remembering that in Cornwall, Pirate FM is the most listened to local station, with BBC Radio Cornwall second and Heart still third, albeit with an increased reach and share over what Atlantic used to get. Bauer would be wise not to change Pirate too much, lest they put that lead in jeopardy.

As a not entirely unconnected aside, Bauer's purchases of both UKRD and Celador means that there's two independent local commercial stations in Devon right now that are looking very vulnerable to being bought by Bauer, and those are Radio Plymouth and Radio Exe. Both are owned by local shareholders, and both would be relatively safe acquisitions for Bauer, as they are unlikely to be forced to divest them in any competitions finding by the CMA. Both could be combined with the South Devon version of The Breeze, formerly known as Palm FM, and made either into a local version of Magic, along with the rest of The Breeze network, or merged in with Pirate FM to create a Devon and Cornwall regional station, with separate News and Travel each for Cornwall's Pirate, and Devon's combined Plymouth/Palm/Exe.

We know that nothing is going to happen yet, due the Hold Separate requirement instituted by the CMA, but once that goes, well, who knows.



Yet, Radio Cornwall manages to be the most popular BBC local radio mainland station in terms of share, and 2nd most popular mainland station in terms of reach behind BBC Radio Shropshire. Only BBC Radio Guernsey and BBC Radio Jersey do better than both Cornwall and Shropshire on both Reach and Share.



That's the City Image Song cut from the JAM package Yours Truly.