Global Radio axes all regional/local breakfast shows

A bit bland to be leading a networked Heart though. If they want to stay ahead of Radio 2, which seems to be hell bent on morphing into Heart, I think they're going to need somebody at Breakfast with a bit more "edge" and a knack for creating buzzy "content". There are few thing on radio that are better than the brilliantly stupid "Innuendo Bingo".

Cue the theories about Chris Moyles already being at Global...

Moyles is 'off brand' for Heart though.
Scott Mills, on the other hand..

The wording on Radio Today is very careful in stating that Capital will take London output from 8th April. Heart & Smooth will take a National Breakfast show later this year.

To me that confirms they’ll both have new shows.

Well, there used to be a rule where commercial stations had to say their name, once every 30 minutes.

Usual out put, with presenter verbals and jingles that was covered.

An engineer at a station I once worked at, got very worried and stressed during a group network football commentary we were taking and the two per half short in-commentary local station name and frequency drops fired from the mothership, failed to fire locally, as it was 50 minutes before the first chance to station ID ourselves.

No-one complained.
Whether Ofcom have dropped that particular requirement, since I hung up my DT100's a few years ago, I don't know.

While there are some bad examples of community radio stations, there are equally some good examples of community stations playing valuable roles in the areas they serve and actually sound quite professional. The problem is a lot of community radio stations are either servers in cupboards with no presenter led output, on the other hand there are some with presenters which are so dreadful you just have to turn over. You have to find a middle ground, but above all it comes down to who's running the station and the management team who are in place to support volunteers.

I'm going to be a little bias here, so forgive me, but Cambridge 105 Radio is an example of where I think we've got things about right. The production/imaging sounds good, the presenters are competent and above all, the mix of music and local content (not knitting lessons at a church hall), mixed in with topical guests from Cambridge life is a good blend and makes for a good listening experience. My aim has always been to create a community radio station that sounds like it's been built in 2018, not some throw back to 1980s ILR.

Yes the station sounds commercial in the daytime with the mix of music we play and the evenings and weeekends provide specialist programming covering soul, dance, rock, classical, spoken word and men's and women's shows to name just some, but we're very careful with our scheduling and how programmes are cross promoted on air (either by the way of on air promos or live presenter reads teasing ahead to what's coming up). The station brings in a steady advertising stream and is available on FM, DAB, Online and Smart Speaker. We're regularly out and about in the community with outside broadcasts from the Folk Festival, Big Weekend, Strawberry Fair for example. The station's also won a couple of community radio awards, for station sound of the year and an award for my men's issues series Talking Men.

We also have a pretty good digital presence online and on social media, but there's always room for improvement. We're not perfect, not by a long shot, but it's taken several years and a lot of hard work to get the station to where it is today.

So, community radio can sound topical and relevant but standards vary up and down the country.

Used to be the case, but no, it's not anymore.

RE: Community Radio. Yes, there are some great CR stations out there which are well-programmed and punch above their weight locally, such as the aforementioned Cambridge 105. HFM near me in Market Harborough is another good station.

Sadly though, there's a lot of them run by bitter ex-jocks who got turfed out in the first wave of "modernisation" in the 90s and just don't accept the way the industry has moved on. The Smashey & Nicey era is over.

There's a community station they play at the ice rink I go to, though it seems they must have had cutbacks at the start of the year, as DJs and news bulletins have disappeared for the last couple of months, at least at the times I go there, so it's just music and jingles and the occasional advert now.

Yes although he is the same age as Chris Moyles he has survived longer because he plays more to the target audience of the station. Moyles was great on Radio 1 but I am his generation, we have common cultural references so I understood a lot of the jokes and items, whereas an 18 year old knows nothing about Roy Walker or Andi Peters. I remember they had an in joke about 'target reference' which was obviously what the management were often complaining about.

Radio X is a better place for him, he likes the music better - he had contempt for what he played on R1 - and the audience is older

I’m an 18 year old (born in 2000) and I know exactly who Andi Peters and Roy Walker are. I find that quite offensive. What an ignorant statement to make if you can’t back up your facts.

The only decent community stations I've heard in London are specialist in nature. Rinse and Flex FM provide a gateway to the underground dance scene, while Resonance is a well respected arts station.

The common theme with those stations is that they don't have a ton of ex ILR presenters playing at heritage radio, but as others have mentioned, some of these outfits are truly shocking outside London, not helped by an already limp BBC local radio network.