Radio: Talksport

In a supremely stupid move, it seems talkSPORT have dismantled their identity for one week for the sake of a competition, and some follow on sponsorship.

Details from found from a post at www.talkforum.co.uk by user 'Geoff Peters'

talkSPORT Strike Deal with Carphone Warehouse
Added: Sunday 9th November

talkSPORT will be sponsored by The Carphone Warehouse from Monday 10th November until Sunday 16th November after a deal was struck by Ashley MacKenzie, son of owner Kelvin, worth around £500,000.

The station was all set to be renamed 'Talk Talk' for the week, however, The Radio Authority would not allow a temporary change in talkSPORT's name. From Midnight tonight (Monday 10th November), the station will be known as 'Talk with Talk Talk" and the only mention of talkSPORT will be on trails and the jingles for the news and sport.

From Monday 17th November, Mike Dickin's show will be sponsored by The Carphone Warehouse for 29 weeks and the station will revert back to normal.

Go to www.talksport.net to see how they have replaced every appearance of the word talksport with 1089/1053am.

Or listen to the station and hear the resulting complete and utter shambles. They have not even mentioned why this has happened. Listeners are in the dark about why the only mention of Talksport is the trails and on the news jingle.

Now correct me if I am wrong but is this not horrifically misguided?

If they wanted the whole week to be sponsored, would Talksport, with TalkTalk at the Carphone Warehouse not be better than than the current 'this is Talk with TalkTalk'?

Is there a precedent to anything like this happening before?

It's very bizarre.. I suppose it's simular to what we now have on ITV1. All the regional companies are still called HTV, Granada, etc but we only see the ITV1 brand.

I may not agree with the generic ITV1 idea, but at least it had a focused vision - to try and pretend that most of the ITV network is a single channel called ITV1. But this is just madness. Calling the station 'Talk with Talk Talk', having links like 'what's happening on 1089/1053 radio', what prat decided this was a good idea? How much money did they waste getting someone to change the website for 1 week. And why is this good for branding?

Aye, but how much more money are they gaining from the sponsorship deal?


It clearly is not, but commercial stations do not care about branding so long as it does not interfere with an influx of money from the advertizers.

Will OFCOM permit temporary name changes? And are we going to see stations changing their names to that of their advertizers for the week?

Just remember, the man who runs TalkSport is the man who asked the question,
" Ethics? That's a county, innit? "

Well i'm a regular Talksport listener, and I can't say i'm surprised given the way the station's been heading recently. Not only is their new name a tongue-twister, it's so hard to remember. The presenters seem to have banned from uttering the name Talksport and have to repeat that stupid slogan all the time.

And for the record, it's believed, they're getting between £500,000 - £750,000 to change their name for a week. Which isn't really that much.

I did notice Mike Dicken awkwardly utter 'you're on talks...with talk talk' to a caller this morning. Really not bedding in well at all.

What interests me is that the radio authority refused permission to rename it to simply 'Talk Talk' for a week. Their TV counterparts, the ITC, do not consider it part of their business to interfere with a channel's branding policy. Thus HTV Group is able to be branded as ITV1 Wales and ITV1, Central Independent Television was able to be branded as Carlton and then ITV1, Carlton London and LWT are both able to be branded as ITV1, etc, etc. Have the Radio Authority retained control over the name a station uses to stop rebrands? It just seems odd that in these days of toothless light touch regulators, that the radio authority was even consulted over this.

And if they wouldn't allow 'Talk Talk', why would they allow 'Talk with Talk Talk'?

Why couldn't it have been "Talksport with Talk Talk" ?

I suppose they think their Sun-reader listeners would get confused. Ironically they're probably more confused now! Another reason is that perhaps Carphone Warehouse paid extra for over-the-top pushing of their service. Talksport do need the money though!

I don't think it cost them too much to get someone to go through their database using the "Find / Replace" command ... LOL

Agreed that it's a ridiculous way of going about a sponsorship, though.

But the funny thing is though that there are still some references to talkSPORT on the website, so the find/replace obviously wasn't very good.

I guess it is because "Talk Talk" is a brand and therefore has to have the "with" part to show it is being sponsored. I am sure that the Radio Authority would have been less concerned about rebranding as a cosmetic exercise, than as a result of sponsorship.

In the same way, I'm sure that if HTV had been rebranded "Kit Kat" in return for a big cheque from Nestle then the ITC probably wouldn't have allowed it.

Why does everything have to come down to ITV on this forum? As far as I know no ITV station has turned itself into an advert (yet) like Talksport has.