New Radio Strategies

I may be a bit slow, but I still haven’t fully processed what’s happening to Virgin Radio. So they’ve been bought by an Indian media conglomerate. Fine. So they’re dropping the name. Sure – I get it.

| View | Upload your own

But the new bosses appear to be – bloggers? Not only that – but bosses that give presentations at the Skype offices and then upload them to Slideshare. Don’t they realise they’re running an old media firm and that they’re not supposed to understand – let alone be ahead of the curve on – this whole interweb thing?

Still stranger, these are not just bosses posing as bloggers for the sake of appearing hip. They actually say things to their staff like:

We know some of you write blogs – we enjoy reading them… We want to reassure you all that you can speak your minds about what’s going on. We’re serious when we say we want your input, and you don’t have anything to fear about expressing doubts or concerns

And what is One Golden Square anyway? Just a blog? A street address (my London geography knowledge is near nil, other than the odd round of Mornington Crescent)? A hint at the new name for the radio station?

The team: Donnach (silent ‘ch’), Clive and Adrian are Absolute Radio – essentially a consultancy firm who have been given the reins of one of the UK’s leading commercial radio brands. And their mission, as they see it, is to remind people how much they’ve always loved it.

The weird thing (for me, anyway) is the chatty, approachable, ‘call me Donna’ feel to the blog. It’s immensely encouraging and great to see this sort of open, communicative, new-era thinking applied to station management.

Commercial radio will no doubt find it very confusing. And, for the moment, so do I. But regardless of what will end up coming out of the speakers, I think I like this new station.

Tagged: blogging