Interesting and somewhat sad to hear that all the presenters on Liverpool’s CityTalk have been sacked. Well, not sacked, but are not having their contracts renewed.
I suspect this is the next phase in the push to replace this much needed FM ‘talk’ station with a relay of the ‘AM only’ Magic oldies radio service. It wasn’t that long ago that there was a huge cull and all but a few of the presenters disappeared, and programmes of music – strangely absolutely identical to the music played on Magic – started in their place.
Interestingly, immediately after this introduction of music the RAJAR audience research figures plummeted.
And the response to the plummet hasn’t been to try to enhance the speech side of the output, no no. It’s been to sack everybody.
Unconfirmed speculation is that non-stop music will dominate the station now, broken up from time to time by longer than at present news bulletins, mainly at peak times. A sort of poor-man’s rolling news service, but one that only operates for a few hours a day with non-stop music filling the countless other hours, until of course, Ofcom relaxes the rules and the ‘AM only’ Magic can be simulcast on FM for Liverpool and the surrounding areas.
Disgusting.
Again, this is a back-door method of getting what the company really wants which is Magic broadcasting on FM. Years ago Ofcom wouldn’t allow this of course, so a new way forward had to be found!
Ofcom should take the licence back and re-advertise so that it can be taken up by a company willing to provide the programming it says it’s going to provide instead of lying and using it as a trick to shift an AM service across to FM.
But Ofcom won’t do that. It’s far too scared of the Borg that operate CityTalk.
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