This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Media
East Midlands Heart will soon be GEM
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 10 November 2010
Following the rapid growth of the Heart radio brand last year, when Global Radio rebranded a stack of its local FM stations to be part of the Heart network, from next year there’ll be one less Heart in operation. Orion Radio has announced it is changing the name of the Heart station it currently runs under licence from Global to GEM.
Orion acquired Nottingham-based Heart 106 last year when it bought five stations in the Midlands off Global, which had been forced to sell off some of its Midlands-based assets by competition regulators when it acquired GCap the previous year, to stop it being too dominant in that part of the country.
Initially Orion decided to keep its newly acquired Nottingham FM outpost in the Heart network, and arranged a licensing deal with Global which would allow that to happen. But eighteen months on they seem to have had a change of, erm, heart, and are opting to rebrand the station as GEM, giving them more control over the station’s output.
The decision to rebrand seems to have come about quite suddenly and taken Global by surprise. The company’s spokesperson told Radio Today: “We are extremely surprised at this decision today by Orion Media as the idea was mooted in the past but dismissed because of audience and revenue implications. Heart 106 East Midlands represents 34% of all national revenues for Orion, and audiences have grown by 23% in the East Midlands since the Heart license was granted to Orion. This is a very risky decision which could be extremely costly for Orion and their shareholders”.
The name GEM will be familiar to people living in the East Midlands because it use to be used as a name by the golden oldies spin off of another now Global-owned local station, Trent FM. The old GEM rebranded to Gold in line with all of Global’s golden oldie stations.
