Business News Deals Media

Global Radio buys Juice Liverpool

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 5 June 2015

It may be BBC Music Day, but the Beeb wouldn’t mind me mentioning a non-BBC radio station. After all, it’s all about the music. Global Radio, still in acquisitive mode it seems, has bought Juice FM in Liverpool (not to be confused with the station of the same name in Brighton) from UTV Radio.

The Capital Radio owner had been a mooted bidder for the Liverpool station ever since UTV revealed it was considering selling its thirteen local radio stations earlier this year. According to The Guardian, the deal is worth £10 million. Global will rebrand the Merseyside station, making the FM frequency an outpost of one of its quasi-national stations, most likely Capital FM itself.

The deal will be subject to regulatory approval – which has proven problematic for Global before – but this is a relatively small deal this time, and neither Global nor UTV seem to expect any problems. It now remains to be seen what will happen to the rest of UTV’s local stations, which include the Signal Radio outlets in the midlands. Perhaps I’ll buy them just to reinstate this jingle. Come on, it’s BBC Music Day, everyone join in now…