LBC
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the London radio station. For other things named LBC, see LBC (disambiguation).
LBC Radio (originally the London Broadcasting Company) operates two London-based radio stations, with news and talk formats. LBC was Britain's first legal commercial Independent Local Radio station, providing a service of news and information to London. It began broadcasting on 8 October 1973, a week ahead of Capital Radio. The launch of LBC also saw the beginning of IRN's broadcasting, as LBC provided the service to independent local radio stations nationwide.
In April 2007 a new marketing slogan for LBC 97.3: "London's Biggest Conversation"- a play on the initials.[1] was introduced. It is currently owned by Global Radio.
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[edit] Current services
- LBC 97.3 - talk format
- LBC News 1152 - rolling news format.
Both are also transmitted on DAB and via a live stream on the LBC website.
[edit] Expansion
Following Chrysalis' full acquisition of the Digital News Network (which it partly owned alongside other major commercial radio companies) on Friday 28 July 2006, the decision was taken to shut down the station at 5pm that night, and it was announced that the service would be replaced by LBC.
From September 2006 LBC broadcasts in the North West, West Midlands, Yorkshire, North East, South Wales & The West on the DAB platform. Each region has tailored news & information.[2]
In a further show of the company's ambition to extend the brand, Chrysalis Radio made a bid, devised by current Managing Director David Lloyd for the new radio licence in Greater Manchester. The proposed station was GMBC and is based on the LBC format. Lloyd's bid failed with Ofcom awarding the licence to a GMG venture called Rock Talk. In 2003, Chrysalis put together a similar bid for a West Midlands licence, with a proposed station called WBC. This bid, however, was also unsuccessful, losing out to Kerrang 105.2 operated by emap.
[edit] Company history
The station has had an early turbulent commercial history and almost disappeared completely in the mid-1990s after Snoop Dogg's late night chat show was embroiled in drama involving a new quiz section entitled What's My Name? after fifteen callers failed to guess his motherlovin name correctly which led to Snoop calling up Warren G and Nate Dogg and going on a regulating mission. Snoop later immortalised the incident in the line "With so much drama in the L-B-C It's kinda hard bein Snoop D-O-double-G" after which he took a brief nap.
The early history is vitally important as LBC acted as the on-air testbed for rolling news radio in the UK. This is the period before the publicly disgraced Shirley (Lady) Porter(cited for gerrymandering or vote rigging during the Greater London Council elections and subsequently her assets were sequestered but not before she managed to shed countless millions)... got her hands on the station from the original canadian management. The launch in 1973 attracted considerable attention and a sizeable audience, particularly for the pairing of the celebrated print journalist Paul Callan and the writer (later national newspaper editor and TV personality) Janet Street-Porter who contrived to create a new form of radio, albeit unintentionally. The pair were pitched as co-presenters of the morning drive-time show.[3] The intention was to contrast the urbane Callan with the less couth Street-Porter, whose accents were respectively known to studio engineers as "cut-glass" and "cut-froat".
- - In the event on and off air friction led to an entertaining stream of one-upmanship that became required listening for many Londoners, the sharper put-downs being blamed for several collisions by motorists incapacitated with laughter. The programme was the first in the UK to combine interviews with celebrities and heavyweight political figures on the same show, blurring the line between classic British comedy and analysis of international affairs. It set in place a seachange in the presentation of news programming. - - The original station spawned a number of personalities who went on to become household names in all branches of the U.K. media. They included Jon Snow, Carol Barnes, Julian Manyon, Dennis Rookard, George Gale, Mike Field, Brian Hayes, Peter Simpson, Julian Bray, Peter Allen, Rosie Boycott, Joan Thirkettle amongst others. Entertainment personalities included Jeremy Beadle who developed a late night phone-in programme and went on to star in a range of TV programmes. LBC introduced for its early rolling news service, handheld Motorola portable VHF sets - this is in a period long before mobile phones were widely available, rapid live uncut news reporting was taken to new levels much to the chagrin of other agencies and the BBC. This was at the height of the IRA bombing campaign centred on London, Capital Radio who opened for business shortly after LBC, were delighted to find that their news radio car had the same VHF broadcast and talk back frequencies as LBC, a mistake quickly realised by the LBC/IRN broadcast journalists who would release dummy wholly fake news and information reports to see how many duff reports would end up on Capitals breaking news service. Capital eventually pulled the plug, shut down the competing news service for London and took a feed from the IRN syndication service. Many LBC journalists and management made a wholesale exit to join ITN, where a large proportion are still employed in 2008!
When the original LBC company, then owned by Shirley Porter's Chelverton Investments, failed to have its two licences (LBC Newstalk and London Talkback Radio) renewed. After it lost its licence, they bid for a national AM licence but lost; a consortium, led by Associated Newspapers, was formed with former LBC controller Charlie Cox called Newstalk UK, but this was awarded to Talk Radio UK (now called talkSPORT). Shortly after, incoming radio station London News Radio bought it to make a smooth transition.
The LBC name was not used on-air at all between October 1994 and July 1996.
LBC was owned between 1994 and 1996 by Reuters who, for most of that time, operated the station as London News 97.3, a rolling news and travel information service on the FM band, and the phone-in driven service London News Talk 1152 on the MW band.
Between 1996 and 2002, LBC was part of London News Radio Limited, a company owned jointly by ITN, Daily Mail and General Trust, Reuters and the GWR Group. This new consortium revived the LBC name on 1152AM on 1 July 1996. At the end of 1996 the FM service was relaunched as News Direct 97.3FM.
Chrysalis trumpeted their purchase with the promise that they lift the listenership to at least one million from around 700,000 (LBC enjoyed an audience of more than two million in the early 1980s) but an array of presenters including Boy George, Henry Kelly, Caroline Feraday, Dr. Pam Spurr, Sandi Toksvig, (all no longer with the company) plus an array of on-air gimmicks and two managing directors has seen the audience remain largely static. LBC's 97.3FM's increase in audience has been at the expense of its AM service.
In 2005, the station's Managing Director Mark Flanagan left Chrysalis to set up a political consultancy company and was replaced by David Lloyd. Some claimed he held no previous experience in the talk and chat radio genre which overlooked the almost two years he spent with the Century FM brand in its Border TV ownership days where the station was a 50/50 music/talk service. David introduced a number of programme changes to mixed reactions - these included a 'Drive Time' slot presented by Iain Lee (since replaced by Paul Ross), a daily 'Big Quiz' which promises (but has yet to deliver) huge cash prizes (and has since been cut down to one show a week) and a number of weekend repeats. He also introduced a 'podcasting' service, now called LBC Plus and a number of premium rate promotional opportunities to boost falling advertising revenues experienced by the radio sector.
In February 2007, Chrysalis confirmed media speculation that they were 'reviewing' the entire radio operation at its investors request. Further media speculation from The Guardian suggested that the group had little option, due to shareholder pressure, to sell its radio arm, including LBC, raising up to £200,000,000 for new acquisitions while The Daily Telegraph suggested that it could be the subject of a 'management' buyout.
Of course; as a commercial radio station LBC 97.3 is in constant competition for 'London's listening quota'. With the advent of digital radio and on-line access to radio additional listeners are from time-to-time apparent from well beyond the London tube map outer reaches.
It is not surprising that fierce competition has precipitatated LBC 97.3 to label itself "London's Biggest Conversation" (whether or not true) against equal porcine volubility evidenced a short twist either right or left of the LBC 97.3 FM radio dial. If that axiom is to reference numerical terms (the total of those who listen in) it must be doubted as the summing of precise listening numbers to any radio station for the time being cannnot be feasible unless radios, DABs, etc. are fitted with listener quota tracking chips. However, if the label refers to 'quantitive personality' re presenter(s) feasibility is most certainly accepted.
[edit] Chrysalis Radio sold
On the 25 June 2007 it was announced that LBC along with its sister stations The Arrow, Heart and Galaxy network were to be sold for £170 million to Global Radio by Chrysalis Radio.[4]
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Oatts, Joanne, "LBC becomes 'London's Biggest Conversation', Digital Spy, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.
[edit] External links
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