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Jazz FM chief moves to make it a stand alone company

By | Published on Friday 9 January 2009

Richard Wheatly, the former Executive Chairman of the Local Radio Company, is planning on buying Jazz FM, which was relaunched by LRC as a digital only service last year.

Jazz FM has had a long and mixed history since its launch as an FM station in London in 1990. Wheatly managed the station for a time before its acquisition by the Guardian Media Group in 2002.

GMG subsequently relaunched the service as the easy-listening station Smooth FM, shunting jazz programming (which it was still obliged to air under the Jazz FM licence) into the graveyard shift and online.

After rivals GCap shut down its new digital jazz service theJazz early last year, Wheatly had the idea to resurrect Jazz FM. He persuaded GMG to give him a three-year licence to use the Jazz FM name, and launched the new digital only jazz service within the LRC group.

He stepped down from the top job at LRC so he could take a hands on role heading up the new jazz channel, but stayed on as a Non-Executive Director of the parent company.

But now the plan is for Jazz FM to spin off as a totally separate company. Wheatly resigned his director role at LRC yesterday so he could spearhead what would essentially be a management buyout.

Insiders say that Wheatly has managed to secure some lucrative sponsorship deals for his new station despite the gloomy advertising market, and is said to have investors interested in backing his buyout and in providing funds to further boost the service’s profile.

Which could all be good news for jazz fans. That said, all the Jazz FM owners and managers there have been over the years have struggled to make a serious jazz music service add up commercially, with anything but the most mainstream jazz music attracting just a niche audience.

Some reckon there is still a viable business in a jazz station based around Global Radio’s Classic FM model (which was what Global, then GCap, had hoped to achieve with the aforementioned theJazz), but whether that is true, and whether this is the right time to try, given the slump in the advertising market, remains to be seen.

Still, if they were to add the blues into their playlists they might find the British public will feel an affinity to their output as the recession really bites.



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