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Media
Orion to rebrand Gold stations as Free Radio 80s
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 25 May 2012
Midlands-based radio group Orion Media has announced it will stop operating outposts of Global Radio’s Gold service on a franchise arrangement later this year, and launch a new station on the freed up frequencies to be called Free Radio 80s.
Orion, of course, originally came into being when Global Radio was forced by the Competition Commission to sell a number of its stations in the Midlands after acquiring the GCap group.
Although Orion, then a new company, took over the licences and frequencies GCap had in the region, two GCap/Global brands were maintained – Heart and Gold – with the new licence owners franchising the Global brands and programming formats, and airing a lot of Global-produced programmes. Heart was then replaced with Orion’s own GEM station in late 2010, and now Global’s Gold will be withdrawn from the region too.
Free Radio is the brand Orion has recently rolled out across its other FM stations in the region (which were formerly called Mercia, Wyvern, Beacon and BRMB), so the new name for the former Gold frequencies, all on AM, will make it much more obvious that the FM and AM networks are sister stations. Obviously the output will also be different, given Gold plays oldies from the 60s, 70s and 80s, rather than having an exclusively eighties based playlist.
Confirming the change, Orion chief Phil Riley told reporters: “We currently have 120,000 listeners across our AM/DAB network in the West Midlands. Our goal is to grow this audience by developing a music radio station that naturally sits closer o our FM brand”.
