More criticism for Capital Radio – this time from the advertising world. The station has admitted that changes need to be made on its main London station if it’s to stop losing listeners to rivals like Heart and Kiss – a rock show, album chart show and less pop music policy are all being considered. While welcoming these moves two top media buying agencies have warned the station needs to manage any transition carefully – especially as it will run alongside big changes on the station’s breakfast show in the lead up to Chris Tarrant’s retirement from the peak time slot later this year.
Mark Jarvis, head of broadcast at Carat, told Media Guardian: "In London Capital is suffering in the face of increased competition. There are 26 commercial channels and Capital is easily the biggest and easy to hit. Their audience has been suffering and the last three Rajars have shown drops in audience. Consumers are looking increasingly for diversity. And you can draw an analogy with ITV - being all things to all people is very hard to maintain and it's difficult for Capital to hold on to the mass audience they've got. But it's a really tough call because if you believe in customer segmentation you'd have to say Capital is never going to do it."
Howard Bareham, head of radio at MindShare, added: "They were all things to all people and that's why they have lost audience - because they weren't doing any of it particularly well. That's why Kiss, Heart and Jazz - stations targeted at a particular group - stole audience from Capital." While welcoming genre shows that targeted specific parts of their audience at specific times he added: "If you like rock, why tune in to Capital's rock show when you can listen to Virgin all day long?".