So, gossipers are gossiping that the board of radio firm GCap will tomorrow accept the takeover offer from rivals Global Radio - tomorrow being the most recent deadline set by the City's Takeover Panel for the GCap/Global negotiations to be completed. Gossipers also reckon that, should that happen, GCap CEO Fru Hazlitt, who only joined the company at the end of last year of course, will immediately step down, though taking a severance package worth nearly a million with her, so I wouldn't lose too much sleep over her speedy departure.
If GCap was to merge with Global Radio, which is essentially the former Chrysalis Radio empire, it will create a considerable force in the UK radio industry, it essentially being the combination of three of the pre-2005 radio majors, Capital, GWR and Chrysalis.
Speculation remains as to whether media regulator OfCom or the UK's competition authorities will have anything to say about the merger - a merged GCap/Global will become particularly dominant in the Birmingham area, plus would own two of the top three commercial music stations in London (Capital and Heart), both of which could cause concern. There is also much speculation as to how many of the plans recently proposed by Hazlitt for turning round the fortunes of GCap might be adopted by Global Radio chief Charles Allen should he gain control of the company - in particular whether he would adopt Hazlitt's plans to dump their share in digital audio broadcasting company Digital One, to close down GCap's digital only stations, to sell the regional Xfm stations and to review the finances of Capital's Gold Network.
Either way, interesting times are ahead at GCap, whether that be under Hazlitt's radical plan for recovery or, as now seems more likely, under UK radio's new uber-chief Allen, a man who received much criticism for his work in his last big media job, boss of ITV.