Recently appointed GCap London MD Fru Hazlitt has set out the latest set of plans to turn round the radio group's still struggling flagship station Capital Radio, following those expected disappointing end of year financials in which revenue was down 9%.
Former Virgin Radio boss Hazlitt told reporters and investors yesterday that she was confident Capital could fully recover through a combination of interactive platforms, customisable content, online communities and music recommendation tools - which is rather predictable given the current media climate, though it is probably the way forward, even though many of the innovative interactive and digital services offered by Capital's rivals, including Virgin, are yet to have any significant impact on RAJARs and therefore rate card and therefore ad revenues.
Commenting on the ongoing challenge of fixing Capital, Hazlitt told reporters: "In London, commercial radio is driven by three things - its music, its breakfast show and its London information. What we're seeing is that Capital performs very well in two of those - it has always done well with its London-ness. The breakfast show we know we have to keep progressing but it has been performing very well. We are still working on it but are very confident. And in the past with music, we tried to move genre but should have stayed with contemporary pop music because we know we don't have commercial competition in that genre".
On all the multimedia shenanigans she continued: "Radio now operates in a multiplatform environment. In the past it has operated on one platform that has been tightly regulated, but now it can operate in a space that is more like a free market and that's a huge advantage for powerful brands like Capital and Classic".