Trent FM Ceases To Exist January 3 2011


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On January 3rd 2011 the radio station that was born on the 3rd of July 1975 will cease to be.

Many stations in the group owned by Global Media will merge, and become "Capital FM 95 to 106" and only two shows per day will actually come from Nottingham, breakfast and drivetime.

As someone who started his radio career in March 1980 there, I personally am very saddened that we are to lose a "heritage" brand.

Leicester Sound & Ram will also be no more, again, two stations I worked on, being involved in the launch of both.

Commiserations to my friends and former colleagues who are losing their jobs.

Story below.

Capital FM to replace Galaxy

Global Radio is to scrap the Galaxy Network, Red Dragon FM, Trent FM, Leicester Sound and Ram FM and rebrand all stations as Capital FM.

The new nine-station “Capital Network” will launch on January 3rd 2011 when all programmes with the exception of breakfast and drive will originate from Leicester Square, London.

Founder and Global Group CEO, Ashley Tabor told RadioToday.co.uk that only a “handful” of presenters will lose their jobs as a result of this move, which he describes as one of the biggest events to happen in UK commercial radio.

He said: “Since Global was created we have prided ourselves on being an industry innovator. The formation of the new Capital Network represents another huge innovation from Global Radio, taking an established, trusted and loved brand and extending it across the UK to create a true national network of stations reaching 6.3m with a clear hit music proposition.”

Local presenters on Trent, Ram, Red Dragon and Leicester Sound, plus some Galaxy presenters are affected by the changes. Global Radio is offering positions in London for staff affected at the network hub in Leeds. Split links will be used by all London presenters outside of breakfast and drivetime to keep local content on the regional and local stations.

Capital FM will replace the six Galaxy stations operating in Scotland, South Coast, Birmingham, and Manchester, Yorkshire and North East as well as the current Hit Music Network stations Red Dragon, Trent, RAM and Leicester Sound.

It means former Capital FM sister stations such as BRMB will now compete directly with the new network, and Bauer's Big City Network faces stiffer competition in markets such as Leeds and Manchester.

From 2011 the network will be known as “95 – 106 Capital FM, The UK’s No.1 Hit Music Station” but the stations will ID locally as [freq] Capital FM but local news hours will be extended and local advertising will remain locally sold.

Global Radio has only just completed a similar programme of creating Heart as a national brand, closing 20 locations and merging them with nearby stations to create larger single stations.

jobs.

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So that's the end of local broadcasting in commercial radio. If you want local news from a local newsroom you'll have to listen to the BBC.

Just like they've done in television with ITV, you now only get local stuff from BBC Midlands. On ITV, Central News used to be local (when it came from Lenton Lane) but now it's Birmingham based with just a nod to this area.

It's a business and they don't make any money from operating at a small local level, so they just turn it into a national organisation and get rid of all the local staff and premises. Cheap is the word.

Interesting to see the boss calls it "one of the biggest events to happen in UK commercial radio." He's right. It will be effectively the end of regional commercial radio.

I remember when Radio Trent started, and it seemed a bit of fresh air compared to Radio Nottingham. They were both covering the same area, but at least they were both genuinely local.

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3/7/75, remember it well, and if I'm correct the weeks before that when it ran "anon" testing etc? was working on the old St Annes council estate renovating such, the houses were in the main empty and every "crew" had trent on, well for awhile till they got fed up with the constant repeated adverts

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I'm sorry for people losing jobs but someone used to put it on at work years ago and it drove me mad with adverts for double glazing.

Long live BBC6Music!

Agreed.

In my earlier post I mentioned it was the end of local commercial radio :mellow: but that doesn't mean I'll miss it. I stopped liking it around 30 years ago. It was good when it started as Radio Trent because it was slightly different and unusual compared to what we'd known before. Unfortunately that didn't last long. It soon became identikit SmoothBlandCorporate FM

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  • 2 months later...

Agreed.

In my earlier post I mentioned it was the end of local commercial radio :mellow: but that doesn't mean I'll miss it. I stopped liking it around 30 years ago. It was good when it started as Radio Trent because it was slightly different and unusual compared to what we'd known before. Unfortunately that didn't last long. It soon became identikit SmoothBlandCorporate FM

Have to agree with you there, the demise started when GWR purchased it (Trent) from Capital Radio, who bought the group just to get their hands on BRMB, who were in the same Midlands Radio Group.

In no time at all, the output from the three East Midlands stations, and indeed the rest in the group became the same, when they started using identical playlists, and apart from a minute or two difference, it was possible to tune between Trent Ram And Leicester Sound, and hear the same song, ringing alarm bells as to what was eventually to come.

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PS, interesting to note that all of the stations in the group are keeping the same breakfast teams, so Nottingham keeps Twiggy and Emma, but rumours are rife that it is only because they don't want to alienate listeners away from the station.........YET!

Let's see what they do a month or three down the line.

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I remember going to the Trent studios to do my top five favourite songs, cannot remember the DJs name but it was quite an experience

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When Paula White became a 'Presenter' RT hit an all time low.

I used to turn her horrible squeeky voice off when she was

flying round in that Traffic plane!

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I remember going to the Trent studios to do my top five favourite songs, cannot remember the DJs name but it was quite an experience

That DJ could well have been me!

I inherited my show from Kenny Hague, and the "All time Top 5" was a feature that I took over, and would invite listeners to send in their top 5 songs, and would play them, before calling them up for a brief chat on air.

I (in hindsight) stupidly changed the title of the feature, as disco was Thee insound, to your favourite five disco discs (FFDD) :unsure:

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Talking of radio what ever happened to that female presenter on radio nottingham whose name I typically can't recall! good looking dark haired local girl, went on to do east mids tv weather, then the news, then vanished! I thought she'd "make it"

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Radio can sure be a fickle mistress, take John Peters for instance, first breakfast DJ to be heard on Trent, same with GEM, a similar scenario with Saga and then Smooth, and then Smooth "let him go" and he is now on a much smaller station with a restricted coverage, when he should really be on one of the larger stations.

In the States, the older DJ is revered, here it seems the opposite applies, that is such a shame.

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