Telling the truth

Telford, Shropshire

When radio stations close, merge or reduce their local content the message for listeners and advertisers is not always an easy one. So how do you mitigate the risks?

Easy. You tell the truth, but you do it well.

So Telford FM deserves full credit for this clear, upfront explanation of their forthcoming merger with neighbouring service, The Servern which is published on the station’s website today:

107.4 Telford FM is to co-locate with The Severn (Shrewsbury and Oswestry FM Ltd) and share all programming, 107.4 Telford FM will change name and become ‘107.4 The Severn’ later this year.

The station will broadcast on three FM frequencies – 107.1FM for Oswestry and North Shropshire, 106.5FM for the Shrewsbury area and 107.4FM for Telford, East Shropshire.

The plan is to change the station name to ‘107.4 The Severn’ later in the year. We will increase the amount of local information and we will still broadcast local news, travel, sport, weather, what’s on etc, but it will cover all of Shropshire not just the individual towns of Telford, Shrewsbury and Oswestry. We will be ”countywide” with news and information from all over Shropshire. The station will still be 90% music based with a mix of today’s hits and classic tracks and still be on the same FM frequency.

We will still offer advertising packages for each area, the commercial breaks will be time balanced on the different frequencies so advertisers will still be able to buy cost effective packages for their town or across the group at a discount.

Ofcom approved the change request to share programming and co-locate stating the change will not substantially change the character of service for either station and it is possible to run both services from Telford within the obligations of their formats.

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it.

Photo of Telford: One Cloud? by liber, on Flickr. Used under CC licence.