While I can understand Global’s strategy of adopting the French/Italian radio business model of acquiring a bunch of local licences and turning them into a single quasi-national brand, the jury is still out over whether ‘Heart or bust’ is really the right way to go.

It worked well in France and Italy because the stations involved were invariably those licensed under de-regulation in the 80s, had subsequently failed and were now being bought by the successful players, such as (in France) NRJ, Skyrock and Fun Radio, who simply installed a satellite dish and relayed programming from Paris.

What we have here is a group of well-established heritage FM stations being given a new brand – and format – and going ahead without, it would seem, having cleared it with the regulator first.

From Ofcom’s content sampling report:

“Licensees do not require Ofcom’s permission to change the names of their stations, although they do need to inform us. They do, however, require Ofcom’s consent to make any changes to a station’s published Format, including the ‘Character of Service’ which provides a general description of the station’s output. To date, Ofcom has not received any request from Global Radio to make alterations to the Format of GWR FM (or, indeed, to any of the other stations that will be adopting the ‘Heart’ branding).”