Search results matching tag 'gcap media'

Emap Disposals

1841938 — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:06:47 GMT

There's been a great deal of discussion recently about EMAP demerging its business or selling off chunks to anyone with a large enough cheque.

The nature of EMAP's business is going to make that difficult for whoever's going to cast an eye over the main consumer brands.

EMAP has led the way in producing cross-platform entities, all of which reinforce each other. Would Smash Hits Radio do (apparently) so well, if there wasn't a TV station that supported it? What happens to the support Heat magazine is giving the relaunched Heat Radio if they go their separate ways?

In an ideal world the buyer would scoop up all the branded bits together, for Kerrang this would include the magazine, website, events, TV and radio - but are the potential buyers - GCap, GMG and Global have all been mooted - really geared up to run all of those different businesses? And if they stretch their core competencies will the brands they've paid handsomely for start to lose their value.

There is also a fly in the ointment with regards the TV channels. EMAP has of course just flogged off half of the TV operation (The Hits, Smash Hits, Kerrang, The Box, Kiss, Magic, Q) to Channel 4. EMAP's had enough trouble keeping each of the platforms 'on brand' and that's when they own them all, it's going to be hugely difficult when these are all owned by separate companies.

'Gold'

1841938 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:38:35 GMT

Interesting to read about the new line-up for 'Gold' - the combination of Capital Gold and Classic Gold. Is it just me, or is it odd that a station called 'Gold' as a silver logo?

Reducing Distribution

1841938 — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:17:27 GMT

Interesting to see that GCap have reduced the distribution of some of their brands today by taking five off radio stations off the digital television platforms.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Core and Life - the stations that the firm declared they were 'ceasing investment' in earlier this year have disappeared as has Classic Gold (the station they're in the process of merging with Capital Gold) and Capital Disney (which was shut down last month).

What is a little surprising though is that agency favourite Chill has been removed from the TV platforms. It will be interesting to see how it affects RAJAR for the station, which has seen its audience nearly double in the past 12 months. The listeners are not happy on their MySpace page, that's for sure.

For any media owner, balancing the spending on platforms is difficult, especially when your product is still in a growth phase and platform attribution is to hard to get a handle on. The danger, however, is removing the places where your audience wants to receive you. Users are getting used to being able to consume the media they want on any platform they want. If barriers are suddenly erected to stop users getting to this content, they’ll probably just look elsewhere, but will they remember come back?

Surely, in the digital world media operators should be removing barriers to content not creating new ones?