Steve Orchard, The Evening Standard

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

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CAN CAPITAL EVER GET BACK TO NUMBER ONE? BY JAMES SILVER

Capital Radio owner GCap Media's revolving door has been spinning like a roulette wheel recently. Last week saw Britain's biggest commercial radio group - which was created by the merger of GWR and Capital a year ago - announce that Capital's managing director, Keith Pringle, and programme director, Nick Goodman, would be leaving the group 'by mutual agreement'. Their abrupt departure, just months after overseeing a much-heralded January relaunch, follows the exits of former Capital boss David Mansfield and three more executives last year.

Talking in his office overlooking the pigeons, tourists and drizzle of Leicester Square, Steve Orchard, GCap's bullish 47-year-old operations director, describes the decision to part company with Pringle and Goodman as 'a difficult one'. 'They've done some remarkably good work in getting the station relaunched, but where we need to take [Capital] next requires a different skill-set,' he says, sounding a touch like David Brent. 'And at that point we decided it was better that we had a parting of the ways.'

Capital Radio, for so long the leading brand in the cut-throat London commercial radio market, has been floundering lately, hit by the triple whammy of the departure of Chris Tarrant, a far better-resourced and advertising recession-proof BBC Radio 1 and 2, as well as Chrysalis' resurgent Heart FM.

Orchard, a radio man to his fingertips, who recalls the days when producers worked with chalk and reel-to-reel tape, makes no bones about the problems his flagship station faces. 'Capital's heritage in this city is enormous,' he says. 'It's the radio station everyone believes is number one. Sadly, it isn't, and we reached a point in the autumn where we had slipped behind both Heart and Magic, as well as the BBC stations. We realised that we weren't going to return to number one by doing the same things which had got us to number three.'

And so Capital's January relaunch followed. It included a shift away from 'manufactured pop' to a 'more melodic, singer-songwriter' music policy and a greater emphasis on 'London content'. Orchard has also implemented a listener-friendly strategy - pioneered at Australian sister station Nova 969 - of never playing more than two ads in a row.

For the last quarter of 2005, Tarrant's breakfast show successor Johnny Vaughan bounced back in the ratings, gaining some 100,000 listeners, many of whom deserted the station in droves when Tarrant left. Orchard maintains that GCap stands full-square behind Vaughan. 'Johnny's position is not under threat. If you look at the longevity and phenomenal talent of Chris, you would have to accept it would take a while for listeners to readjust. Certainly, in the early phase, a lot of listeners will have said 'He's just not Chris Tarrant'.'

But is the rest of the station's talent roster safe? 'There is no radio station on the planet which has found its complete line-up and will stick with it for evermore.'

A few Capital DJ's might be reaching for the phone to call their agents on hearing that. I press him on whether Drivetime host Richard Bacon's job is secure. 'If you look at any individual DJ, and say 'Is that DJ safe?' I think that's an unfair position to put management in. Richard is doing a good job for us and I'm confident he'll be producing good ratings.'

While that sounds a little like a football club chairman expressing his full confidence in his manager, later I am assured via email that 'there are no current plans to change any of the DJs at Capital Radio'.

Recent revelations about the bonanza pay deals reportedly enjoyed by BBC Radio DJs has caused consternation among commercial radio companies, who argue that the corporation is paying market-distorting sums.

'It clearly is an issue for us because, although we are the biggest player in commercial radio, we can't compete against the BBC and their seemingly bottomless pit of money,' says Orchard. 'They are forcing the rates up around the industry. You've got to question where the public value is in that because the public would still be hearing those DJs on other radio stations at a lower cost. So why are they paying these enormous fees? I can tell you the pressure is certainly not coming from the commercial sector.'

Orchard - who announced on Monday that Capital's new programme director will be Australian Scott Muller, who runs the aforementioned Nova 969 in Sydney - graduated from Oxford with a history degree and a masters in applied social studies. After a stint as a social worker, he began in the radio sweatshop, as a jobbing football reporter and local breakfast presenter.

Rising quickly through the ranks at GWR, he was appointed group programme director in 1994. In the wake of the merger, he became operations director of GCap Media, joining the company's board last November.

The exodus of former Capital executives at GCap, argues Orchard, was simply a consequence of the merger. 'When you pull two companies together with duplicated structures, you are going to create redundancy. Normally, those things are sorted out at the point of the merger. But the GWR/Capital merger was one of equals. There were two parallel structures intact. And what exposed it was the difficult state of the advertising market.'

Some might quibble with his assessment that the merger was 'one of equals'. A year on, GWR has emerged very much in the winners' enclosure, with all three of GCap's executive directors <\<>- including chairman Ralph Bernard <\<>- from its side of the fence. 'You can't rewrite history,' he concedes, 'and that is what's happened. But there wasn't any master plan to install GWR executives at the helm of GCap.'

Whatever the merry-go-round of suits, Orchard is convinced that with Johnny Vaughan the station has the right long-term talent to win back listeners. 'My perception now is that there is nobody as funny as Johnny on the dial. When he first came on the radio he probably sounded a bit harsh and blokey. But he has worked harder than anyone in this building to learn the craft. If you listen to his show today, he is much warmer.

'With the combination of the music changes, the impact of the ad strategy and now with the improvements with Johnny, we have got the station ready for people to come back to us.'

(The Evening Standard, April 26th 2006)

Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, April 26, 2006

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