Real Radio Scotland has swooped to buy Paisley-based music station Q96.
Real
Radio, which is part of the Guardian Media Group (GMG), was named
Broadcast Company of The Year at the Drum Media awards earlier this
month.
The deal is expected to go through in October, although
Real Radio will need permission from Ofcom to move Q96 into its Glasgow
headquarters.
Although no price has been disclosed for the deal,
industry insiders believe it would have been relatively inexpensive for
GMG as the Paisley station only had a weekly reach of 46,000 and the
audience has been steadily declining.
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Real Radio managing
director Billy Anderson declined to be drawn on format or name changes
at this stage but pointed out that Q96 would be heavily influenced by
the experience within Real Radio Scotland.
“We’ve bought a
station and we don’t want to run it at the current performance levels.
What we have to do is arrest that decline.”
Q96 was owned by UTV
which inherited the station when it bought the Wireless Group for
£96.9m last year in a deal which saw it also buy the licence for
Edinburgh-based all-speech station Talk 107 which it launched in
February.
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UTV also owns Dundee-based station Wave 102 and appears to have decided to concentrate on its stations in the east of Scotland.
Real Radio is a highly news-orientated station with a team of 10 reporters contributing to its 24-hour regional news service.
Earlier
this year the station retained its title as Scotland¹s number one
commercial radio station, according to figures released by Rajar.
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