GCap Media, Britain’s largest radio group, intends to focus on online media after “stabilizing” its plummeting advertising performance. Annual revenue is down nine percent, according to this morning’s trading update (pdf) for 2006/07. But, accounting for changes to ad inventory policy at London’s Capital station and the sale of two other stations, like-for-like performance is more encouraging, with a one percent increase projection for the current quarter. CEO Ralph Bernard: “Now, having stabilized the business, we intend to focus on the excellent opportunities we see in the digital world – particularly online.”
With a large portfolio of specialist and regional radio channels, GCap has benefited from the increased spectrum capacity on the UK’s DAB digital broadcasting network (it owns a majority stake in the platform itself), but has so far made few strides in the internet space. A trial that began in December on the Xfm station represented “the first phase of an ongoing strategy to deliver personalized and interactive radio services across the GCap Media Network”, but the so-called “Mi-Xfm” web player is more limited than music recommendation engines like Pandora and Last.fm.
- New deputy chairman: Bernard gave no other details of the new online focus but announced veteran media exec Richard Eyre, a director with mobile content publisher I-Play, had been appointed GCap deputy chairman after resigning from the board of rival radio owner Guardian Media Group to avoid a conflict of interest.