[UKJinglesMember]

Is it my imagination or has the Heart Network dropped Jingles all together now?
(Unfortunately I’ve had to listen to it all afternoon and only heard liners) :0&

[LenGroat]

Sadly there is a straight-jacket mentality on this station (and the others owned by Global) so there is limited music choice, djs allowed to say very little, and idents that are completely non-memorable.

Result? The younger generations have little reason to ‘love radio’ so will resort to Radio 2 or some digital music device…..

[UKJinglesMemberAuthor]

The sad thing is Joe Public won’t notice the difference as the 3 worded Jingles weren’t really memorable were they? I-)
Who can tell the difference between Heart (Coke) and Gold (Pepsi) when they used Jingles like…..Thanks God for 7-up! )

[IainJohnston]

The now-cleared takeover of the GMG stations and hence the merging of the most choice stations from the Real Radio stable may be getting taken by Park as an opportunity for a bit of re-styling of the “Heart Network”, especially as many of the stations about to be “absorbed” are larger regional stations rather than the many city/county ones already “Borg’ed”.

Perhaps running-down the old one before a new package? (Due for one?)

Or just even more cost cutting to help pay the interest (to their own parent company?) on the £33 million loan to buy out GMG?

[simon_t123Member]

In Essex local shows are using quite a few sung cuts still … notably on ‘feelgood fridays’ … but generally in Drivetime & weekends the IQ Beats cuts are in use, not sure if that follows around the country but it sure clashes with the jingle-less network shows

As mentioned here it seems Global have not had a very good run of things financially and of course now have to ‘flog’ off stations in key areas, which from the look of the options given to them would seem to imply that getting shot of the ‘Real’ brands is the best option, given that Heart & Capital, plus some Smooth are also choices for the axe !

A custom package from IQ Beats as large as Heart has commissioned for several years can’t come cheap so a few IQ Beats sounding ramps will do the trick ! I hope that’s for the interim, but as the last package already featured a large chunk of re-edited, re-mixed & re-instrumented cuts I fear it was a sign of things to come … as in now !!!

[IainJohnston]

The whole point of Global buying GMG WAS to get hold of the Real regional stations and convert them to Heart! Anything else is a mere sideshow.

Also, they aren’t unloading stations for financial reasons – its due to the findings of the (non industry specific) Competition Commission – Global would have huge market dominance if they were allowed to keep EVERYTHING they buy.

Also, they ARE doing extremely well financially – ask any former employee by what cost to the people once employed.
The so-called “losses” are merely part of a complex series of financial devices now commonly used by a great many now foreign-owned formerly “British” companies (for that read now “Channel Islands” holding company/trust) owned by overseas entities.
But we won’t go further into that here – its all “out there” to read on the Web.

Also. it would appear that in 2014 Ofcom are going to further de-regulate the already greatly weakened format/music conditions on station/group/network “licencees”.

So what better time to start “softening up” their listening public for the free-for-all ahead by making an already-bland “station” even more bland, so that when the rules are further relaxed they can then re-style it to whatever “new model” that I’m sure they’ll be planning right now?

As to whether sung jingles will be part of the “All New Heart”, only time will tell…

[Author]

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