[Orry Verducci]

What next? "Well advertisers are telling us people dont even want music anymore, just ads!" If you gut something people liked and replace it with something inferior of course they're going to stop listening. It's self inflicted and now it's happening to TV.

Is it inferior though?

Generally speaking I find the quasi-national stations to be much better executed products than the local stations they replaced. Instead of having a station with ok presenters and production we now have stations with excellent presenters and very slick production standards.

I find most people don't care if it's not local. They just want to hear a station that sounds good and plays music they like. As evidenced by the many people who listen to BBC national radio, or the stations we now have on the national DAB muxes.

To Global's credit they're also very good at making the stations appear local when they technically aren't. My local Heart station seemlessly weaves in "across Cambridgeshire" branding between the songs, and broadcasts news and travel bulletins bulletins dedicated to Cambridge. When done well like that most listeners can't tell the difference, or care that actually it's being broadcast from London/Milton Keynes.