GCap boss switches off plans for digital

Instead Fru Hazlitt, who took over at the GCap Media radio stations group last month, believes the industry should reinvest in FM, and migrate audiences to listening to Johnny Vaughan and Denise van Outen or Henry Kelly and Simon Bates on their computers.

Under pressure from a £300 million hostile takeover from failed ITV boss Charles Allen and his backers, Hazlitt has gone into GCap and today decided to rip up the digital radio strategy of her predecessor Ralph Bernard.

The reason, says Hazlitt, is that despite the huge investment in transmission infrastructure and in promoting DAB (digital audio broadcasting) by both the industry in general and GCap in particular, digital radio isn't working.

"The consumer take-up of DAB digital radio listening has not been speedy to say the least," said Hazlitt.

"The truth is that the consumer is not voting with their feet as far as digital radio is concerned. The consumer response has been slow. Only 9% of radio listeners are listening on digital and only 4% of them are listening to digital-only radio.

"When that compares to GCap's net spending of £8 million [£23 million spending running DAB services with revenues back of just £15 million], DAB is not economically viable for GCap."

As a result, Hazlitt has ordered the sale of GCap's stake in the Digital One DAB transmission platform leading to the closure of Planet Rock and theJazz, as well as the Core and Life stations which had already got the bullet.

The plan to get GCap making money again will also see the amount of adverts on its flagship Capital radio station double to nine minutes an hour.

"Capital had this well-publicised rule of not running two ads in a row. This has had no impact on listeners, numbers of which have continued to fall, but had a serious impact on advertising," said Hazlitt. Her plans were derided by friends of Allen, whose Global Radio business has made a 190p-a-share offer for GCap. "It is four closures and a reversal of strategy," said a source.

Hazlitt today refused to say how many hundreds of jobs might go or how much the closures and sales will cost.

GCap is part-owned by DMGT, owner of the Evening Standard.