Radio City sold to German empire

Jul 30 2008 by Barry Turnbull, Liverpool Daily Post

RADIO City is now under German ownership, having been sold by Emap to the Bauer Publishing Group.

The new private owners may be expecting big things after the business last year returned £3.8m in pre-tax profits on sales of £10.4m.

Extra revenue may be possible in a tough media market following the launch of the CityTalk station this year, the latest licence to be won by the company. City Talk is an all speech station which complements the existing stations of Radio City96.7 and Magic1548.

In the first half of this year listening figures for both music stations have increased, explained station manager Richard Maddock.

He said: “For Radio City 96.7 our reach has gone up from 470,000 to 480,000, our total hours are up from 4.295m to 4.335m and our market share has risen from 11.8% to 11.9%

“Both hours and reach have risen quarter on quarter over the past 4 books – Q3 2007 reach was 415,000 and hours were 3.913m, so since this time last year reach is up 16% and hours up by 11%.

“Radio City 96.7 has more listeners (reach) than any other station in the market, commercially we’re number one with a share that’s over twice as big as our nearest competitor (Smooth). Even if you add the shares of Smooth, Century and Juice together we’re still bigger.

“For Magic 1548 our reach has gone up 7% to 82,000 and, total hours are up 6% to 680,000. Magic 1548’s market share is now up to 1.9%. Some of our competitors have found it tough in our market, Juice’s hours are down 24% and Century’s have fallen 15%.”

No financial figures are yet available for this year but for the period to March 2007 the business made a pre-tax profit of £3.8m on a turnover of £10.4m compared with £4.9m and £11.6m the previous year.

The directors report stated:

“We believe we offer the best choice for our target audience of both listeners and advertisers and as such are well-placed to take advantage of commercial market upturns. Going forward the focus will continue to be on growing audiences and providing the best and most relevant media solutions to clients.”

Bauer Publishing Group is a worldwide media empire.