On January 20th 2006 one of the biggest Global media companies changed how the rest of the media world saw them with just THREE WORDS.
This company was founded 83 years earlier by two brothers with a single focus on one word ANIMATION.
The company is the Walt Disney Company and the three words are HIGH+SCHOOL+MUSICAL. And [...]

Music research…big thing I always get asked about by listeners and non-listeners, that and what time do I get up and why aren’t I as funny as Chris Moyles!
Radio 2 told me about some research they did.
Played a very new unknown song, one group heard it with a dj saying how much he loved it [...]

CBS and AOL have this week announced that they will stream their radio services on the iPhone – Andy Grumbridge looks a benefit of this from a UK / Golden Square perspective

With Apple opening up the iPhone for 3rd party developers there will be a surge of radio-listening apps for consumers to download - and [...]

In July 2006 I was fortunate enough to spend some time in Mumbai, speaking about S&P at the first ever India Radio Forum. My companions for this 4-day trip were James Cridland and GCap’s Nick Piggott, both of whom are famously excellent speakers on all things digital… I recall sharing a Mumbai mini-cab with them [...]

The team at Golden Square should very proud this morning as they are the only radio station to achieve three Arqiva nominations.

V Festival for Programme or Feature of the year
Virgin Radio News team for News award
Virgin Sales team for National Sales team of the year.

We at TIML believe awards can genuinely help bring a positive [...]

“In the first acquisition of a British media outlet by an Indian company, the Times of India Group has bought Virgin Radio for 53.2 million pounds.” 
Read the full article and watch the film at timesnow.tv.

 
All decisions have an element of risk, getting a better feel for that risk is key to our decision making. I often get asked about the radio relationship with Research.
Here are re-occurring comments

How can you research emotion – music!
Clips of songs down the phone!
The world is run by b****y focus groups!

For us TIML it’s all [...]

“As Drama 2.0 pointed out recently, AOL is starting to think it may have paid too much for Bebo.
The recent sale of Virgin Radio for ‘just’ £53m seems to confirm that.”
Read the full article on the e-consultancy News & Blog.
 

“A major change that is about to occur on the Infinite Dial was announced late on Friday. Virgin Radio, one of the UK’s few national commercial radio brands and one of the most streamed radio stations in the world, was sold to a combination of the Times of India company and Absolute Radio….”
Read the full [...]

Everyone focuses on the power of the image especially the moving image. But we are all in the AUDIO business and for me the Sonic indentity rules every day.
Who can forget the Intel sonic or even the Mcdonalds ‘Justin’ sonic. Both of these are quite new arrivals on the scene. For me one of the [...]

Rarely a moment of a day passes without my mind wandering into possible brand benefits and new names. You just can’
t help yourself, do you feel the same?
A quick stroll with the family on a Saturday into the High St to buy some shoes used to be a simple exercise.
Big decision of the day, whether [...]

We know some of you write blogs - we enjoy reading them.

Adam (with his newly increased fame, after a recent namecheck in the Media Guardian) wrote:
“The problem is that you have to tread very carefully when blogging about your employer. So I’m not going to say a great deal more, but as ever, what I [...]

There’s been a fair bit of interest and comment on what we’re up to. Here are some of our favourite articles and blog posts. Feel free to comment on them, either here or there.

Jon Plunkett’s ‘Farewell Virgin Radio, hello…. what exactly?‘
The Guardian’s ‘Virgin Radio: Clive Dickens looks to station’s 2001 heyday‘
James Cridland’s ‘Farewell Then Virgin [...]

Testing out our new ‘interim’ PowerPoint template:

Donnach getting nervous:

What a lovely audience:

A couple of people asked me what was playing on my IPOD yesterday afternoon at Skype.
In fact it was my ‘Today’ playlist, some of my faves of the moment.

(Click on the image to see the detail)
Looking at it again it makes me realize how eclectic and varied my taste has become over the years.
A bit [...]