How many times, like me, have you met someone, told them where you work and got the reply: “Oh…I can’t get Virgin where I live”?

Even though London-focused content is generally restricted to 105.8, it too often seems to encourage people who listen on this frequency to have the mislead perception that Virgin Radio is a London station.

How worried should we be by this?

Well, there are a fair few people who work in the capital on a daily basis, who reside outside the M25. (750,000, it says here: http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article1017728.ece). Not to mention the many who visit regularly for work or other reasons. So a great deal of these will be out of reach of the London FM frequency when they’re at home. This isn’t great if they believe “out of reach of Virgin on FM” means “out of reach of Virgin Radio”.

Any of these people who are exposed to Virgin on FM while they’re in the city are quite likely to get the impression that it’s purely a London station, if they listen closely enough. Why? Well, whilst we now avoid the word “London” in station imaging, ‘London’ / ‘here in London’ / ‘more news for London’) are seemingly uttered in every split FM news bulletin, and the travel news on 105.8 is (and has to be) within-the-M25-centric. Then there’s the additional FM-only coverage (within news bulletins) of events like the London Marathon, mayoral election, and so on. Whilst all this is fantastic for super-serving the sizeable London audience, could it be playing a part in discouraging “Daytime-Londoners” from attempting to listen to the station (on Digital or AM) when they get home?

We all know that connecting with listeners by engaging with their community is the golden rule of local radio, but in this 21st Century multimedia world, does ‘community’ really need to refer to *geographical* community…? Particularly in the case of this, a truly national brand.

I believe some serious questions need to be asked as to whether the disadvantages outweigh any benefits gained by offering any London content AT ALL (beyond the minimum legal requirement, of course, Ofcom-fearers!). And if London content is here to stay, is there a cleverer way of making it work for us, and not against us. We could learn a few lessons from the TV news line: “now let’s take a look at what’s happening where YOU are”. Their local news coverage enables them to better relate to viewers; yet there’s never any doubt that “News at 10” on ITV, or the 6pm BBC1 news bulletin are national products.

The One Golden Square rebranding provides the unique opportunity – through marketing and programming – of ensuring listeners’ perceptions of the brand are exactly where we want them to be, right from day one.

On the one hand, it’s the place where we fight amongst the other commercial services on an equal footing because we’re on FM as they are. So we tend to devote lots of time comparing ourselves with those services, competing for the valuable London sales revenue and spending the vast bulk of our marketing budget in the city.

But precisely 50% of our listeners (and 46% of our listening hours) are outside of the London TV region.

So how do you reach those people effectively? TV advertising on a national basis would be lovely, but extremely expensive, and until DAB penetration is higher, possibly not something to be done on a regular basis.

But this is a national radio station, and it stands apart from local radio because of that. While others might be networking, this is a single service without opt-outs, and it should behave that way. There are undoubtedly more digital listening hours available outside of London rather than from within it – not that we don’t want to rule the London roost of course!

On another tack, long timers here like myself will recall the long lost Liquid – a wholly remarkable station that gave a digital radio slot on a service that felt like something beyond what a student radio service could be. Some of the people who did shows on that have gone on to some very interesting careers since then. But perhaps I should leave that to Tim Vernon to talk about.