100% Absolute by Clive Dickens

22Sep

Firstly, I wanted to say we have all been working extremely hard recently in the run-up to the sale of the business, the summer festival season and during the transition to one of the most momentous points in the history of this radio station – the launch of Absolute. The effort, passion and commitment of the team at Golden Square has been tremendous so thankyou for your hard work.

Virgin Radio is reinventing itself as Absolute Radio with a new line up, more real music and more personality than ever before. We’ll be staying true to our roots – and our original frequency – by playing the best music from the last 50 years but our new name also gives us more freedom to deliver the things our listeners really want. So that’s less repetition, more live music and a new unapologetic, infectious style on-air, online and on DAB. It will mean we are the proud owners of our own place after renting for so long. It’s the end of an era, but the start of something absolutely amazing, (we all keep saying it don’t we?).

And on that note, I’m happy to trumpet the news that the switch will be flicked at 07:45 on Monday 29th of September – and we will become 100% Absolute Radio – after our lengthy engagement, and we shall no longer have to utter that ’soontobe’ sentence.

We will begin that journey in Breakfast on Friday 26th September when Christian O’Connell and a very lucky listener jet off to Munich with Coldplay to experience their gig in Absolute style.

Russ Williams will kick off a special ‘Goodbye Virgin Radio’ show with reflections on the last 15 years, along with some very special friends who’ve been with us along the way and at 4pm we will mark the last moment that we will hear Virgin Radio as we know it. We will mark this moment ourselves internally – more details to follow.

From 4pm we kick off the Road from V to A as we countdown tracks beginning with V to A, with the first track (beginning with A) chosen by our very own audience in an online poll and played out on Absolute Radio as we hear it take it’s first breath on the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show at 7.45am on Monday 29th September.

We have a journey ahead of us as Absolute – this is just the beginning.

Clive

Categories: absolute
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Posted by adam on September 22, 2008

Comments (19)

  1. Niko (from Manila) @ September 22, 2008 at 10:47 am | Permalink

    If there’s a song with “absolute” in its name, then maybe it’d be fun to hear that as the last song, and you start with a song that begins with V. Or, “Like a Virgin,” for one last cheese count. :p

    But it’s been a fun ride, to be honest. I listened to the station for an extended period (something I rarely get to do nowadays) over the weekend, and I absolutely (no pun intended) enjoyed it, more so that three months ago. And it’s be nice to hear how it all turns out, with the jingles and the final goodbye on the crossfade.

    If I’m allowed to do so, thanks for opening the entire process to us – listeners in the UK, and listeners overseas (like me). It’s a way for me to geek out, I’ll admit, and provides a peek into one of the more interesting stories I’ve encountered.

    And, yes, 07.45 BST – 15.45 Manila time – I’ll be there.

    PS – I hope you could put the “Goodbye Virgin Radio” show on some sort of listen-again. I’d love to listen to that, but I don’t think I could.

  2. Alistair MacPherson @ September 22, 2008 at 12:10 pm | Permalink

    Hi Clive,

    During our podcast you promised to come back to me (or us) regarding the position for overseas listeners being able to take part in competitions. Have you any answers for them?

  3. Erwin @ September 22, 2008 at 1:49 pm | Permalink

    What’s going to happen with the .OGG livestreams? They are still labeled as Virgin Radio.

  4. Ben Matthew @ September 22, 2008 at 3:11 pm | Permalink

    The OGG streams have been updated but it’s possible that not all directories have updated themselves accordingly. Where did you see Virgin listed instead of Absolute?

  5. Erwin @ September 22, 2008 at 3:30 pm | Permalink

    I don’t no. This is the url: http://ogg2.smgradio.com/vr160 but this is the wrong one maybe? Where can I find the updates ogg streams?

  6. Marty from new yawk @ September 22, 2008 at 3:45 pm | Permalink

    Howyadoin Clive:

    I am looking forward to the launch of Absolute Radio. But of concern to me is, what is going to become of all the Virgin Radio tat? It would be upsetting to me if it ends up in a pound shop.

    As my office in the accounting firm can stand to be redecorated, I w/b happy to allow it to serve as an official tat depository (it’s depository not suppository, right?).

    @alistair- thank you for your interest in the overseas listeners.

  7. Dan @ September 22, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Permalink

    Bowie’s Absolute Beginners for the first track, surely?

  8. Llia @ September 22, 2008 at 5:13 pm | Permalink

    Marty – Is it you that’s been stealing all the VR coffee mugs? No-one here is admitting it and the numbers have gone down significantly over the past month… I think the only way to explain it would be an overseas listener sneaking in at the dead of night to purloin them.

  9. Giovanni Lombardo @ September 22, 2008 at 5:22 pm | Permalink

    I am really excited for the birth of ABSOLUTE RADIO.I hope ABSOLUTE RADIO will broadcast much more of good rock music, real music!. I have also a question concerning the launch of ABSOLUTE RADIO for the web section:

    Will there be a big countdown online?
    When will it finally being stopped the website with the old format? Maybe at 4pm!

    I have to give you a hint:

    I hope that at 4pm of September 26 will closed the old-format web site,too.I suggest you create a web page with just only a big logo of ABSOLUTE RADIO, a countdown on the display and links to audio streaming to continue to listen ABSOLUTE RADIO online.

    What do you say?

    I hope some of you can answer to my questions

    Good luck ABSOLUTE RADIO

    GIOVANNI from Italy

    @absolute radio : the first track for the launch of ABSOLUTE RADIO at 7:45 am 29 September:ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS by DAVID BOWIE

  10. Marty from new yawk @ September 22, 2008 at 6:35 pm | Permalink

    @Llia- Can I interest you in an official Virgin Radio mug lightly used by the presenters only on Sundays?

  11. Siggi @ September 22, 2008 at 7:06 pm | Permalink

    Hi

    I listen all the time from Iceland and I use the Ogg stream. It has not been updated, at least not this on this url: http://network.absoluteradio.co.uk/core/audio/ogg/live.pls?service=vrbb

  12. Lozza @ September 22, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Permalink

    Absolute radio will be great, if it turns out as good as as planned. However, let me firstly say there has been a massive air of loss at Virgin Radio since last December when Suggs left, he was a great radio talent-completely different from anything else out there. Virgin made a mistake letting him go, even though his shows were pre-recorded…but who cares, he was brilliant. A big goodbye to Tony Hadley too, he was good at presenting, not as good as Suggs, but very good nevertheless!!! Finally, I think Sarah Champion should be on air more, maybe presenting an Absolute Xtreme Show on a Sunday night? That would be awesome I reckon.

    Bye Bye Virgin Radio :( Hello Absolute :)

  13. Ben Matthew @ September 23, 2008 at 10:00 am | Permalink

    Re: the ogg service.

    I think some of you may be getting confused between rebranding streaming services with the correct metadata and the short code used in URLs.

    Because of the abundance of references to the old OGG url we won’t be switching that over for a little while. The usage of the code “vr” is frankly nowhere near as important to us than the dispay that appears (in say VLC media player) that used to read Virgin Radio and now says Absolute Radio.

  14. Erwin @ September 23, 2008 at 10:21 am | Permalink

    Ok. And then the sound quality of the streams. I must turn my volume knob up to hear something. This not only on your OGG streams also on the other streams. The output of the stream is to soft.
    I don’t now how you process the signal of the streams. Is it feed directly from the main soundprocessing equipment or from an external soundprocessor? I know you are using Omnia 6 or something. There is a special output on these machines for webcasting/streaming.

  15. andy @ September 23, 2008 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

    sounds brilliant clive, lozza seems to think it would be great to have suggs back, i for one would not be happy if he returned. He was awful i would much prefer to hear real djs like russ williams and nick jackson.

  16. Erwin @ September 23, 2008 at 3:35 pm | Permalink

    Nice, I tuned to the stream and I hear someone turn tweak the volume up. It’s better now but it sounds a little bit to ‘flat’ to me. A little bit more compression would be nice.

    B.t.w. I notice the soft volume output also on the Absolute/Virgin Classic Rock streams.
    I don’t know how the volume from the other streams are, so I don’t listen to them.

  17. stuart @ September 23, 2008 at 6:38 pm | Permalink

    What time is the goodbye programme starting on Friday?

  18. adam @ September 23, 2008 at 11:49 pm | Permalink

    Stuart – 10am – 4pm. Listen out to Russ to find out more…

  19. Giovanni Lombardo @ September 24, 2008 at 12:04 am | Permalink

    What time is the long “all music programme” called Road from V to A ?

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