Darryl Morris – Will Capital succeed?

On Wednesday 29th December 2010 I hosted the Breakfast Show on Galaxy Manchester. It was my final outing. Capital has arrived.

It’s an easy question to ask, isn’t it? Will Capital work outside London? The answer most given will be no, and for good enough reason. There is very little feasible connection between the city of, say, Manchester and the word Capital. But that’s not the question for me. The question is: does anybody care? Does the Galaxy audience really care where it’s coming from or what it’s called? Equally, do they care that Capital’s main competitor in the Manchester market, Key 103, has heritage? That it got there first and is Manchester’s original hit music station? I imagine the answers to these questions are similar to the first one.

The ‘hit music’ audience are much more concerned with how soon they’ll be able to hear Rihanna ft Drake or the new one from The Wanted. They aren’t loyal to you because you came first or have been around longer. They pick it up and drop it just as quick. It happened with MySpace, Bebo and MSN and it’ll happen with Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone.

They aren’t local, either. Very little of what they do revolves around where they live. The internet connects them to the world and there is a real chance, with Capital, they’ll enjoy the prospect of being part of a 6 million strong network. If it means they get the chance to see Usher exclusively and there is content that engages them, they’re all set. They don’t care about dodgy pavements. They don’t care about broken street lamps. They don’t care about the local council’s inability to collect the waste on time. Don’t get me wrong, local is what radio does best and it always will, but not for this audience at this point in their lives. Most importantly of all, they don’t care if it’s called Capital, Galaxy or Manchester FM. There will be questions at first, but soon they’ll realise it’s not much different.

You may well disagree and good on you for doing so. Forums, social networking sites, studios and offices are filled with gossip, chatter and slanging matches, but the very worst people you can call upon for advice on this is industry folk. We all have opinions on the re-brand and that is nothing but healthy, but they aren’t based on the possibility of success, they’re based on selfish nostalgia; and nostalgia is the most dangerous barrier to progress.

Do I think Capital will succeed? I think it has a far better chance than we’ll ever give it credit for.

Darryl is a presenter for XFM, the BBC and formally Galaxy. He is also company director of a community radio station Bolton.

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