AIBU to be pissed off at XFM's axing and even more so at the Men Focused Rebranding?

[RedToothBrush]

Global Radio are axing XFM - both London and its Manchester sister shows.

Instead they are replacing it with a rebrand radio station called Radio X fronted by Chris Moyles on its Breakfast Show.

Their pitch is that 'Its target audience will be men aged between 25- to 44-years-old, and will play rock and guitar-based music'.

Not only am I distraught that Manchester is loosing a place which championed and promoted local music and musician, but I'm also incredibly peeved at this rebranding being pitched at men only.

Global's own description of XFM's current listenership and target audience is as follows:
XFM listeners are engaged, eclectic and influential.

As a community, they’re loyal and enthusiastic. As music fans, they’re passionate and supportive. And as an audience, they’re exactly what advertisers crave. They go to gigs, live events and club nights, they have taste when it comes to music culture, cinema, video, gaming and exhibition, and they’re the kind of people who help form opinions across the world of music and entertainment. Put simply, they’re huge consumers and tastemakers. And that means XFM offers huge opportunities.

And its listenership is 'Slightly favoured by men at 63% compared to women at 37%'. And now women are apparently being erased in this rebranding. With '79% of those who listen to XFM across the UK are aged between 15-44.'

So effectively the difference really seems to be that women are being axed from the target demographic.

It doesn't even make commercial sense for male listeners. A hell of a lot of XFM listeners listen to XFM because they never could stand Moyles and the axing of the Manchester radio station is going to destroy its huge percentage of the radio listenership up here.

Its a sad decision for music lovers. Moyles, Vernon Kay, Johnny Vaughan and Ricky Wilson are Blandsville Extreme.

AIBU in thinking that the whole pitch is both a travesty for music and really has a sexist vibe to it, that women don't like guitar bands and rock music?

What music and radio should I be listening to instead according to Global's bollocks logic?

(And BBC PLEASE don't axe 6Music now).

Haha I heard about Moyles and the xfm relaunch in popbitch months ago.

I'm geuninly interested, he was always quite entertaining.

I was off the understanding that it closes this week and if off air until the 21st. I am happy to be corrected though

Too many f's in of! Always has been a problem of mine

What - none, not one of the current djs is staying?! Can we crowd source John Kennedy to launch somehing else? Does Matt Dyson even know how to function without xfm?

I am very fed up.

Has he stopped running his second hand car lot then? Aka the dodgy tax scam?

I take all Red's points and find the level of stupid chucked at her from some quarters astonishing. Frankly I'm amazed one or two of you have managed to log in here.

Hope any money Moyles makes goes to paying his back taxes. I won't be listening but then I'm a woman. Dh and all the men I know won't be listening either because this whole "lads" thing is so over. It's not 1994 any more hence death of the lads mag and Global think they can do Loaded on the radio I fear they have made a grave error.

Matt dyson is going to absolute. I think john Kennedy is staying

I also am pissed off for the female artists who are probably also going to be ignored.

erm.... london do you actually mean hypocrisy? are you sure? are you a troll??

tbf I'd love a radio station run by women aimed at women with good music chosen by women and useful, interesting news and magazine programmes for women. it would be like every day life, but with more visible women in it. I vote sue perkins runs it. It wouldn't have to be overtly female, just that 90% of it would be about women. Like top gear, and, oh, everything else in the world is about men. because men run those things.
And the great thing is, it wouldn't be all pink hearts and shit love songs, cuz as far as I can tell, it's steve effing wright who plays all that old knob over on beeb 2!! and how much of that stuff do you get on Womens Hour on beeb 4? none. But we only get an hour.
c'mon lauren laverne, cerys matthews and all you fabulous female broadcasters, give us something for 50.8% of the nation

I used to listen to XFM a few years back but got a bit fed up with it and switched to 6music.
I think it's disgusting they're rebranding it though. Why why why do they want to go all blokey??Women do like music other than "cheese" or "love songs".

Women do like music other than "cheese" or "love songs".

I think there's a distinct group of men within the rock music group who believe that women only like good music if they're groupies. They can't possibly enjoy music without wanting to shag the lead guitarist and as such they're not real fans. This conveniently feeds into their dreams of starting a band and becoming irresistible to women...

This particular type of man tends to be obnoxious, is the kind of person who will challenge you to name all the members of a band if you like a record otherwise you're not a "proper fan" and complains about bands becoming mainstream and people not appreciating the back catalogue.

Unfortunately it also seems that this type of man is pulling the strings at Global Radio...

OneFlew "I think there's a distinct group of men within the rock music group who believe that women only like good music if they're groupies"

I'm beginning to think I emit some kind of radar signal that keeps these types of men away from me because I don't meet them. Which is great. if only I could patent it I now have £££££££££££££ in my eyes like a cartoon.

sorry, as you were.....

I'll be first in line when you do Lorelei

I liked XFM :(

I'll be interested to see if this does well. I think most XFM fans (in the later part of that age group at least) won't like this and think Chris Moyles is a twat.

Certainly that was the response I saw among men on Facebook (but they were mainly 40-55 ish)

Potter over to Radio 6 Music it really is quite good - XFM went downhill, in my opinion, when it let Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant go.

I saw a twitter post that tonight is John Kennedy's last ever evening show. I feel sad.

Genuinely gutted about this. I don't know what I'm going to listen to now.

Bloody really miss Team Rock and Kerrang. Team Rcok was amazing - where else would you get Pantera played at 7am in the morning?
Here in the Midlands I think we are only left with Planet Rock which is dire...

I'll stick to my CD's !

Totally gutted. I listen to Xfm Scotland on my commute. Love Fraser Thomson in the morning and Jim Gellatly on the way home. Totally fabulous mix of music.

Can't take to the weekend guys at all though. So that's no loss.

I'm another one very disappointed in this move. RIP XFM. I have noticed they were playing more rock than usual lately though, which is a good thing but employing Chris Moyles, urgh.

I am so glad you have started this as I have been in mourning since reading this news a few weeks ago. I have listened to xfm for the last 15 years and am really annoyed at both the change in station (it becoming personality led rather than about championing alternative music) and obviously them trying to obliterate female listernership. It is very narrow minded of them and I can't help feel this is somehow linked to other moves in rock and indie music to push women to the sidelines. When I first listened to the station there was a decent representation of women with Claire Sturgess and Natasha proving that women knew about music and can be fantastic at conveying their enthusiasm over the airwaves. You would have hoped that this would have progressed over the years and I feel despondent that actually we are going backwards.
I too wish that 6music was fm.

I guess it gives Chris Moyles something to do until the breakfast slot on Radio 2 becomes vacant.

I feel sorry for the genuinely talented broadcasters (male and female) who are being sidelined to make way for Chris Moyles, Johnny Vaughan and Vernon Kay. For goodness sake, what a hideous trio.

There was something interesting about computer games and how sidelining female players and excluding them in the marketing was a deliberate strategy. It was very interesting and it sounds like they are doing something like that.

I remember when XFM was launched in London it was so exciting to have a proper alternative radio station, I still have it tuned in the car.

I will be detuning it because what this announcement means is that they are telling me to fuck right off and they are no longer interested in me as a listener.

Chris Moyles is also a total wanker.

So. OP YANBU at all.

Chris Moyles was drawing in over 8 million listeners when he was on Radio 1 so it's understandable why stations want him.

I wasn't one of them

Apparently Britain needs more "banter".

Great.