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).

Yes that is just what Britain needs. Endless banter.

JUST PLAY THE MUSIC!!!!

Plus "banter" is usually code for retrograde sexist arseholery so, you know, not convinced that what we need is more of it. Women and girls have to put up with enough "banter" already IME.

My god this news is so depressing! Feel like I have been transported back to the 90s lad period. I love xfm! Yeah some of the DJs were sounding a bit dated but a rebrand could have been so good for it and made it current again, their new music playlists were excellent. I can't believe they are getting Chris moyles and vermin Kaye in! WTAF? Basically it will be the new absolute radio, I give it a year.

Haha vermin Kaye!! Auto correct was spot on!

I don't listen to XFM because of some of the vile misogyny I heard on there a few years ago. I made a formal complaint to Ofcom or whatever it's called and it was upheld and the DJ concerned was sacked. I can't really remember the details now but there was some speculation about the size of a particular woman's vagina and much hilarity at the thought that it was too big - this was on the weekday breakfast show. I wouldn't have liked it on a late night show but this was on the breakfast show.

The new station sounds dreadful. But almost all rock/guitar stations have a horribly laddish tone to them. And I find R6 a bit insufferable too - all the effing talking and being just a bit too pleased with themselves.

lol @ vermin kaye

Oh crap - What a bad idea.
I switched off anything with Chris Moyles on it as he's just not funny. Most of his "humour" was bullying behaviour. So great! Lets take a decent music station and make it "laddish" and boorish.

There is NO irony complaining on here - a site with a higher population of women posters than men - about a service women use being taken away and used for another purpose.

Good to see other people are gutted about this too! I've searched my radio for a replacement but there's bugger all on DAB in Birmingham. Someone suggested Absolute and I did listen for the day but it wasn't hitting the spot. I miss Kerrang mostly.

I can see the logic in this decision. Global already have a brand targeted at a 25-44 female audience : Heart, so it makes sense for them to have a parallel brand targeted at men. That is market segmentation, not sexism.

Since Radio 1 pressed the reset button by getting rid of Moyles & Whiley a few years ago in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, a huge gap has opened up between R1 & R2. Global are trying to fill this gap.

I just don't think heart and the new idea of radio x make up for xfm. I loved it as a teen - it (alongside kiss100) seemed to take me seriously as a teen but not then lose my interest.

Is Heart Radio marketed as 'for women'? Or is it marketed for the music?

I think the problem is the fact that this marketing campaign is reinforcing the message that guitar music isn't for women through its sheer aggressiveness and focus on this angle and therefore is making me feel pushed out and marginalised that is the real key here.

Whilst it may be trying to attract certain advertisers, if the way to do that is to force out women as lesser listeners then I do think there is a problem.

Especially if the marketing for Heart isn't on a parallel.

I don't have a problem with market segmentation. I do have a problem with outright trying to marginalise women in order to create a brand from a product that was previously marketed as 'for everyone' and didn't have these made boundaries of male and female territory. A brand that was not in need of changing because it was failing and was proving itself to be healthy and doing exceptionally well in a challenging and changing market.

Given that Ofcom's remit is to set and uphold certain standards for broadcast and to ensure that licences are issued in order to benefit socially because of the limited number of broadcast frequencies and its existence was to deliberately prevent radio and television being at the mercy of pure unregulated commercialism, their are certain questions this move does raise.

Notably, Mumsnet has perhaps gone the other way, by having the gender neutral strap line for parents by parents. And notably, MN does not need a license to broadcast and does not have to fulfil and uphold certain standards to retain that licence.

XFM London has been rubbish since 1998 when Capital bought it.

I am with you Redtoothbrush. I don't care if some idiots want to create the sonic equivalent of Men and Motors (which funnily enough was rebranded cos that's a crap name) but I do take issue with them ending a decent station which was available to all and broke good bands and recorded some fantastic sessions and replacing it with a rubbish cynically commercial one which apparently isn't interested in music but in the personalities of washed up 'personalities' and banter AND which not only look as though they are excluding women but have blatantly SAID that they are.

It went shit in 1998...? What year was it that Britpop ended?

Was Capital buying XFM a cause of the end of Britpop then? Or had it reached its peak and things were going to change somewhat because of the shift of the music industry anyway which was being reflected in sales?

Noting here that XFM Manchester is bucking certain market changes and holding its ground in the current changes in the market place and could have been retained in many ways even with changes to Global's licencing.

In short, your point is irrelevant bollocks

But radio stations playing recorded music are dead. For practical purposes, no-one under thirty is listening to them, or at least not in remotely the numbers they did (which is why Radio 1's demographic is such a challenge to them). Younger people are listening to music, or at least consuming content, via Spotify and YouTube and iTunes and, and, and. They're listening to curated, personalised content where they find communities whose playlists and recommendations they align with. If you were able to tune in to the sound in the bedrooms of 17 year olds at 8am or 10pm, how many of them are listening to radio? Like linear TV, it's over.

Older people have the radio on in the car, but that's not something the younger people will grow into, any more than "wearing a nylon housecoat and being nostalgic about the blitz" is something that people in their fifties will grow into. It's not an age thing, it's a generation thing. If and when today's teenagers are commuting by car, they will simply plug or bluetooth their phone into the car stereo and continue listening to what they listen to at home, and that isn't Radio 1 or its commercial analogues.

The older music fans enthusing about Radio 6 because they get to hear music they otherwise wouldn't should talk to their teenage children, who will be getting access to new and interesting bands via TwitSnapFaceChatScrobLast. If you resurrected the John Peel show (a show much more talked about than actually listened to, but that's by the by) it wouldn't have a tenth of the range or reach today's younger music fans have access to.

So how do you run a commercial station and make money? What's the audience? Commuters and people who are at home during the day, less the people who listen to Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 6, local talk radio, their own CDs, their iPod/iPhone? Advertising on that is going to be incredibly cheap, as all the stations can offer is a small number of listeners who are hardly the most attractive to advertisers (when was the last time an XFM listener made a high-value impulse buy based on hearing an advert?), which is why they're handing back their broadcast frequencies as uneconomic.

How does radio compete with Spotify and Youtube? Find the answer to that, and Alan Yentob will buy you an unflattering brightly coloured outfit lunch. And dinner.

Recorded music radio. It's over.

Then why aren't they keeping the LIVE element of the music which still IS a strength and still is relevant even in the youtube area? People do still want to leave the house and see bands.

Instead they are favouring 'banter' and a MOR agenda which no more attracts young people who grow into the age demographic than the problem you describe above.

Instead they are deliberately trying to alienate 50% of their audience and cut ties to local loyalty and identity which has proved to be a huge draw.

People do still want to leave the house and see bands.

You can't pay the 24x7 bills of running a commercial radio station on "the LIVE element". It's also expensive to produce, and people who "want to leave the house and see bands" (who I suspect are older than you think, as gig-going is in near-terminal decline amongst for example university students) are by definition not listening to the radio in the evening anyway.

Instead they are favouring 'banter' and a MOR agenda

Which makes the most of the people who do listen to the radio. A small share of a large audience is probably worth more than a large share of a small audience. There's a natural tendency of all commercial daytime radio to end up as a phone in interspersed with Billy Joel records.

Excuse me? I've been into rock and metal since i were 13.

I am genuinely gutted for Jimbob and Tim Cocker who do the breakfast show, you could hear how upset they were this morning. They are funny, warm, genuinely love and are knowledgable about indie music and come across as really decent people.
Likewise Clint Boon.

Global are fools, Chris fucking Moyles and his sycophants. Pfft.

I'll go back to the fact that XFM Manchester figures have been consistently good even recently and have gone UP not down compared with 5 years ago. Their best figures have been in the last year and are doing well with their audience share too. So what have they been doing right?

And given the history:
Since the Capital takeover Xfm has gone through a number of phases, including a period as a predominantly male-orientated station with sports output and puerile, "laddish" output which came to an abrupt end when the Radio Authority fined Xfm £50,000 when then breakfast presenter Tom Binns joked about bestiality on air

Lets hope things go the same way. Fines are not great commercial sense.

It sounds like Tim and Jim may have already got another gig elsewhere though. I wouldn't be surprised if they took a lot of listeners with them.

I'll go back to the fact that XFM Manchester figures have been consistently good

It's the advertising revenue that matters. And advertising on radio is dirt cheap. Commercial radio doesn't care about listening figures as an end in themselves, they care about the listeners that advertisers are willing to pay for. Commercial radio's demographics are such that the listeners just aren't worth very much to advertisers, outside London.

I used to listen to Moyles on R1 and, surprisingly (even for me, I mean), I liked his show a lot - but that was the whole team thing more than him, and the fact he had opinions, which Cotton (on after him) never did.

But the fact they are targeting men specifically just seems weird. I liked Moyles - but now it's not my place to listen to him? Ok then!

If there is one thing that is guaranteed to get my rock and guitar-based music friend to turn off a radio its chris fucking moyles.

friends* plural

friends* plural - yeah yeah, whatever you say