Interview: Richard Huntingford, Chrysalis Radio (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
RICHARD Huntingford is primed for a fight. With Chris Tarrant finally gone from Capital FM, the man who launched Heart 106.2 in 1995 predicts that within a year his station will be the biggest in London. Not only will it have the most listeners, but with its new sister station, LBC, it will also beat the Capital Group in the race for advertisers. And as you may have noticed from a relentless advertising blitz, he is currently spending £1 million to prove he means business.
It does not bother Huntingford, the enthusiastic chief executive of Chrysalis, that Heart last week slipped back to a 5.8 per cent audience share, half a million listeners behind Capital's 7.9 per cent.
With Johnny Vaughan in the breakfast hot-seat at Capital, he is convinced that Heart's Jono Coleman and Harriet Scott will shortly zoom ahead. "Chris Tarrant's departure has certainly fired a starting gun for a very interesting race for supremacy," he says with a confident grin. "Well, we enjoy a good scrap, and are looking forward to taking on Capital and hopefully taking the crown off them."
Heart, tipped for success at tonight's Sony Radio Awards, briefly overtook Capital in the ratings last October, but it is Tarrant's departure, Huntingford says, that offers "a fantastic opportunity".
"He's been the glue who's held together a big swathe of their listenership, but we always felt that it would take 12 months after the change for people to choose new breakfast habits," he explains. "Remember, something like half of Tarrant's listeners were over 35, and Johnny Vaughan is clearly targeted at a much younger demographic. We expect a number of those people will not find the Vaughan show to their liking, and will alight on us."
Huntingford will only say of Vaughan's performance that "he is a professional broadcaster who's got a good production team". But more likely to rankle executives at Capital is his pledge that Chrysalis's radio sales team will soon provide greater opportunities than Capital's for advertisers.
LBC, which Chrysalis bought 18 months ago, has more than doubled its audience reach to 4.3 per cent, and is forecast to become profitable next year. By next summer, Huntingford says, further growth will enable his group to offer advertisers access to more listeners than Capital's portfolio. He includes those of Jazz FM, whose advertising Chrysalis sells.
At Capital's Leicester Square studios, the war-talk provokes disbelief. The group declares that it would be "inappropriate" for its chief executive, David Mansfield, to bother responding to such assertions - although he recently accused Chrysalis in an interview of "running scared". But off the record, sources there sneer that Huntingford "has a very strange way of looking at the numbers", and of misrepresenting Vaughan's target audience.
"This is the ninth period in a row when Capital's figures have gone up, meanwhile Heart's have been going down," asserts one (Chrysalis disputes the figures). "Wouldn't he be better off paying attention to keeping the number two position - Classic FM is almost overtaking Heart's market share - before he thinks about us?"
But Huntingford, 48 on Friday, will not be swayed. "We're not running scared," he insists. "We're actually having a very fine time of it." What matters to this former accountant are the numbers - and LBC's revenues alone, he points out, have risen by 31 per cent since January.
His own finances, too, have been rather healthy of late: Chrysalis, chaired by its founder Chris Wright, last year paid him £508,000, and he has a £1 million three-year incentive plan. David Mansfield, meanwhile, was on a mere £487,000 ...
Financial prosperity for the radio industry as a whole, Huntingford suggests, will follow the crossmedia consolidation he hopes is about to begin. TV companies, he believes, must be allowed to take over Britain's radio networks to enable them compete with the BBC.
"We have to take audience share from the BBC," he says. "They promote the hell out of their radio and TV offerings on both media, and it's not a level playing field. You can see a scenario where ITV will wonder where the next phase of growth is going to be, and decide it is to be a cross-media TV and radio company. And that would be good news for the whole commercial radio industry."
In the meantime, Huntingford thinks that LBC can play its part in battling the BBC's dominance. "The goal is to be the number one speech station in London," he declares. So as well as taking on Capital, he thinks that LBC, with all its troubled history, can suddenly beat Radio 4 for London's attention?
"It's a long-term vision," he smiles, "but I'd say we're off to a good start."
(Evening Standard, May 12 2004)
RICHARD Huntingford is primed for a fight. With Chris Tarrant finally gone from Capital FM, the man who launched Heart 106.2 in 1995 predicts that within a year his station will be the biggest in London. Not only will it have the most listeners, but with its new sister station, LBC, it will also beat the Capital Group in the race for advertisers. And as you may have noticed from a relentless advertising blitz, he is currently spending £1 million to prove he means business.
It does not bother Huntingford, the enthusiastic chief executive of Chrysalis, that Heart last week slipped back to a 5.8 per cent audience share, half a million listeners behind Capital's 7.9 per cent.
With Johnny Vaughan in the breakfast hot-seat at Capital, he is convinced that Heart's Jono Coleman and Harriet Scott will shortly zoom ahead. "Chris Tarrant's departure has certainly fired a starting gun for a very interesting race for supremacy," he says with a confident grin. "Well, we enjoy a good scrap, and are looking forward to taking on Capital and hopefully taking the crown off them."
Heart, tipped for success at tonight's Sony Radio Awards, briefly overtook Capital in the ratings last October, but it is Tarrant's departure, Huntingford says, that offers "a fantastic opportunity".
"He's been the glue who's held together a big swathe of their listenership, but we always felt that it would take 12 months after the change for people to choose new breakfast habits," he explains. "Remember, something like half of Tarrant's listeners were over 35, and Johnny Vaughan is clearly targeted at a much younger demographic. We expect a number of those people will not find the Vaughan show to their liking, and will alight on us."
Huntingford will only say of Vaughan's performance that "he is a professional broadcaster who's got a good production team". But more likely to rankle executives at Capital is his pledge that Chrysalis's radio sales team will soon provide greater opportunities than Capital's for advertisers.
LBC, which Chrysalis bought 18 months ago, has more than doubled its audience reach to 4.3 per cent, and is forecast to become profitable next year. By next summer, Huntingford says, further growth will enable his group to offer advertisers access to more listeners than Capital's portfolio. He includes those of Jazz FM, whose advertising Chrysalis sells.
At Capital's Leicester Square studios, the war-talk provokes disbelief. The group declares that it would be "inappropriate" for its chief executive, David Mansfield, to bother responding to such assertions - although he recently accused Chrysalis in an interview of "running scared". But off the record, sources there sneer that Huntingford "has a very strange way of looking at the numbers", and of misrepresenting Vaughan's target audience.
"This is the ninth period in a row when Capital's figures have gone up, meanwhile Heart's have been going down," asserts one (Chrysalis disputes the figures). "Wouldn't he be better off paying attention to keeping the number two position - Classic FM is almost overtaking Heart's market share - before he thinks about us?"
But Huntingford, 48 on Friday, will not be swayed. "We're not running scared," he insists. "We're actually having a very fine time of it." What matters to this former accountant are the numbers - and LBC's revenues alone, he points out, have risen by 31 per cent since January.
His own finances, too, have been rather healthy of late: Chrysalis, chaired by its founder Chris Wright, last year paid him £508,000, and he has a £1 million three-year incentive plan. David Mansfield, meanwhile, was on a mere £487,000 ...
Financial prosperity for the radio industry as a whole, Huntingford suggests, will follow the crossmedia consolidation he hopes is about to begin. TV companies, he believes, must be allowed to take over Britain's radio networks to enable them compete with the BBC.
"We have to take audience share from the BBC," he says. "They promote the hell out of their radio and TV offerings on both media, and it's not a level playing field. You can see a scenario where ITV will wonder where the next phase of growth is going to be, and decide it is to be a cross-media TV and radio company. And that would be good news for the whole commercial radio industry."
In the meantime, Huntingford thinks that LBC can play its part in battling the BBC's dominance. "The goal is to be the number one speech station in London," he declares. So as well as taking on Capital, he thinks that LBC, with all its troubled history, can suddenly beat Radio 4 for London's attention?
"It's a long-term vision," he smiles, "but I'd say we're off to a good start."
(Evening Standard, May 12 2004)
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