Talk 107

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**talk107**

Broadcast area	Edinburgh, Fife and The Lothians
First air date	14 February 2006
Frequency	107.0 MHz
Format	Speech
Owner	UTV Radio

talk107 is a radio station based in Edinburgh, Scotland, broadcasting a phone-in based talk format. It was the UK's first local commercial talk licence to be awarded outside London and is the only station of its kind in Scotland. It is owned by UTV Radio and trades as a wholly owned division of talkSPORT - the national sports talk station.

1 Station history
2 Station presenters
3 News
4 Audience Figures
5 External links

[edit] Station history

The FM local commercial radio licence for the city of Edinburgh and the area surrounding the Firth of Forth was awarded to Dunedin FM on 16 December 2004 (Dunedin is an anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic name Dùn Èideann for Edinburgh, Scotland). Originally due to be launched as Dunedin FM, talk107 was launched on 14 February 2006 at 6am. The first programme was The Morning Show with Alex Bell & Susan Morrison.

[edit] Station presenters

The original talk107 presenter line-up consisted of Alex Bell, Susan Morrison, Mike Graham, Graham Stewart, Simon Pia, Heather Dee, Gordon Dallas, Micky Gavin, Ramsay Jones, Mark Woods, Colin Paterson, Stephen Jardine and Alex Hastie.

Shortly after launch, in March 2006, the following presenters were added to the weekend schedule: Adrian Allen, Mark McKenzie and Mark Judge. Respect MP George Galloway's weekend shows for sister station talkSPORT were syndicated on talk107 from 3 June 2006. Station Director Peter Gillespie commented after the launch in Feb that "Scottie McClue did not feature in any talk107 plans." Following the release of the RAJAR figures, presenter Colin Lamont with his Scottie McClue Mega Phone In took over the Sunday-Thursday late night show from 20 August 2006.

Former Forth One and Forth 2 presenter Diane Lester, a "well-kent" voice in Edinburgh joined the station in October 2006, to co-present the Afternoon Show with Micky Gavin.

Alex Bell's last appearance on the Morning Show was Wednesday 25 October. Ex Forth One and Forth 2 presenter Scott Wilson took over as host of the Breakfast Show on Monday 13 November, co-presenting with Susan Morrison.

While in November, launch programme director Colin Paterson was replaced by Mike Graham.

On 1 December 2006 a new weekend line-up was unveiled.

Ian Gilmour presents a new Friday night show, with Graham Stewart on Saturday nights and Sunday evenings. Mark Judge presents weekend breakfast.

On 3 December 2006, Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan presents a new Sunday morning show.

Adrian Allen has left the station, while Alex Hastie no longer has any regular scheduled shows.

[edit] News

talk107 has live local news 24 hours a day. It also has news programmes The News at One and The News at Six at 1pm and 6pm weekdays.

The main newsreaders are Gwen Lawrie and Gordon Chree - who also run the newsteam as Editor and Deputy Editor.

The other newsreaders and reporters are Joe Odber, Denise Glass, Catherine Brown, Leeanne Coyle and Lisa Bacon.

[edit] Audience Figures

In its original licence application of September 2004, The Wireless Group plc published initial audience projections for talk107. By the end of its first year on-air, the forecast was for an average weekly reach of 140,000 listeners (12.5% of a potential 1.1m), each listening for an average of 8 hours per week. However, in the weeks leading up to launch in February 2006, public predictions by station management saw estimates lowered to 100,000 listeners.

talk107's first RAJAR results, published on 3 August 2006, revealed the station had made poor progress towards that target. In the three months from April to June 2006, the station attracted an average of only 16,000 listeners per week (2%), each listening for an average of 2.2 hours per week, leading to a market share of 0.2%. This was the lowest debut of any UK radio station in RAJAR's history and resulted in talk107 being Scotland's smallest, surveyed radio station. The station's second RAJAR, published 26 October 2006, saw a modest increase in listeners to 23,000 (2%), with 3.8 average hours per listener and a doubling of market share to 0.4%.