Shell Like

Virgin Radio was bought out recently, by Bennett, Coleman & Co, owner of Times of India newspaper, and Absolute Radio. But the Virgin name will not be part of the sale as the tidy-bearded Mr. Branson objected to it due to Virgin’s other interests in India. Full story here.

So thirty million dollars will be invested in renaming. Which made me think about station names in general. UK station names appear to derive from local rivers - Trent, Clyde, Forth etc. with Ocean FM taking it a bit too far, and River FM a bit literally; from the music they play - Rock, Smooth, Classic; or their broadcast frequency - 2Ten, Ten17, and perhaps even Signal 1 & 2.

Certain fauna are a big fave, presumably ones that have some significance to the broadcast area - Bee, Eagle, Fox, Kestrel, and Bear. Then you have the ‘picked it out of a hat’ examples - Delta, Dune, Fire, Home, Oak, Pirate, and The Edge (wonder if they play a lot of U2?).

Two that I have absolutely no idea about are Lantern FM and Ivel FM. But then they both hail from the west country, which has a long history of bonkers names, as the residents of Piddletrenthide and Affpuddle will testify.

Whatever they come up with, expect the new name for Virgin to end with a dot com. This will be done to highlight the multi-platform aspects of the station and its output in the modern media landscape, or to save on printing costs.

Ever wondered why US radio stations all begin with K or W? No? Well it’s the kind of thing that keeps radio geeks like us up all night. Way too much information about it can be found here.
- Mike