‘You will kill us!’ Inside Boom Radio’s battle to survive as BBC plans spin-off that will crush competition
The BBC’s plan to press on with a Radio 2 spin-off station will wipe out smaller rivals, warns the chief executive of a fast-growing independent commercial station.
Phil Riley’s warning comes almost five years after he eyed a golden opportunity when BBC Radio 2 embarked on a strategy to attract a younger audience.
“Their target is everybody over 35, but they decided they wanted to de-emphasise people over the age of 55/60 and emphasise a younger demographic,” claims Riley, a British radio stalwart.
The BBC hired a crop of younger presenters and reduced the play of ’60s and ’70s music in favour of more music from the 1990s onwards to appeal to younger listeners.
In February 2021, Riley and his partner David Lloyd – both veterans of the British radio industry – launched Boom Radio with the explicit aim of reaching Radio 2’s underserved older audience.
“We were at the end of our careers and felt like there was an opportunity to launch something that would be of more appeal to those over 60 listeners. The baby boomers that they [the BBC] seemed intent on ignoring. We did the numbers and felt we could raise a bit of cash from some friends,” Boom Radio’s chief executive Riley told GB News.
Riley and Lloyd’s big bet paid off.
Since its launch, Boom Radio has gained a significant listenership. Official figures indicate that the station has more than doubled its listening audience in a year, with listening among the over 55s demographic reaching record levels.
Specifically, by mid-2024, the station was reaching over half a million listeners weekly, with growth rates at 14 per cent in the last year.
“We got up to a million regular listeners and the listeners we had were listening to us for very long periods of time,” Riley told GB News.
And it achieved this on a fraction of the BBC’s budget.
The future looked bright for the fledgling station then last year the BBC announced plans to launch a Radio 2 spin-off station focusing on music from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, aiming to provide a “distinctive take on pop nostalgia”.
From that point onwards, Boom Radio was on a “collision course” with the BBC, Riley says, adding that the spin-off would halve the independent radio’s listenership overnight.
Following the announcement, Riley and his colleagues conducted their own research while enlisting an independent research firm to ask a “whole bunch” of radio listeners of all ages what they thought about the BBC’s proposed new service – and the results were not good.
“Forty-four per cent of our listeners said they would be extremely likely to trial that service – that was almost the highest if not the highest percentage of any radio station because the description of this new service is exactly like the description of Boom,” he told GB News.
However, unlike Boom, the BBC has the resources to go ad-free, laments Riley.
Based on current growth projections, the cost of this move would be catastrophic for Boom.
“It’s probably about 50 per cent of our revenue. A very very big chunk of our projected revenue for two years from now would disappear if we lost the listeners that we think we’d lose. We think we’ll lose somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of our current listenership.”
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The battle is only just beginning
Riley and his team managed to persuade Ofcom to intervene and delay the BBC’s launch of an online trial service of the spin-off in the autumn.
“Ofcom agreed with us and stopped them doing that, but they’ve [the BBC] come back and they’re now trying to get Ofcom to let them launch both online and on DAB next year,” he said.
That decision prompted the regulator to order the BBC to conduct a public interest test.
Announcing its findings, the BBC admitted that the spin-off would have an impact on its competitors and in particular “would significantly hamper Boom Radio’s financial performance”.
Despite this acknowledgement, the broadcaster has decided to press on with the new station, concluding: “Having considered stakeholder feedback, our overall strategy remains unchanged.”
The BBC has proposed several changes, including more speech content and archive material to differentiate it from other commercial offerings.
It says that the cost of implementing these changes will increase the station’s annual budget from £420,000 to £660,000.
The final decision now lies with Ofcom.
Riley has warned the BBC about the threat the move poses to Boom Radio, telling executives that it will “kill us off”.
The radio veteran says his stark warning is usually met with “warm assurances”, but that doesn’t mean “its actions as a corporation aren’t absolutely designed to take a competitor out of business”.
He added: “We’re not part of Global, Bauer, Newsday ITV or anybody else. We’re just a bunch of baby boomers who’ve put our own hands in our own pockets to fund this and get it going. We don’t have other radio stations to fall back on or other profitable businesses to help us out.”
Riley, who is fighting tooth and nail to stop the spin-off from getting on the air, says there are two possible motivations behind the decision, and one is decidedly more innocent than the other.
It’s conceivable that someone on the side has done an audit and concluded that there’s the digital capacity to “squeeze more radio stations” into the schedule and that an “oldie station” would be great, he says.
“The not-so-innocent version is: ‘Crikey, these people have stolen a million of our listeners already. We better fire some torpedoes back at them and go after what they’re doing, but do it without the commercials.”
This would have a devastating impact on a small business that punches well above its weight.
“We’re tiny. There are less than ten members of staff, most of them part-time. Only two or three of us are doing it full-time. We’ve got 25 presenters doing two, three or four shows a week. They all work from their own homes. We don’t have central offices. Everybody’s dispersed around the country,” Riley told GB News.
But he has big dreams for the station, all within grasp.
“It’s not inconceivable that we will be as big as a Virgin, Magic or Kiss in the next two or three years. We’ve got a lot going for us. We’ll be knocking on the door of the big boys.”
In response to a request for comment, Lorna Clarke, BBC Director of Music said: “We have received a wide range of feedback and reflected much of it in our plans, including significantly redeveloping our proposal for the Radio 2 extension to increase its editorial distinctiveness. Our music extensions allow us to support new music, showcase British talent, resurface performances from the BBC’s unrivalled archive, and help audiences discover a greater breadth and range of music than what’s available on the market.
“The continued growth of commercial radio and the global streamers have shown there’s room for multiple ways to bring genres and decades to life for audiences. Our plans are unique, with context, curation and storytelling done in a way only the BBC can do, meeting the evolving expectations of audiences and providing more choice to licence fee payers.”
You can find out how to listen to Boom Radio here