The relocation of Newstalk‘s studios to the same building as Today FM was a clear sign that a merger between the two radio stations was afoot. Now it appears that the Communicorp-owned operations are undertaking phase two of the merging process by bringing their respective news-rooms closer together.
It seemed apparent from the time of Denis O’Brien’s purchase of Today FM that the two stations would eventually develop a relationship akin to the one between RTÉ’s Radio 1 and 2FM – it was only a matter of when rather than if.
According to the RTÉ.ie article the new development will see back-room news resources being pooled but front-of-house newsreaders remaining unique to each station – much like RTÉ’s current set up. What results is a largely logical situation where, say, one journalist goes out to an event and later brings information back to Marconi House rather than two doing the same separately.
Unfortunately this does cut down on the potential work for journalists in Ireland at a time when the deteriorating economy is creating bad news in general for the industry. Interestingly it seems that a news-room merger had previously been rejected by the BCI but the aforementioned economic climate will be the perfect cover for Communicorp to re-pitch the idea.
There’s still more to run on this merger, however. Other back-room operations like sales and marketing will be next, if they have not already slipped into a ‘merged’ status yet. Various facets like this will begin to fall into place and the eventual final step will be an alignment of the schedule to ensure there is no conflict (which is currently only really limited to the mid-morning and drive-time slots); although this could take some time to resolve.
It’s unlikely that we will see a re-brand of either or both in the mid-term future, though – a lot has been spent on the Newstalk name and Today FM is far too strong a brand to even consider wasting.
They will become closer still, however; you can bet good money on that.
In reality it makes sense for the two to form a tag-team against the 2FM/Radio 1 alliance that has dominated radio for so long. There is still plenty of time left before such a truly joined-up operation emerges, though. If you’ll excuse the poor metaphor it’s fair to say that the two stations are currently co-habiting fiancés; the wedding is still a while away.