Don’t let our local radio station be spirited away

SpiritFM, based in Chichester and transmitting to the Horsham district, was bought by media giants Bauer Media in 2019 and will now join Bauer’s ‘Hits Radio Brand Network’. As part of the move, Spirit FM will rebrand as ‘Greatest Hits Radio’. Here, County Times Editor Gary Shipton urges Bauer to think again.

It would be fair to say that when Spirit FM arrived in Chichester in 1996 - the new kid on the media block - some of us on the County Times and its sister titles regarded them as interlopers.

These were the days before the internet had made much of a local impact and the sudden appearance of commercial radio was as cautiously received as aliens from outer space.

We socially distanced ourselves and by a good measure more than two metres.

But like the people of Horsham and this whole region of West Sussex we have increasingly regarded them with professional respect and personal liking.

It is true that they chase the same advertising pounds on which our own trusted journalism also depends.

So from that very narrow perspective they could be regarded as competitors.

But the County Times, more than 150 years old, has always put the communities it serves first.

Over the years, Spirit FM speaking through the cheery and reassuring voices of its much loved presenters has done the same. We salute them for it. In so doing, they have won a place in the affections of the entire local community.

I rarely comment on other media. It has always seemed to me to be bad form to talk down a competitor.

But neither I nor our newspapers - with which I have had the privilege to be associated for nearly 40 years - will stand by and let this marvellous radio station nor its brilliant team of managers, journalists, presenters and staff face an uncertain future without putting up a fight.

Bauer Media is rebranding the station to some dreadfully bland, indifferent and generic name which has all the hallmarks of the output of some second-rate management strategy day where the participants are rushing the sign-off to get to their free end of meeting dinner.

Spirit FM may only be 24 years of age. A great, great grand-child in County Times terms. But it has come of age.

So Bauer, I speak as a friend, think again.

Keep the brand, protect the local team, and be proud of all that is being achieved by your new acquisition for this part of the world.

To throw away all that has been so painstakingly built up over some two decades would not only be profoundly reckless but a slap in the face to the local people who love and rely on Spirit.

Don’t let this station’s unique qualities and contribution be spirited away.

Gary Shipton is the Editor of the West Sussex Cpounty Times and the Editorial Director of its sister titles across Sussex and beyond. He is a leading figure in the media, a member of the industry’s legal grouping on the NMA and a member of the committee which sets the standards which all professional journalists uphold through the Editors’ Code of Practice.