Strategy Verdict - GCap Media

It's just not new and may not be sustainable.

The concept is simple. Between 10am and 4pm every day, the airwaves will
be open to listeners who can interact with the station via text, phone
or online. The listeners can request tracks, create playlists and post
their own views and photos. There will be two producers on hand to
manage the process and at certain points a presenter to do voiceovers.
This will no doubt be extremely appealing to the station's typical
listener, as they are a flock of "individuals" and this will be a
perfect forum to share opinion.

The idea is to give the listener the power, but understandably this has
to be within reason and apart from the three "wildcard" tracks that can
be chosen the rest come from a previously defined list.

Does this make it more "power to u, within our boundaries"?

What is interesting is the implied reasoning that listeners during the
day are no longer concerned with presenters, so it's brave of Xfm to
take this step away from traditional radio.

How this fits with Mi-Xfm, which launched only six months ago, remains
to be seen, but if this is going to work on any station, it should be
Xfm. The key part of this strategy is that it keeps the music as the
centre of the station.

The one question I would ask is: as the segment is during the day, does
anyone have time for this level of interaction - are the Xfm listeners
not at work? Xfm is trying to address this with multiple platforms to
interact.

With no immediate above the line support, Xfm will have time to work on
the intricacies and concentrate on what is successful, but it must also
ensure it keeps evolving the idea as it could feel old very quickly.

- Review by Victoria Sangster, head of radio, Mediaedge:cia.