Raymond Snoddy on media: Brave Bernard's legacy will linger on

The interesting question is who eased the GCap chief executive out? He
virtually created the biggest group in UK commercial radio, was wedded
to the industry and is still six years away from his bus pass. So it is
preposterous to suggest that Bernard woke up one morning and told his
wife that it was time to go. In fact, the anonymous drafters of
corporate resignation statements are going to have to sharpen their
pencils in future to come up with something more credible.

Leaving to 'spend more time with my family' has become too risible a
phrase to use. Now Bernard's reason - 'the time is right to stand down
as chief executive' - has surely gone the same way.

Perhaps it is time to try something closer to the truth, for a change.
Was it a case of assisted suicide of the sort they cater for in
Switzerland? Maybe it was over dinner with non-executive chairman
Richard Eyre that the realisation suddenly dawned that it was time to
push off. If it was so, then the culprits orchestrating matters almost
certainly reside in the City.

It is there that the charge sheet against Bernard is extensive. He
marched GWR Group into foreign adventures. When that failed, he had no
other choice but to make a virtue of the all-UK policy.

Much more serious was the bungling of the merger between GWR and
Capital. Mergers often destroy shareholder value unless they are handled
carefully. But, by any standards, the disappearance of the GCap share
price over the edge of a cliff in 2005 was unusual, particularly when it
was the sort of commercial radio consolidation that the City had been
seeking for years.

The painfully unimaginative name didn't help and aptly symbolised the
debacle to come.

But the most important reason that Bernard reached 'the right time to
go' was digital. He believed in the future of digital radio to an almost
unreasonable degree and just kept investing the profits. He is a
founding member of the Tony Blair Right Thing To Do school.

The effects of this courageous strategy were compounded when he made
clear his contempt for the City's short-termism and told them he had no
intention of changing his mind. They always get you in the end for that
sort of thing, Ralph, though a looming recession might have been the
final straw.

His abiding memorial will, of course, be the growing success of digital
radio in the UK. It was Bernard who used GWR money to pay for the
integrated chips for the sets when nobody in commercial radio or the
consumer electronics industry wanted to know. He was absolutely right.
It is sad that he will not be around much when the promised land is
finally reached.

His achievement in launching Classic FM is less ambiguous. When David
Mellor bent legislation to make space for a commercial classical
station, almost nobody in radio or the City wanted to know. Bernard had
to run around with a begging tin and made it with only hours to spare.
It is his enduring legacy, and this Classic FM listener salutes him.

Bernard once toyed with the notion of getting GWR to buy Leyton Orient
FC, before rejecting the idea as inappropriate. Now, if his successor
finally manages to get GCap's share price up, Bernard should be rich
enough to buy the club on his own.

30 SECONDS ON ... RALPH BERNARD

- Ralph Bernard started his broadcasting career in the newsroom of Radio
Hallam in Sheffield.

- He completed his first merger in 1985, when Wiltshire Radio, where he
was managing director, bought Radio West.

- He has been a chairman or chief executive continuously since 1984.

- In May 2005, Bernard became executive chairman of GCap Media, formed
by the merger of Capital and GWR. He reverted to the role of chief
executive in January 2006.

- On GCap Media's first day, there was a profits warning. The ensuing
advertising recession cost the company a fifth of its £250m annual
revenue.

- Bernard's hobbies include collecting Wisden cricket almanacs.

- In 2002, he was awarded a CBE for his services to the broadcasting
industry.

- Bernard finished this year's London Marathon in five and a half hours.