Anil Ruia

Anil Ruia, chairman of UK 1FM (and a NWDA board member) has called the process ‘dangerously flawed’ after a series of revelations by Ofcom into how they made their decision.

The revelations are believed to have arisen at a meeting between the company and senior Ofcom officials on 9 May in London, when the officials admitted they had not undertaken any serious competitive analysis of the Manchester marketplace and had also failed to acknowledge the fact that GMG had bought Century Radio while the bidding process was underway.

When one of the officials was pressed about the monopolistic nature of the situation in Manchester, he apparently told the UK 1FM team that “There is always the BBC.”

Rui said: “We were shocked but Ofcom have confirmed again that they simply did not consider the impact on the marketplace when they handed the station to GMG, which had just been given permission to acquire Century 105.4 in addition to its existing Smooth FM franchise, which essentially gives them an unprecedented monopoly over the two regional commercial licences in the North West.”

Mr Ruia continued, “We are also astonished that in the run up to a tightly fought General Election, Ofcom have confirmed that they simply did not consider the effect on political, editorial and journalistic debate by handing a part speech station to a company which already owns, in addition to Smooth and Century, the Manchester Evening News, ChannelM TV, Manchester Online, the Metro newspapers and a series of papers in Cheshire as well as The Guardian and Observer.

“GMG are good people but their control of voice and concentration of media in Manchester and a large part of the North West is unprecedented and is not good for advertisers or democracy. Ofcom seems to have moved from being a light touch regulator to a no touch regulator and clearly have missed the big issues in this process.”

UK 1FM believes that politicians and media commentators in Manchester and beyond were baffled by the decision, including GMG itself which pronounced itself surprised by the decision in February.

The company argues that there is a statutory duty placed upon Ofcom to ensure diversity and range of both choice and control and has written to Ofcom calling for an independent adjudicator to conduct an immediate and wide ranging public review.  

At the time of writing, Ofcom had not responded to UK1 FM.

UK 1FM shareholders include deputy chairman Chris Bird, broadcaster Rob McLoughlin (also deputy chairman Hasgrove plc), bookmaker Fred Done, restaurateur Gerry Yeung and construction boss John Kennedy.

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