Wheatly leads consortium to take over running of Jazz FM
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Jazz FM, which relaunched quietly back in the autumn, as a digital station, looks as if it will have a new company structure once again.
But could it be a case of, as The Who had it: “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss”? Step forward Richard Wheatly, a non-executive director of the Local Radio Company, which licensed the rights to the station from the Guardian Media Group last year. He has just resigned from the LRC and is now heading a consortium planning a takeover of the station. This would be a return to old times for Wheatly as he was chief executive of the station before it was sold to GMG. “The board of the Local Radio Company announces the proposed disposal of the JazzFM business following a strategic review. The company also announces that it has begun negotiations regarding the proposed disposal with a consortium headed by Richard Wheatly who today resigns from his position as a non executive director of the Local Radio Company,” the LRC said yesterday in a statement. Wheatly was heavily involved in bringing the Jazz FM brand back again to fill the gap left by the demise of digital station theJazz last year.