Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Q has a slippery definition of the word "exclusive"

Here's some exciting news (if you can pretend to be excited by U2 for a minute) as Q trumpets an exclusive:

Q Radio will exclusively broadcast U2's entire show from Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium on the night of Thursday, 20 August.

Exclusive, huh? That's quite a coup, a small digital network like Q signing up those rights.

But... hang on a moment, what's this announcement from the Big City network?
The Bauer Radio network has secured the live broadcast rights to U2's latest tour, planning to air the band's Sheffield concert across its 20-station Big City network and three of its national digital stations.
[...]
The Big City network programme director, Steve King, said the concert would be the "biggest commercial radio event of 2009".

"U2 are very appropriate for the Big City network - they are straight down the middle of our audience, particularly the more recent material from their last album and the one before that," he said. "There aren't many artists you can do this with – U2, Take That, possibly Robbie Williams."

You would have thought that since Big City and Q are both Bauer stations, the trumpeting of "exclusive" on something that isn't could have been avoided.

To be fair, though, Big City stations won't quite be broadcasting the whole thing:
Longer pieces between songs would be taken out, King said, because they were not so relevant to a radio audience.

Presumably, though, Q will still leave those bits in, exclusively covering the bits that are meaningless on radio.


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