Magic Radio (London radio station)


Magic Radio is an adult contemporary Independent Local Radio and national radio station based in London owned by Bauer Radio. Magic Radio forms part of Bauer's National portfolio of radio brands. The station is available on 105.4 FM in London and across the UK on Digital Radio, App, DTV and online at magic.co.uk.
Magic Radio used to be part of a network of Magic stations also operated by Bauer. On 5 January 2015, Magic Radio launched nationally on DAB and all other Magic stations were dissolved to form the Bauer City 2 network.

History

In 1998, Melody FM was purchased by media group Emap from Hanson plc for a reported £25 million and rebranded Magic that December.
On changing the station's name, Emap introduced automation for the first time - weekday afternoons were split with a 'non-stop music hour', first sponsored by the now defunct energy company Calortex, and later by the Emap-owned Red magazine. Magic was criticised for automating a further eleven hours of its daily output given the reach and size of the station.
In an attempt to cut costs, Magic began networking its mid-morning show, hosted by Richard Skinner, and automated overnight output with the eight other Magic stations in the North of England in January 2002. Audience figures fell on all nine stations in the twelve months that followed, some arguing a lack of local content had driven listeners to tune away. Networking was ended in January 2003, although the eight 'northern' Magic stations continued to share a mid-morning show, hosted by Mark Thorburn, and were subsequently networked again, with the exception of local breakfast shows, following a repositioning of the northern Magic group in mid-2006. These stations were later rebranded into the Bauer City 2 network in 2015.
The end of networking heralded a programming shift; Magic adopting its 'more music, less talk' ethos. Former Capital FM head and radio consultant Richard Park was brought in to increase the station's audience share. In September 2003, Magic saw its first major revamp: live programming replaced automated output in the evening, and Independent Radio News-employed staff manned the station's daytime news output, removing shared presenting/newsreading responsibilities, a legacy from Melody FM. IRN retained the contract to supply Magic's news bulletins until 2015, when the service was brought in-house.
Later years saw a reliance on weekend celebrity-hosted content and large cash prizes to entice listeners - the award of £110,600 to Nicola Diss, the winner of the popular Magic Mystery Voices contest on 12 January 2006 was the largest cash prize given away on UK radio since 1999, a sum surpassed just a few months later by the prize collected by listener Dawn Muggleton in the Smooth Secret Song competition on London rival 102.2 Smooth FM, scooping £118,454 on 19 April 2006. However, Magic regained the honour on 30 March 2007 with listener Maria Crosskey winning £168,600 in a six-month-long Mystery Voices contest, although she was later disqualified.
In 2008, Emap sold its radio stations, including Magic, to Bauer Media Group.
Magic, along with urban-music station Kiss and a number of other radio brands, broadcasts from Bauer Radio's headquarters in Golden Square. It had previously broadcast from studios on Winsley Street until September 2014.

Sister stations

Magic launched two new digital-only sister stations in March 2016, which broadcast as part of the Sound Digital multiplex jointly owned by Bauer. The stations are Mellow Magic, a service of timeless relaxing classics, based on the successful Magic night-time programming strand of the same name, and Magic Chilled, a station in the DAB+ format - Bauer's first DAB+ service - playing laid back hits. Fran Godfrey has hosted the breakfast show on Mellow Magic, its only live programme, since the station's official launch. Magic Chilled moved from SDL to local tier DAB in early 2019 as part of the reorganisation of space required for the launch of Scala Radio; in London the Chilled service continues to be broadcast in DAB+ at the same bitrate as before, whilst in other areas it was made available in standard DAB, largely replacing Absolute Radio 90s, which is now on SDL.
Following the migration of other Bauer services to SDL, some of the vacated space at local level was used during the spring of 2016 for a short-term pop-up Magic sibling, Magic ABBA, run as a commercial partnership with Mamma Mia!: the Musical. This temporary service was then replaced in the summer by soul music service Magic Soul Summer; initially intended as another short-term pop-up, the soul station ultimately remained active, truncating its name to Magic Soul from autumn 2016 onwards, and remains on air as the fourth station of the Magic network.
A fifth station, show-tunes and soundtracks station Magic at the Musicals was launched on DAB+ in London in November 2019; the station has since been rolled out to several other areas, chiefly on selected Bauer-owned multiplexes, in standard DAB.
An online-only sibling, Magic Workout has been made available as one of a suite of streaming-only Bauer services.
There is also a complementary Magic-branded music television channel available on the Sky and Virgin Media digital TV platforms in the UK, operating as part of the Box Plus Network jointly owned by Bauer. The channel plays classic and contemporary melodic pop hits.

Notable presenters

Current presenters

For a number of years, Magic ran a Mystery Voices competition in which listeners were required to guess the names of three celebrity voices. One said "Magic", the second "One-oh-five" and the third "Point-four". Every hour a listener guessed the names of the celebrities and for each failed attempt £100 was added to the prize fund. The competitions often ran for several months with the winner eventually receiving a prize potentially worth upwards of £150,000.