Smooth is turning 1

One year ago, smoothfm rose from the ashes of Vega and Classic Rock. Today, it’s found a programming groove that focuses on feel rather than format.

DMG Group PD  Paul Jackson spoke last year to radioinfo, telling Peter Saxon:

The whole thing’s been a plan that we’ve been rolling out and we spent a lot of last year looking at what our options were and what was the right thing, not wanting to get it wrong.

radioinfo:  What is the balance between research and seat of the pants programming?

Jackson: You can have all the research in the world. But the research for me, only ever tells you what not to do. It doesn’t tell you what to do. The research never guides you to the answer. The research doesn’t have the answers in it, it just tells you what to avoid.

Its not about the records that you’ve played, it’s the ones that you’ve got the willpower to keep off the station. I think that is the key.

We’re looking for a ‘whole’ sound, and to me it’s the sum of the parts coming together, so we’re really looking to make a ‘set’ of records.

This week he also spoke to The Music Network about the station’s first birthday:

“To simply have the opportunity to launch new radio stations into saturated market places, with a format that hadn’t existed here before, was very exciting for myself and all the smooth team to be a part of.

“We have over a million listeners, have reached record shares and have got to number one FM 25+ across the workday.

“Since Michael Bublè had agreed to be our launch partner, we asked him to do shows for us and he thought it was a great idea.”

Listen to some of the launch audio here and review our coverage of the first smooth year here and here.