Fifteen years after its name change, the Lagardère group station returns to the air on January 1. At the start of the school year already, another radio, teenager FM, relaunched itself by finding its original surname.
by Aude Dassonville
“At night, I take my electric scooter (…) while riding, I think. And I say to myself, it’s a city beautiful at night (…) on 1 er January, Virgin Radio becomes Europe 2. “Some listeners remember: between 1990 and 1998, actor Richard Bohringer hosted a free antenna program, called” it’s a beautiful city at night “, on a radio branch born in 1986 under the name of Europe 2. Renamed Virgin Radio on 1 er January 2008, the station will find its original surname in 2023.
At the start of the school year already, the regional Radio Ado FM, broadcast in Paris, Ile-de-France and Toulouse, had followed the same course: after being called Swigg for five years, she became a teenager again. By vibrating the nostalgic fiber, both have only one objective: to set out to conquer listeners. “In 2017, we had changed names because we wanted to follow the changes in musical tastes of 15-25 year olds, explains Jean-Eric Valli, the 1981 group boss, to which Ado belongs. But that did not work. “
It was by reviving the historic station in the form of a webradio in 2021 that Mr. Valli noted a renewed interest: “She quickly became the most listened to all our webradios”, he. By the way, the musical programming was revised: urban music has been dull, while Golds (titles that have become timeless) of Beyoncé or Drake have resumed service, neighboring in the playlist with representatives of the new scene French.
Pragmatic reasons
On Europe 2 too, the playlist is being reformed, thought to enhance the new French and international talents (Marie-Flore, Suzane, Yungblud, etc.), but also pop-rock tones rather than electro. “The radio audience by 13-24 year olds has lost twenty points [in cumulative audience] in five years, recalls Stéphane Bosc, the director of musical radios of the Lagardère group, owner of the station. An electroshock had to
Indeed, while the music radio still achieved 6.3 % cumulative audience at the end of 2007 (just before closing the brand of Richard Branson), it fell to 5.5 % a year Later, 4.8 % ten years later, and 2.6 % at the start of the 2022 school year… even France Culture, 3.1 % cumulative audience in September-October, does better than.
This return to the origins also had to be tempted for other reasons, just as pragmatic. According to a good connoisseur of the network, in fact, the financial counterpart to use the name “Virgin” was around 200,000 to 300,000 euros, in the form of a percentage of the station’s turnover, with ‘A guaranteed minimum. “We needed a more unifying name, a name that belongs to us, and especially enough to create a brand platform with Europe 1”, is content to indicate Stéphane Bosc, without giving figure.
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