Galaxy 102 and Key 103 have both changed their straplines to “Manchester’s number one hit music station”.
The unfortunate co-incidence means listeners in the Manchester area now have two radio stations positioning themselves in exactly the same way.
Galaxy are moving away from the “Love Music” line that they adopted shortly after Global Radio gave the stations new logos in 2007. The new positioning matches that of Capital FM and adds fuel to industry rumours about Galaxy changing name to Capital FM or vice versa.
Past straplines for Galaxy include “Number one for Dance & RnB”, “Live it!” and “Passion for music, passion for life”. The Galaxy website still has the “Love Music” line as part of the logo and there are still some drips of it on-air, but a Global Radio insider told Radio Today this will be gone in the next two days.
Key 103’s strapline change has already been reflected on the station website and is a change from various positioning statements used over the past few months, including “Manchester’s original hit music station” and “All of the songs you love”.
Gary Stein, Station Director for Key 103 told Radio Today: "We were very surprised yesterday to hear Galaxy start to use this strapline which has been part of Key 103's music positioning for the best part of the last decade. We currently use this through all our on air imaging and certainly don't plan to change our positioning, and while you can copy a strapline you certainly can't replicate what Key 103 does."
Galaxy has overtaken Key 103 in recent RAJAR’s with 509,000 listeners in the Manchester marketplace against Key’s 473,000. They also have marginally better average listener hours.
Listen to a sample of both stations [link=http://roymart.in/strapline-fight]here[/link].
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