There is nothing like starting the working week fresh, and it appears 2CH has done just that by changing its call sign and logo.
2CH seems to have been rebranded to Magic in line with the rest of the Magic easy listening stations around the country.
After the Macquarie/Fairfax merger, the new business ended up owning three radio stations in Sydney, which is against the current media ownership laws.
Macquarie Media has about one month left to sell the station by the end of March as required by the ACMA, unless something changes with the media laws before that.
The name change brings Sydney in line with the company’s Melbourne and Brisbane stations, which are also named Magic.
It is not known what negotiations are taking place behind the scenes for the sale of 2CH.
Whether Macquarie Media sells all three Magic east cost stations as a package to someone, or whether it only intends to offload 2CH, as required by the ACMA is unknown.
If Macquarie Media retains Magic Melbourne and Brisbane, it could perhaps hire back its programming and sales services to the new owners so that 2CH remained as a ‘network buy’? If all the stations were sold as a network, then the new owner would have a viable low-cost product targeting older listeners to offer to advertisers up and down the east coast.
And there was the option of "selling" 2CH to the Council of Churches for $1 and for Macquarie to continue to manage and program the station for them in exchange for 50% of the profits. But surely ACMA would have seen straight through that ploy as being an attempt to hold a third Sydney licence until/if the media laws change.
As a low-cost, three capital city (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) package, the Magic network would have to be an attractive proposition for a group without any current capital city licences, such as Grant Broadcasters, providing the price was right.
Why rebrand if they need to sell a single station? It would appear they intend to off-load all 3. Alternatively they could sell off 2UE.
They already knew government was going to change media ownership laws. This new policy is not good for diversity.