Calum Macaulay
Calum Macaulay, director of LocalRadio for UTV Media(GB), has been appointed the managing director of talkSPORT as of 1 January, 2013.
His appointment follows the news that TalkSport’s managing director of sales, Adam Bullock, and programme director, Moz Dee, are leaving the company to form a new media company called CONTENTed Digital Media.
UTV declined to comment beyond confirming Macaulay’s new post. He joined UTV in 1999.
TalkSPORT is owned by UTV Media plc based in Belfast. The group’s largest division is UTV Media (GB) which is head quartered in Warrington and overseen by managing director Scott Taunton.
The company’s UK assets include national radio station talkSPORT, 13 local radio stations together with additional interests in eight of the UK’s digital radio multiplexes and Sport, a weekly free sporting magazine distributed primarily in London.
TalkSport has just over three million weekly listeners and picked up the station of the year award at the Sonys in 2011.
The station is steadily chipping away at Radio 5 Live’s previous dominance of live sport on radio. It has been building its portfolio of live Premier League football rights – it now broadcasts 64 games a season – and has also won the rights to live FA Cup games and England internationals.
Beyond football, the station has also bagged the exclusive rights to the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia next year.
In other developments at the station, Bill Ridley, who has previously worked at talkSPORT with former MD Kelvin MacKenzie, is to return as programme director on an interim basis.
Iain Fowler, station director at UTV’s Stoke franchise Signal Radio, will replace Macaulay as the new director of local radio at UTV.
