public lse ubc industry media founded 1989 headquarters london england uk key people simon cole chief executive tim blackmore group editorial director products tv and radio services number of employees 90 2008 website www.ubcmedia.com ubc media group began as the unique broadcasting company founded in 1989 . in june 2014 the company merged with 7digital to form a global digital music and radio platform . the new company is called 7digital group plc. contents 1 staff 2 history 3 divisions and services 3.1 1 broadcast division 3.2 2 digital division 4 profitability 5 references 6 external links staff edit ubc unique broadcasting company was founded by simon cole and tim blackmore in 1989 . 1 cole is chief executive having started out as a trainee at the bbc and developed national sponsored programmes whilst at piccadilly radio in manchester . blackmore is the group editorial director and has a background in radio production with bbc radio one and capital radio . he is a fellow of the radio academy . 2 history edit ubc bought the classic gold digital network which includes digital and analogue licences from gwr group in two separate transactions in 2000 and 2002 for about 2m . in 2007 ubc effectively sold them back for 3.95 m to gcap media the company created from the merger of gwr group and capital radio group . in july 2006 as part of ubc s move away from owning radio stations it sold its share in digital news network dnn for 66k . in december 2007 ubc bought the remaining 51 % stake in oneword radio from channel four television for 1 and then closed the loss making speech dab radio station one month later . 3 in may 2008 ubc announced its commercial division was being bought by the american company gtn for 15 million . the deal was expected to complete around the end of july 2008 ; 4 a definitive agreement was announced in february 2009 . 5 in june 2008 ubc announced it was closing down its loss making venture cliq a service which allowed dab listeners to download music to onto their mobile phones . the system was designed to be implemented on dab enabled mobile phones but few manufacturers have been interested in adding dab to their handsets . two years on and the company pulled out of dab by selling its 7.5 % stake in mxr digital . 6 the stake was bought by fellow shareholder guardian media group for 136 000 plus a one off cash dividend payment from mxr of 52 000 . the move is part of ubc s strategy to focus on the production of content and the development of interactive software . as part of the agreement ubc was also released from its spectrum contracts that were due to run until 2015 with mxr . this enabled ubc to release circa 400 000 of provision which had been made to cover this contract . divisions and services edit ubc group has two divisions 1 broadcast division edit ubc produces commissioned programming to the bbc via its production companies unique radio production based in london smooth operations tv and radio production based in manchester . predominantly specialising in music and live music production smooth operations also produces bbc events such as the radio 2 folk awards and the radio academy s annual industry conference the radio festival . along with bbc commissioned programming they produce tv content for sky arts covering live music events such as cambridge folk festival and celtic connections.they also produce commissioned radio programming for rt 2fm . the company also produces digital content in the form of podcasts for various clients while unique facilities offers in house and outside broadcast production facilities from its base near marylebone london . 2 digital division edit unique interactive produces software including mandls a system which updates the text on dab sets epg an electronic programme guide for dab for epg capable devices profitability edit before the sale of its networked programming division ubc s business model relied heavily on providing content to commercial radio based on so called barter syndication effectively giving content to stations in exchange for selling some of their advertising airtime . but as revenues from radio advertising slumped so did the group s profitability . ubc s post tax operating loss for the year 2006 2007 was 1.26 million compared to 193 000 in 2005 2006 . the company is focussing on reducing costs and increasing profitability by ditching its digital radio stations and concentrating on providing content . 7 references edit ubc media group board of directors . ubc media group . retrieved 2008 05 21 . the radio academy fellows ubc media group press release on closure of oneword . ubc media group . retrieved 2008 01 11 . ubc media group press release on buyout by gnet . ubc media group . retrieved 2008 05 08 . gtn announces definitive agreement to acquire commercial division of ubc media . gtn . retrieved 2009 03 12 . ubc pulls out of mxr digital . radio today . 21 june 2010 . retrieved 21 june 2010 . ubc media group press release on closure of cliq . ubc media group . retrieved 2008 06 11 . external links edit ubc media group smooth operations unique interactive cliq entertainment news unique facilities global traffic network retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title ubc media group & oldid 659492876 categories media companies of the united kingdom navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 27 april 2015 at 14 09 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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