Global Radio has picked ShineVu digital head Christopher Thorogood to be its digital director. Thorogood replaces Robin Pembrooke, who became ITV’s digital director in September; Pembrooke’s shoes had been filled by Lloyd Shepherd.

As it unites its remaining Hit Network stations under one national brand, Global Radio has picked Lloyd Shepherd to replace outgoing digital director Robin Pembrooke, Pembrooke says. Pembrooke is becoming ITV’s online MD, as we revealed last month.

Global Radio’s online and interactive director Robin Pembrooke is leaving to fill the vacant managing director post of ITV.com at the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster ITV.

—BT (NYSE: BT) fibre: BT has launched a fibre-to-the-cabinet consumer broadband service, Infinity, offering up to 40Mbps starting at £19.99 a month. Most homes can already get up to 8Mbps over copper wire, some of those can get up to 20 Mbps through ADSL2+; BT says four million homes will…

By John Plunkett: Global Radio has been censured by media regulator Ofcom for “gratuitous” plugging of Apple’s iTunes on its Sunday afternoon top 40 show. The company’s Big Top 40 chart, which replaced Hit40UK earlier this year and broadcasts on more than 140 stations around the country, includes a top…

The BBC may have been barred, for now, from sharing its iPlayer with TV broadcasters - but it’s still offering to pump radio stations through the service. Tim Davie’s audio and music division, which has, for some time, been wanting to create an industry-wide player to host streams from both…

By John Plunkett: Global Radio has hired BSkyB’s strategic content editor Ben Perreau to be its first director of digital content, working across all the radio group’s brands including Heart, Classic FM and Capital. Perreau, a former editor of NME.com who co-founded music news site Gigulate, will be responsible for…

Global Radio made more staff redundant Friday morning, we have learned, just three months after its last round of blood-letting. Online operations at regional stations are being restructured with nine web editors told to reapply for two jobs and an unspecified number of total job losses; we understand some people…

Global Radio is laying off around 40 of its 112-strong online and interactive team, paidContent:UK has confirmed with the company. Five of the 22 people on its London-based team will be made redundant and staff are being asked to re-apply for their jobs. The cuts will affect online staff for…

—ITV: ITV’s (LSE: ITV) odd ITVLocal.com offering is doing data partnerships with two other sites in a desperate attempt to hit its target of £150 million online revenue by 2010. It will offer a rebadged version of ThinkProperty.com’s property search as well as another with bill switching site uSwitch, a…

Channel 4 Radio is talking to DAB radio makers about launching a £20 branded mini tuner for iPods and mobile phones, as it looks to build a head of steam for the format ahead of launching its own DAB multiplex, The Times claims. 4Radio is due to unveil several of…

Uncertainty around DAB and the costs involved in launching digital radio operations persist… —4Radio: Channel 4 assures the multi-channel radio operation it planned to launch on the second DAB multiplex will go ahead - but boss Natalie Schwartz is not saying exactly how. 4Radio is finding setup costs as high…

After weeks of negotiation, Charles Allen’s Global Radio has finally sealed the deal to buy UK commercial radio leader GCap Media, throwing the latter’s recent turnaround strategy in to question. The 225p-per-share offer came after the market closed, just after the takeover panel agreed to extend the deadline by 24…

Forced by spiralling digital radio costs, GCap’s plan to sell its DAB multiplex stake, offload theJazz and Planet Rock digital stations and shutter three Xfm regions (see this morning’s post) is a slimlining strategy that puts broadband and ye olde FM at the fore. Part of the package as GCap…

In a sign of crisis for digital radio, UK commercial radio leader GCap will, as expected, sell its 67 percent stake in the DigitalOne DAB multiplex as part of cost-cutting measures designed to fend off an earlier bid from Global Radio. Recently-departed CEO Ralph Bernard had already protested digital radio…

Fru Hazlitt, who, we revealed yesterday, has been named CEO of commercial radio group GCap, was hired in part thanks to her online experience. Hazlitt was with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) UK & Ireland for six years from 1999, becoming managing director for the final two after a stint as European…

There’s still life in the old dog yet. Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) biz dev guys have been busy bees - both Bebo and UK commercial radio leader GCap have decided to add links on their sites that point users to songs available from the iTunes Store. Bebo is adding the integration…

- AOL: The musical chairs amongst Britain’s online ad sales execs continues. Duncan George, who quit as GCap commercial director a day before the radio group reported a big annual profit plunge in May, will next week resurface as AOL (NYSE: TWX) sales director, Media Week says. George had helped…

Commercial radio leader GCap managed to grow year-on-year online revenue by 50 percent (£800,000), interim results for the six months to September 30 show. Join the dots and the company pulled in £1.6 million from the web over the year. - Initiatives: It claims to be “ahead of targets for…