According to the Daily Telegraph, Richard Branson’s making a bid for Absolute Radio, née Virgin Radio.

Absolute Radio is apparently up for sale by its Indian owners. I say “apparently”, since any business is up for sale for the right price; and what we have so far is nothing more than rumours and speculation. During my time at the station, SMG – the former owners – were rumoured to be selling the station almost every month: we quickly learnt to ignore the press reports, even if we were quietly hopeful that we’d leave the control of a corporate owner that didn’t really understand us.

Similarly, there have always been stories – since Chris Evans bought the station from Branson – that Virgin were interested in buying the station back. Virgin Radio now has a number of radio stations round the world, some owned by Virgin Enterprises, some on a franchise deal, but lack a big-ticket station to call its own. Again, we in the company learnt to ignore those stories, too – though those that remembered the Virgin era were, again, quietly hopeful that Branson might buy the station back.

So: both the story of the station “up for sale” and Branson “putting in a bid” are just rumour.

Back in 2008, I wrote about the difficulties of Virgin Radio’s brand – and why TIML was correct in not continue to license it. I still believe that they did the right thing. If you’re not Virgin family, you’re not really Virgin.

The story about Richard Branson putting a bid in to run the station is interesting, since – unreported by the Telegraph in its story – one of the senior management figures in Virgin Radio International, the owners and part-owners of many of the Virgin Radio stations, like Virgin Hitz in Thailand – is one John Pearson. John was a founder member of the original Virgin Radio in London, and was, until the mid 2000′s, Virgin Radio’s CEO. The business has significantly changed since his tenure; but John understands the issues and strengths of the station, and steered it through particularly successful times.

The question is whether Virgin can sort out its inter-company branding issues in the UK. Running businesses based on a brand licence, as Virgin do, means that there’s a peculiar misconnection between the Virgin businesses. In 2007, I wrote about Virgin Trains’ onboard radio service which ignored Virgin Radio; the music service Virgin Digital promoted a rival broadband company to Virgin Net; Virgin Atlantic’s credit card was with AmEx and not Virgin Money. Virgin Trains also has a deal with Orange to boost coverage for the network (and not for Virgin Mobile). I could go on.

If Virgin Enterprises, or Virgin Radio International, really is buying Absolute Radio back (and re-branding it to Virgin), then it needs to own Virgin Radio completely, and properly make it part of the Virgin family. Radio businesses need to earn money away from their core broadcasting operations to survive; yet for a Virgin brand licensee, diversification is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve while remaining within the branding agreement. Being owned by Virgin makes it easier. Much easier.

I’m still a fan of the Virgin brand. I loved listening to Virgin Radio in Toronto (owned by media group Astral) and their Thailand station. It still gives me a thrill to see the ‘star’ logo. I had the happiest time of my life working for the brand, and made every effort to be a good Virgin citizen and brand guardian online. After all: I did make the station the world’s most listened-to online radio station. As a flag-carrier for the Virgin brand, the plucky little company did pretty well.

But it’s all a big “if” at the moment. And I’m not entirely sure that Virgin are interested: or that TIML really want to give up their station so early in their tenure. I suspect it’s nothing more than a fanciful story, fun though it is to speculate.

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