Media Headliner: Capital Radio's hard but friendly mother hen.

The commercial buck stops with Linda Smith at the new GCap, and she concedes that it will be a challenge.

You sense there have been difficult times down at Capital Radio recently. Not only was the group, ahead of its merger with GWR to create GCap Media, forced to announce a 4 per cent decline in revenues for the last quarter of 2004, it has also faced tough decisions related to the merger.

Some of its key commercial players will make way for their counterparts at GWR as the deal, officially a merger but with Capital as the larger of the two companies, is completed. Senior staff including Linda Grant, Capital's national commercial director, are leaving as part of the shake-up, which could involve as many as 30 people in Capital and GWR's commercial departments losing their jobs. The teams will sit together at one site, with a location to be decided within the next fortnight.

One constant figure, though, is Linda Smith, Capital's group commercial director, who will take the same role when GCap begins trading on 9 May.

Once nicknamed 'mother hen' at Capital for her organisational and people skills, Smith seems, on the surface at least, to be just the sort of woman you need around at a time of such vast and, for some, worrying change.

So has she found the process difficult personally, having to tell good people that they won't necessarily have a job?

Smith says: 'Anyone who says that the process is easy would be odd. If you have to get rid of people, that has to happen but you're dealing with people who've done nothing wrong. I have been made redundant before, so hopefully that insight helps.'