Ashley Tabor believes that the answer to commercial radio's problems is simple: it's the playlist, the music, the sound that keeps people tuned in.

The chief executive of Global Radio is also determined to make sure that Britain's biggest radio group gets it right. He sits in on the weekly playlist meetings for each of his principal stations, be it Heart, Galaxy or Capital Radio in London - and he tunes in the same as you and I to test the product for himself.

He can, he says, listen to “two or three things at once” and adds that a typical breakfast might have him listening to “Gold breakfast, Choice FM, 15 minutes of Heart and then Red Dragon in Cardiff, which I can get on a wi-fi internet radio”. It is a thought that might intimidate a nervous radio DJ, if there is such a thing.

Yesterday Mr Tabor, the 31-year-old son of multimillionaire Michael, who effectively bought him GCap Media and Chrysalis Radio for a combined £545 million, demonstrated that he was not a mere micro-manager when he unveiled the new structure for the merged company. It will create a national network of 35 Heart-branded stations aimed at thirtysomething women and will place Capital into a new Hit Music grouping that will focus on contemporary tracks.

Capital has long struggled, but Mr Tabor believes that it can recover lost ground in London with a straightforward music-led strategy. He said: “Just because Capital has lost its focus doesn't mean that it can't get it back again.” That may sound simplistic, but he believes that the need to keep the City happy - Global is private - the pursuit of mergers and a lack of attention by management to the company's stations have allowed it to flag.

His energy, however, represents more than the enthusiasm of somebody with a new company to run - the GCap Media purchase won regulatory approval only last month. Capital, a former GCap station, has long been part of his life.

“I left school at 16 and went straight into radio,” he said. “One of the first things I did after I left school was work as a volunteer on Capital's Help a London Child appeal - I wanted to find any way in.” Still in his teens, he worked in Capital's programming team in the mid-Nineties and spent part of that time playing out records overnight on Chiltern FM. “I would work up in Dunstable, go back home, sleep two to three hours and get up and go into Capital.”

In his twenties he set up a small talent management and music publishing business, handling some acts that came out of The X Factor, and owning the songs written by Corinne Bailey Rae.

Two years ago he started to look at buying into the struggling commercial radio business, eyeing first GCap Media, with Richard Park, the veteran programmer. Chrysalis came up for sale, and that was bought for £170million before the GCap purchase this year.

Mr Tabor will not identify his backers - other than his father, whose fortune of about £620million comes from bookmaking, horse breeding and property. “He's my Dad,” Mr Tabor said. “He's an inspiration. I learnt from him the importance of not allowing your time to be cluttered up by things that don't make a difference.”

For now, what he wants to do is focus on content and brand, working closely on the playlists. No more acquisitions are planned and he does not intend to raid the BBC for presenters.

He hopes for a quick resolution to problems bedevilling digital radio. He wants AM and FM to remain on air and believes that spending the time that some of his predecessors spent on digital is “a huge distraction. I want to think less about which signal is coming out of the transmitters and more on what the signal actually is.”

Mr Tabor will not say so himself, but a deal to merge Global and Channel 4's commercial digital radio stations on to one block of frequencies is in the offing. The second block, surplus to requirements, will be mothballed and Channel 4 will launch its digital stations on the shared spectrum. All he will say is that the discussions are “taking a long time, because a lot of people are involved” - a hint that they are going in the right direction.

The timing of Mr Tabor's move into radio is difficult because the advertising market is collapsing. He concedes that predictions of a 10 per cent fall in radio advertising this year are “not a million miles away”. On that basis, the companies bought are unlikely to be worth what was paid for them, although Mr Tabor describes Global Radio as “a long hold” and that he doesn't “see any need to go public” to recoup some cash. “It's tough out there,” he said, speaking of the trading environment. “But I think if we can offer compelling programming, then it will come back. Everything is cyclical.”

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