Here in the UK, Manchester’s Key 103 has taken a break from playing non stop Gaga/Bieber/Perry to become TakeThat103 for one day only to celebrate the band’s return to the city 16 years since they last played there.

You can read all about it here in more detail on the UK’s Radio and Marketing blog.

“Flipping format” is nothing new to the UK. Before becoming Glide FM, Oxford’s FM 107.9 became Glee FM. And in the US, stunts like this happen all the time .

In Australia, they do it a different way – creating pop up radio stations to celebrate specific days or events – such as ABC Woodstock (to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock) or ABC Beatles (a weekend of documentaries to mark the 40th anniversary of the break up of the band).

The BBC did something similar last year with BBC Tennis – as Adam Bowie notes here.

When I worked in South Wales, we once even created an extra station for Red Dragon FM in Cardiff to support the first year of the staging of the Wales Rally GB. The station – Red Dragon Rally FM- ran as a separate station – taking Red Dragon programming overnight and flipping to rally news and background interviews with a more rock oriented music policy.

Let’s just hope no-one becomes Bieber FM