Massive cuts at Global Radio

[dgl]

slightly off topic but if you want to listen to a wide range of music, with some of the music being less well known and using versions other than the radio edit the go to Morrison's. Even heard Matia Bazar - Ti Sento in the Bridport one once, and that was not released in that version (sung in their native Italian rather than the English language release).

 

[Darandio]

I've never really bothered with music based radio since I was no longer able to listen to John Peel on an evening, at least at home anyway.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

I'm sure that the Conservatives aren't bothered but this must just about seal the fate of local radio in many areas. I wonder if there is something in the OFCOM licence about those frequencies being only for local programming?

In Wales, the Global stations there (its either Capital or Heart that do) have to have a "show" which features Welsh artists on it as part of the licences remit, no idea if this includes the former Marcher stations though but I suspect it does. I also suspect similar on the former Juice FM Liverpool licence for the local dance output which is aired on Thursdays and Fridays from 6pm for an hour, however on the Juice Brighton licence there's no dance music / specialist interests remit which I find bizare considering that Brighton has a large gay population.

I do think the plan is to get all of the Capitals, Hearts, Smooths and what other "local" stations that Global have on to a single UK-wide frequency, which would free up the FM band to allow more community radio stations to go on air as well as being allowed to crank up the wattage to 50W rather than the current 25W. The nearest we'll get to local radio these days will be community radio.

The funny thing is that I'm not sure I see the future of radio in being playing out 10 songs on loop, because you can do that on Spotify and get to influence what the songs are. Surely the future of radio is something with more personality than the utter garbage that is Heart?

The current form of commercial radio will fade out eventually, I just can't imagine seeing Heart or Capital (even the Big Top 40 for that matter which seems to be on life support since Bauer pulled out of networking it) lasting - sooner or later they'll end up with no listeners as not everyone will want to listen to a ten track playlist.

 

[bussnapperwm]

Local radio in the Midlands died with Free Radio getting sold to Bauer and most of the daytime stuff coming from Manchester.

Jo and Sparky moving to Gem 106 in the east Midlands from Free Radio Black Country resulted in me becoming a radio 1 listener because I did not enjoy their replacements.

Scrapping free radio 80s (broadcast from the free radio Birmingham Studios), replacing it with Greatest Hits Radio from Manchester added insult to injury for me personally.

 

[radamfi]

I do think the plan is to get all of the Capitals, Hearts, Smooths and what other "local" stations that Global have on to a single UK-wide frequency, which would free up the FM band to allow more community radio stations to go on air as well as being allowed to crank up the wattage to 50W rather than the current 25W. The nearest we'll get to local radio these days will be community radio.

Can you have FM single frequency networks? Surely if it is possible, then the national networks (Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 and Classic FM) wouldn't have so many different frequencies.

 

[Ken H]

Can you have FM single frequency networks? Surely if it is possible, then the national networks (Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 and Classic FM) wouldn't have so many different frequencies.

Yes. but you have to lock the 2 stations frequencies so the waves coincide. But in marginal areas your radio can hunt between the 2 signals. Some stations have regional adverts so that can sound odd.

 

[geml90]

I do think the plan is to get all of the Capitals, Hearts, Smooths and what other "local" stations that Global have on to a single UK-wide frequency, which would free up the FM band to allow more community radio stations to go on air as well as being allowed to crank up the wattage to 50W rather than the current 25W. The nearest we'll get to local radio these days will be community radio.

Some community radio stations are using 50W now. I believe Ofcom are open to stations using more than 25W if it can be justified when they apply for a licence. Infact I think there's a station in North Yorkshire with a transmitter at 50W and another at 100W.

Some commercial stations play a reasonable number of different songs - Absolute played 1,500 unique tracks in the last month and Planet Rock played 2,400. Still about 90% of people listen to live radio every week (compared to about 20% for Spotify etc) and about 36m people in the UK listen to commercial radio each week.

I used to listen to my local FM station all the time, but now there only really token mentions of local places at the end of the weather and the news is just press releases. Now I switch between Magic Soul, Greatest Hits Radio (which has pretty good local news here), Absolute and a handful of other stations. Stations like Minster FM still sound very local and entertaining and I wish we had something like that here.