Glasgow’s Insight Radio broadcasts on 101FM, from an Anniesland based transmitter, and is available throughout the UK and Europe via satellite.
The station is now reported to be in talks with DAB multiplex operators with a view to securing space on that terrestrial digital platform. This could be a national DAB network or a series of local DAB networks.
It has also been reported that the station will launch on Freesat next month.
Aberdeen’s Original 106FM has been sold by Canwest Media to Jonathan Arendt, Richard Johnson and current managing director Iain McKenna.
Under a licence agreement the station will continue to operate under the Original FM brand name.
Just 10 months after launching, community radio station Radio Cardiff has cease broadcasting.
Radio Cardiff began broadcasting on October 8th 2007, providing local news and information with music featuring reggae, soul, jazz, funk and house music.
The station reportedly blames the closure on a delay in funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and Cardiff County Council.
Richard Findlay, former chief executive of Scottish Radio Holdings and owner of Dundee’s Wave 102, is expected to buy up five radio stations in Ireland later this week.
Findlay and his son Adam own New Wave Media and are understood to be offering more than 50 million pounds to buy the stations.
The stations are reported to be Ocean FM (Sligo/Donegal), KCLR (Kilkenny/Carlow), Tipp FM (Tipperary), KFM (Kildare) and Mid West Radio (Mayo).
The north-east’s new radio station Original 106 FM could already be up for sale with owners Canwest Mediaworks reported to be preparing to exit the UK radio industry.
Canwest had previously indicated that “anything is for sale at any time at the right price” but staff at the three Canwest radio station were told on Friday that the company is “considering the sale of its radio operations”.
London community radio station TGR Sound, broadcasting to the Bexley, Dartford, Thamesmead and Woolwich areas, will cease broadcasting at 1pm on Sunday 22 June.
A statement published on the TGR Sound website describes the financial conditions which have led to the closure:-
It is with much regret we have to announce, that as of Sunday 22nd of June, your local Community Radio Station, 103.7 FM TGR Sound will cease broadcasting.
Since its launch in 2004, the station has provided over 300 community groups with support and free publicity for their events and services, trained in excess of 5,000 people and forged partnerships with 200 organisations. This has all been achieved by the hard work and dedication of a team of mainly volunteers.
103.7FM TGR Sound was well regarded by OFCOM and had become as one of the foremost community radio stations and possibly one of the only stations that would have been in a position to offer ‘Live’ broadcasting from 6.00am to Midnight, seven days a week had it been able to continue.
However despite the efforts of our members to bring in advertising and sponsorship from the local councils and both local and national companies, it has proved an impossible task in an increasingly difficult and competitive environment.
Although regular revenue from training and hosting festivals existed, it is not sufficient to cover the total costs of running an FM Radio Station and therefore we became increasingly dependant on grants and funding to survive and pay for the cost of rent, electricity and other essential services. These forms of funding by their very nature cannot be guaranteed and a succession of rejected applications have left 103.7 FM TGR Sound with no major source of income for the remainder of this year.
We would like to thank everyone for all their hard-work and involvement – not only the volunteers but the community groups, organisations and individuals who helped to make 103.7 FM TGR Sound the number one listened to local radio station across Bexley, Dartford, Thamesmead and Woolwich.
Scottish radio stations featured in the New York Festivals Radio Broadcasting Awards this year.
Clyde 1’s Superscoreboard football show took gold in the Sports Commentary/Analysis category along with bronze in the Best Sports Coverage category.
In the Ongoing News Story category, ‘Going for Gold’, Radio Clyde’s coverage of Glasgow’s successful bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, took silver.
And in the Music Special category, ‘Made in Scotland’, Clyde 2’s tribute to Scottish Music, received a bronze award.
It was gold also for Forth 2’s Darran Adam who received his award in the Best Ongoing News Story category for the station’s coverage of the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections.
STUART CAMERON will take over the four hour Sunday breakfast show on Radio Borders on July 6th.
It is hoped that a full country music programme will follow by the end of the year.
Radio Borders was announced as Britain’s number one station this year in terms of having the highest audience share.
“It’s been a long time since country music formed part of the output on Britain’s leading station, and I’m quietly confident that this could change in the near future,” said Stuart, winner of the Country Music Association’s Overseas Country Music Broadcaster Award in 2002.
Kaiserslautern, Germany
Positive tests results using the DRM+ standard for a radio station broadcasting on FM were unveiled at an international symposium at the end of May.
Throughout March, April and May 2008, the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern broadcast its experimental radio station across the southwest German city in digital on 87.6 MHz using DRM+ in order to test this extended version of the DRM digital radio standard.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency, the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern and the German
State Media Authority of Rhineland-Palatinate carried out extensive field tests to validate the trial.
DRM+ extends the regular DRM standard, which is the universal, openly standardised, digital
radio system for the radio frequencies below 30MHz (short-wave, medium-wave and long-wave)
by allowing FM stations in the 87.5 MHz to 108 MHz frequency range to broadcast in digital.
Mr Lindsay Cornell, the Technical Committee Chairman for the DRM Consortium who spoke at
the symposium, says: “these tests demonstrate that DRM+ provides clear added value for the
listener by offering not only an uninterrupted service for both portable and mobile reception but
also excellent audio quality. The DRM Consortium applauds the work undertaken in
Kaiserslautern which goes a long way to show that DRM+ has great market potential.”
Mr Cornell went on to thank Prof. Dr. Andreas Steil from the University of Applied Sciences
Kaiserslautern and Mr Joachim Lehnert, Head Engineer from the German State Media Authority
of Rhineland-Palatinate for their significant input into the tests.
The University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern expects to receive a new licence to continue
DRM+ test broadcasts from the German Federal Network Agency following this successful first
test phase.
Visit www.drm-radio-kl.eu for further information on the trial and the project.
