Could it be put to good use - and not impact on other services?

There are several community radio stations in Glasgow, some of which have defined geographical areas that they broadcast a general mix of programmes to. Others are specialist services that due to the quirk of the licencing of community stations have ended up broadcasting to small geographic areas, when a larger area would be of greater benefit.

Awaz FM is, to my mind, a misuse of FM spectrum. Why? Well, they have a pokey wee 25 watt transmitter on 107.2 that doesn't even serve all of Glasgow. Awaz FM is Glasgow's only Asian station, trying to reach as many Asians as possible for as much as their signal allows.

Meanwhile, up at Seargeant's Law, 96.3 is a higher powered transmitter about to fall silent. This one covers almost all of Glasgow and still gives something between very usable to very good reception in areas well beyond that, including most of Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire, parts of South Lanarkshire, parts of Ayrshire and even good in-car reception along the M8 until you reach Black Hill.

That is potentially an awful lot more Asian people who could receive that signal.

(Editor's note: 21% of Glasgow's population is ethnic minority; around half that are Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi or Other Asian).

Ah! But has a community radio station ever taken over a frequency (with the same transmission power) as an ILR before?

Yes, it has. Vibe FM in Watford. They are a community station, with the unusual allocation of 200 watts, simply because the ILR that previously occupied the frequency had that power as well.

Ah! But has a radio station with absolutely no connection with another radio station ever been allowed to take over the transmitter and frequency of the other radio station when it was closing down?

Yes! Heartland FM was given permission to take over the Perth FM licence when Mark Page could no longer operate it, meaning that Heartland FM was able to extend its service area. Heartland later moved that transmitter site and has extended its area even further.

Does it not make total sense?

Awaz FM would in no way impact on the business interest of Global and their remaining services, which may have been the reason why they wanted to hand the licence back in the first place.

However, her video on YouTube has generated NEGATIVE publicity for two radio groups in particular and given the public something to talk about, if the social media comments are anything to go by.

Now, I've titled this thread because her song "Earthquake" has actually been getting playlisted on some smaller commercial radio stations in the UK and many more radio stations in Ireland. Even more strangely, the song that has been dismissed for radio airplay at BBC HQ in LONDON is actually on the playlist of BBC Radio Scotland and has also been played on Radio Ulster. So it can't be that crap, surely?

How can that be?

How can some radio stations that are aimed at the very same demographics that Sandi's song would appeal to decide that it is not to get played, whilst other radio stations (sometimes owned by the same company or organisation) do play it, despite aiming for the same demographic?

We keep getting told about those wonderful audience "tests" that help to determine the playlists of radio stations. However, with increased centralisation, the pile of songs that are intended to be played on a network of radio stations are ultimately decided by a person. So I wonder how these "tests" are REALLY conducted - and if they are conducted, do the results actually mean much?

For example, in my DJ-ing days, I could fill dance-floors with Celtic Rock records that are real chanters up here in Scotland - but would any of Bauer's Scottish stations play Runrig these days? Do those people in the Deep Sarf of Englandshire even recognise what Celtic Rock is or even who those bands are?

In the 1980's Radio Clyde championed and supported Wet Wet Wet, simply because they were local and their songs were playlist worthy. If Wet Wet Wet had arrived on the scene now, would they have even made the playlist, which is ultimately dictated by someone in charge of it - who happens to be in another country?

I have also exposed the farce of playlisting with some songs that were played by one station aimed primarily at over 55's, yet the other station in the same market (Glasgow) that is also aimed at over 55's (but is owned by a different company) did not playlist those very songs, even though the sound of the songs were better suited for that radio station. How can the "test" results be so different?

I have playlisted stations - purely on merits of songs, whilst also using my DJ-ing instinct. I'm glad to say that I've seldomly been wrong. However, I also pay close attention to the charts (and radio station playlists) of other countries, which is how I've even determined trends. I played songs long before they were released in the UK, purely on the basis of their sound and how well they were doing elsewhere. Uptown Funk was in the Top 20 World Singles Chart three weeks before receiving ANY airplay on UK radio and long before its scheduled release in the UK (bear in mind that its release was brought forward by 6 weeks, after it was sung by one of Simon Cowell's karaoke contestants on the X Factor).

How was the "test" conducted for, say, Cheyenne by Jason Derulo, which did receive quite a lot of radio airplay - but the great British public have not made it chart in the Top 40?

As for Sandi's song, it's mediocre - just like a lot of songs that do make it on radio station playlists. At best it would be a small hit - but in my mind her emotional outpouring (some people have dismissed it as a publicity stunt) has brought a subject that I have spoken about I the past to a wider audience. She's probably hit a nerve.

I would have thought that Radio Clyde would have risen above such tactics but it seems that they have let their standards drop, with a bit of a stooshe between themselves and a trial radio station that's operating on the mini-MUX for 9 months or so.

The region's evening newspaper has reported this catfight which, if the e-mail is as true as it's reported, has ensured that Radio Clyde have given it's "rival" even more publicity than they would probably have wanted to give, whilst possibly making themselves look quite petty.

I'm also baffled by the logic.

If Go! Radio Glasgow is a rival and Radio Clyde don't want to mention the name of someone who is associated with it, then surely that same rule has to apply to Tony Blackburn, who also presents a program on Radio 2, which is a far greater rival to Clyde 2 than Go! Radio is likely to be during its 9 months on air - yet Tony gets his own show on Sundays and very regular trailers throughout the week.

I did create another thread about how our European (and Irish) cousins are into vertical expansion, by offering streams that provide different slants on the music they play but are doing it under the same brand, thereby offering a bit more choice for the more discerning listener. I did wonder if we could be getting the same in the UK and if we did, would it go far enough?

So 75% of us now have access to another 18 radio stations (whilst Glasgow's 7 other stations, broadcasting on some kind of local MUX, are whimpering away to as many people as can hear them, whilst they try to get more people to hear them).

Some of those 18 stations are indeed offering more choice. We now have a near-national jazz station again, a Panjabi station, some kind of arty-farty station, a kids station and soon to be a talk station that actually talks about anything other than sport and news.

Also, we seem to have a wee bit more of that kind of vertical expansion I mentioned earlier, under single brands and possibly adding more listeners to the main stations portfolios. Magic Mellow and Magic Chilled seem to be distinctive enough from the main Magic channel, offering the kind of music 24/7 that would otherwise only be heard for a wee bit of the day on the main vanilla channel. Likewise we have Premier's anything goes as long as it's Christian channel paired up with Premier's non-stop hand-clapping and uplifting songs channel.

So it's all good, right?

I would agree about channels with distinctive slants - but why-oh-why do we have so many other new channels that are doing the same as same as channels that are already there? Worse still, what about those "extra" national channels that are in fact a slight playlist remix of their own selves on a local MUX that serves far more people than sheep.

I've seen the excuse that it's to get their brand out "nationally" and to reach areas that are un-served by their brand on a local basis. Fine. Except that those very places is where hardly anybody lives. As for it being "nationally" available ......er, Digital 1 covers far less landmass in Scotland than the amount of landmass (and islands) that can't actually get the signal.

Besides, is it a good idea for, say, Heart Extra to effectively be in competition with Heart "Scotland" when the pretending-to-be Scottish service has been having a poor record of falling audiences, with those who are still listening are doing so for less?

Or is there a game plan going on?

There are simply not enough hours in the day for most people to go out of their way and take full advantage of all these extra stations, not without sacrificing existing services. I can only think that whilst the vertical expansion is a sound idea in attracting new listeners that might not have otherwise bothered , the "Extra" stations are a crude attempt to kill off the local equivalents in the long term and then, finally, have a national station.

It's the first to launch in Scotland and one of the first in the UK under the new revised restrictions regarding advertising vs public funding/donations.

This one could be worth watching because it broadcasts within an area for which the ILR (Radio Borders) has a TSA of 101,000 people (yes, it is that close). It is also broadcasting from the capital town of the region, which also happens to be the same town that the ILR broadcasts from.

TD1's very existence and now its presence on FM is very timely because Radio Borders is becoming increasingly networked from Edinburgh, Glasgow and even Manchester, with a possibility of it being lost altogether if and when the Edinburgh DAB mulitplex is rolled out to include the Borders region.

The Borders region is also about to see some economic expansion when the 30 mile stretch of railyway line opens later this year, with direct train services between Edinburgh and Galashiels for the first time in 6 decades.

To make things a bit more interesting, TD1 also contains a few former Radio Borders presenters.

It's current sound is very slick and reasonably professional, reminiscent of how Radio Borders used to sound, packed with local features that go beyond tokenism. It also has an upbeat Heart-esque music policy, although it has a much broader selection of feelgood songs than you would hear on Heart.

The trouble with community radio stations, especially those that serve small geographic communities, is that they are staffed by volunteers – or rather they are often NOT sufficiently staffed by volunteers to sustain an on-air service 24/7. Volunteers usually have something else that they need to do, such as working for a living. Employers are often quite inconsiderate in that they expect people to work during actual working hours, which for most people is sometime between 8AM and 6PM.

Despite this uncomfortable truth, we still see wannabe community radio stations applying for licences and as part of their application they put in their ambitions to have live local programming for every hour that God sends. Some of them succeed. Most do not. This ultimately leads to the situation of OfCom investigating several dozen community stations for possibly not meeting their promises of performance.

Meanwhile, in the cut-throat world of commercial radio, many small-scale stations have realised that they simply cannot sustain themselves either, so they choose to either network, voice-track or they simply do not bother with a presenter and “live” programming at all. Yet, strangely, it all works rather well. Putting aside the big group stations that have a presenter dropping in links from a remote studio umpteen hundred miles away, some stations seem to have a magic formula of putting out quite a lot of local information relevant to their audience, even though there is no-one in a studio actually saying it. Even more surprising is that those stations, i.e. Jack FM, Bob FM and The Breeze are staying well within their promises of performance, sometimes they exceed that and at the same time they even win awards for their production and creation of compelling programming. It has also been proven on this very website that Jack FM actually puts out more speech, despite having no presenters, than its commercial rival that has a gob-on-stick employed to say the station name 60 times an hour.

So I’ve been thinking. Community radio could learn a wee trick here. Since it is most difficult to get volunteers to reliably fill in weekday daytime slots all the time, why not play safe and not bother to have them at all? However, this is probably the best time of the day to put out the most amount of programming and content that is relevant to the area they serve and the people who could listen.

Jack FM works, with its non-stop music, along with its drop-in packages and traffic content. There’s no reason why community radio stations can’t do the same. We have lots of community stations that are simply automated jukeboxes with station idents (and occasional adverts) by day, although they do have a good amount of programs at nights and weekends (when volunteers are most available).

So community stations can and should try to make their daytime programming feature-packed with non-stop music and drop-in package and traffic items that are seriously heavy on community information. You don’t need presenters – that has been proven.

I have also listened to a few USA stations that are presenter-less outside of breakfast. They do a neat wee trick with their music by having a pre-recorded voice-over announcing the name of the artist and song, especially if it is a pre-release or new release and occasionally if it is a long-forgotten back-of-the-record-shelf classic hit. Community stations that have more diverse music policies could also do this, which would be especially handy if they have a format that includes pre-releases or even local unsigned acts.

Meanwhile, programs after, say, 6PM could be live or pre-recorded and usually be of the specialist type. I would suggest most community stations have a youth strand between 6 and 8PM, with specialist shows between 8 and 10PM. The station could go into automation after 10PM, with a late-night love song/chill-out/easy listening playlist up to midnight. Some shows that go out on weekday nights could also be repeated on Saturdays and Sundays, with the youth programs repeated on Saturday mornings and afternoons and some of the specialist shows repeated from Sunday lunchtime or so. Other shows at nights on Fridays and Saturdays need not be repeated, such as dance shows and rock shows, whilst some programs could also go out on Saturdays and Sundays only during daytime.

What you could have, with my suggestions above, is some seriously good sounding, highly professional content, with the right amount (and sustainable amount) of volunteers who are able to spend a lot more time ensuring that the quality of their programs is very good and easy to listen to. If you have too many volunteers spread too thinly across a schedule (who cannot guarantee their attendance), the quality inevitably drops, they are harder to manage and the overall output of the station is much less attractive to listeners.

If a station has a station manager, it is possible that they could present a breakfast show. Does it need to be live? Probably not! It’s community radio, not local radio. It could be voice-tracked. Traffic items could include what the listener would expect to hear, such as celebrity birthdays, whats-ons, live news bulletins on the hour, a pre-recorded local news bulletin dropped in and even some Euro or world news dropped in on the half-hour (since those bulletins are often sent by e-mail). Weather bulletins could be pre-recorded the night before. You don’t need to do live travel reports, you’re a community station broadcasting to a small area – but news of upcoming roadworks etc could be slotted in. Other than that, the presenter could pre-record entertaining links and features that need not be live.

A fine example of a truly automated station that also puts out speech packages is Passion For The Planet. Community radio could easily do the same.

With so many events and festivals that are close together, such as St Andrew's Day, Hogmanay and Burn's Night, all of which are recognised as being "Scottish" celebrations, ambitions are well underway for a radio station that intends to promote local and national events, including concerts and live broadcasts, which will be held throughout Scotland between November and January.

Headed by Jack Thomson, who has been appointed as station manager, the radio station will have a unique sound by playing only musicians and acts that have been born in Scotland, or raised or formed in Scotland, and have had chart hits over the past six decades.

With the tagline of "All Scottish Hits, All Of The Time", listeners can expect to hear classic tracks and recent hits from acts such as the Alan Parson Project, the Bluebells, Donovan and even new music from artists such as Yasmin and Nina Nesbitt.

The station will be called Jock FM (not to be confused with similar named stations in England) and according to Jack the playlist rules will be very strict.

"You will only hear Scottish artists - nobody else," said Mr Thomson (who, he points out, is often nicknamed as Tamson). "That means that Rod Stewart will NOT be included because he was neither born nor raised here - although we will make an allowance for one of his tracks, when he dueted with Perthshire's Helicopter Girl."

"Whilst celebrating all things Scottish and playing the best in Scottish music, we intend to be a fun station with a little satire to go with our Saltire. Presenters will also have tongue-in-cheek names with a Scottish flavour that our Scottish listeners will understand and be amused by."

One presenter, Robert Campbell, a hospital radio presenter and a self professed fitness fanatic who calls himself Big Thin Boab, said he was looking forward to the station being on air around Christmas time and before Go Radio launches in early 2017.

Robert said, "The good burgers of Glasgow will get to hear real music, live from Scotland and entirely from our studios that will be located beside the Clyde, with a powerful transmitter situated in the heart of Glasgow. For a whole month we intend to bring your favourite Scottish hits and promote great events that celebrate our culture. Things are going quite smooth so far in our plans to bring a novel station to the airwaves. "

The station will be available on FM and online.

Whilst on my way to the Chinese supermarket yesterday, I decided to give this "new" station a try.

Now, please bear in mind that we are often told on these radio forums how much more professional commercial radio is these days, now that most of it is owned by two or three big companies, whilst other smaller stations are "tin-pot" and not anywhere near as good nor as professional and it's a surprise that anyone listens to those smaller stations because they are so bad (especially because they don't play 42 station idents an hour, which is atrociously amateur).

So, after hearing the same songs as played on the main Smooth Radio service (although they were played in a slightly different order but with different station idents and the addition of the word "extra"), I turned the volume up to hear the news at the top of the hour (which was the first captivating output of the station during my listening time). Then, straight after the news, on this highly professional station owned by a highly professional company that are much more professional than anyone else that claims to be professional, there was an Extra ident for smooth weather - followed by ..............................................................................................................silence!!!!!!

After almost half a minute, another station ident was played, followed by another song that's on the main Smooth Radio playlist - but that song is being played at a different time of the day from its sister station, as are the other songs but all those songs are interspersed with different station idents from the sister station, of course, which seems to justify its existence and is therefore providing more "choice" for the listener.

Still, apart from missing an important bit of station traffic (a feature that listeners would be fairly interested in), it all sounded quite slick. I mean, those idents were played within a nano-second of the next song - and that is just flippin' brilliant. Who needs CD's. Spotify, I-pods, vinyl, cassette players or Radio 2 to be entertained.

Unfortunately it's on Glasgow's mini-MUX that has yet to switch on its second transmitter and it might not be around after its 9 month trial (who knows?) but it's worthy of a mention.

YOUR Radio (don't you just love that word and that name for a radio station?) was really pleasing my ears as I was driving into work this morning. Great stereo imaging. Nicely balanced treble and bass. Correct volume level (some other stations on the same MUX were either too loud or too quiet). Just a pity that some tracks were in mono for some reason.

When I compare it to other stations, this one is up there as being one of the best for sound quality.

Clyde 2, whenever I catch it, tends to have splashy, slurry sound at times during networked shows (but good sound quality during shows that actually come from Glasgow).

Radio 2 is good. Gold is very good. Unfortunately most of the stations (even the ones in stereo) could do with better balances of treble, bass and an effort to sound less slurry.

For quite some time I have tried not to let my love of music be tainted by commercial radio, which seems to go out of its way to ruin the experience and joy of music by cutting songs short, having presenters waffle over songs (with nothing to say other than the station name and a promotion for a premium rate competition that you don’t stand a chance of winning) or playing the same 600 songs for the rest of your life.

To make matters worse, most commercial stations that I used to listen to have dropped their specialist shows, so even the appointment-to-listen programs have gone. As a consequence I no longer tune into them at any other time (either accidentally or habitually) and have instead joined the large numbers of former listeners that are now spending most of our listening time tuned to the BBC or community radio, whilst said commercial stations continue to enjoy ever-decreasing audiences that are now in (or close to) single figures.

As an example, the UK’s longest running soul show (on Northsound 2 in Aberdeen) was dropped, as was another great soul show on Forth 2. So now, for my fix of soul music, I have to seek out programs on some BBC stations and occasionally community radio. This applies to other forms of music that I get in the mood for.

Fortunately, OfCom have provided the initiative that is small-scale DAB for which some trial services are on air in some parts of the country.
For a short while at least (although I suspect they will all get their trials extended or become permanent services), these mini MUX’s have provided a much more accessible platform for a variety of stations catering for communities and niches, many of which would otherwise have been confined to the internet and had little promotion for people to discover them and listen.

For the past few months I have discovered a wealth of stations that I had never heard before. Some are mediocre. Some are good. Others are great.

One such station is Sunset Radio in Manchester. For the past three months I have been listening to this station almost every day for typically more than an hour. I love soul music (as well as other forms of music). Sunset Radio plays mellow soul tracks, most of which I have seldom heard or ever heard before, so it’s been a real voyage of discovery for me.

As a consequence I have heard so many songs that I have considered to be so outstanding, I’ve ended up buying albums from Amazon or the artists’ websites, purely as a result of hearing the tracks on that station. So far I have spent almost £300 on CD’s and MP3 downloads. I now have all albums by Maysa Leak (who I had never heard before). I have filled the gaps in my Stevie Wonder collection (Characters was posted through my door this morning) and I have been introduced to other great artists and songs that otherwise don’t seem to get played on other stations.

Sunset Radio is not the only station to have had that effect on me. Jazz FM has done so in the past. Radio 2 and 6 Music occasionally do. Radio Clyde USED TO!!!!!!!

Indeed, when I look at my CD collection (and put aside the pre-releases that get sent to me as a legacy of my DJ-ing days), I can honestly consider that most of it has been bought as a result of hearing songs on specialist shows (and occasionally daytime shows) on commercial music radio, as well as the BBC.

So I do have to ask (again), what point is there to commercial music radio for music fans when there are other alternatives to listen to? Why should anyone listen to it when the the hooks and must-listen features are gradually being withdrawn?

Commercial radio may be doing alright for just now but I don’t see how it can last in the long term.

Meanwhile with streaming music providers, specialist small-scale DAB stations, internet channels, YouTube and social media, commercial music radio must surely be heading to a point of irrelevance, eventually.

Heart Scotland's reach Q-on-Q has plummeted from 18% to 15%. This is also the case for its year-on-year figures. This means that Heart is having almost as few listeners as Scot FM's peak and is a galaxy away from Real Radio's peak of 26% just 5 years ago.

The audience share for Heart has also plummeted to a low of 5.9%, from a high of 16.7% five years previously.

Wow!

Heart Scotland has been under investigation from Ofcom on various matters, including swearing mishaps.

However, I am astonished by this because I would have thought that Robin Galloway's presence at the station would have seen the figures increase for a wee while before dropping again - but this is quite bad.

After reading a report about the possibility of the BBC News Channel being closed, I immediately thought "No bloody wonder." Of all the BBC's outlets, this is one channel where money appears to be no object.

On this 24 hour news channel, we have several newsreaders repeating the domestic news bulletins throughout the day - but then at primetime slots, we have a different newsreader doing the same job for a mere half hour, then we don't see them until the next day. If a major news story breaks somewhere else on the planet, said primetime newsreader is jetted off to that place, to stand in front of a landmark, to read the same story that was reported by a locally based correspondent .... and then after he or she has done his bit, they immediately hand over to another newsreader in the news studio for the rest of today's news.

Then comes the real bugbear I have. Scottish news stories!!!! For some reason the BBC send a "Scotland Correspondent" to report the news story. This person is usually English and often can't pronounce the place names. This is immediately followed by our own Reporting Scotland program for which one of our own reporters is actually doing the same story in the same place - and speaking the same language!!!!

Why BBC? Why?

I personally didn't make a point of listening to any of the closedowns or sitting up late and being within breathing distance of a radio to hear the transformation from music or speech to static and nothing, simply because I'm not at all that bothered about the inevitable extinction of a band and broadcast platform that I often cursed at - because its failings would often show up at the very precise moment I wanted to hear something that was really interesting.

Medium wave (and even long wave) was always cursed with static from machinery and gadgetry (even more so these days). It always distorted beneath power lines and had a faint pulse beneath telephone lines that latterly transmitted data for the internet. Then, after the sun went down, things got worse, with our favourite AM stations often being interfered with something from a distant place or that tedious phasing as signals would fade in and out.

Yet it still had its fans - even me (to an extent). Don't get me wrong folks, up until the turn of the 21st Century, there were many AM stations that I quite enjoyed listening to .... but it wasn't because they were on AM. It was simply because they were on something and I could get to listen to them. Most of them provided me with a bit more choice, in an age where wireless was still the most accessible platform and the ability to listen to stations via the internet was cumbersome at best and quite unreliable at worst.

Unfortunately (although it was fun), for me to get that extra choice and to be able to hear them, I had to build very large medium wave loops, put them in the loft and connect the other end to a radiator pipe. Signals that were faint or almost non-existent would come booming in.

If I was in my car or out and about at night and listening on a personal stereo, I simply tolerated the fading and interference. If I was driving down the east coast, the signals would travel well enough over the sea to give me quite reliable reception of a station in Aberdeen, even though I was in Sunderland.

So I made a point of listening to stations like Manx Radio, County Sound, Supergold, BBC Radio Stoke, Radio 10 Gold, Q Da Beat, Radio Veronica, Arrow Classic Rock, Radio Netherlands, Radio Sweden, Brussels Calling, Radio XL (for the jungle techno program that was presented by MC Magika on Monday nights) and a few others, all at my home in Central Scotland and occasionally whilst I was mobile. However, I only listened to them because the signal was still reliable to enough to actually enjoy them and the good programming and music they put out.

I do remember the days of listening to "Foxy On Luxy" during my teenage years with a bit of fondness - but I also remember being quite fed-up at the large amounts of fading that particular station had. I still have a couple of old tapes of Rosko's LA Connection that used to go out at 10 PM on Sundays - and the signal always seemed to fade when Rosko would ID the song that I was quite enjoying (thank goodness Shazam sorted that bit out a few decades later).

Still - it's sad to see some services go ....... but here is the crux. It's only some!

Indeed, in 2015, NEW services appeared on medium wave. There is one from Brittany in France on 1593 KHz, which I get fairly well at night time when I'm in the car but I have also made a point of listening to it occasionally on a wi-fi radio at home during the day (or night).

If you use the Twente-based WebSDR, you can also come across some radio stations that might surprise you. In a northern region of Italy is a station called I AM Radio, which pumps out soul and funk classics of the 70's and 80's and is mainly in English. Belgium still has its main and foreign service on 612 KHz.

Then there's the more positive effect of the disappearance of high-powered German and French stations. Let's face it, when it came to listening to more local services, those ones were a bloody nuisance at night.

So I would expect Radio Cumbria to get much further in the evenings in 756 KHz. Spirit radio from Ireland will probably enjoy near interference-free reception in is fringes and well into the UK on 549 KHz. BBC Radio Essex and BBC Radio York may well be heard across most of the UK at nights and even during the day. Also, any radio stations that were unfortunate to be placed on either side of 1440 KHz will no longer have that problem.

Oh - and let's not forget that there are now some lower powered community stations on medium wave in the UK .... so give them a chance.

Up until now I've been very used to rock-solid DAB reception in the car almost everywhere. It's only when I get very far beyond a DAB station's service area that I experience any drop-out and eventually the loss of a signal. In the case of the Dundee multiplex, I can still get rock solid reception through the streets of Edinburgh and across the Lothians, even up to the boundary of West Lothian and Lanarkshire (which is a good 50 miles or more beyond the area it's supposed to serve.

I didn't have such high hopes for the small-scale MUX that's using two transmitters (at 50 watts) as a mini-SFN to serve most of Greater Glasgow. Whilst I wasn't right inside its area (I don't suspect that there are any reception problems there, except for deep in amongst the buildings of the city centre), I was driving around the North side of Glasgow then onwards through Stepps, towards Cumbernauld, back along the M73 and then up the M8 to the Newhouse interchange and then through some towns on the outer edges of North Lanarkshire.

Despite the low power, it really surprised me how well the signal actually gets out. It does drop out - for a second in some places, even in Stepps. However, during the rest of my journey the signal was fairly stable with no bubbling mud. Drop outs were few along the motorways and trunk roads and they only lasted a second or two. Even when driving through Newmains, although the signal strength meter was flitting between one and two bars, the signal was still very good, with few drop-outs.

So the signal is getting out quite well beyond its service area, albeit in anorak quality. Even for me, I would find the drop-outs irritating because I am so used to rock-solid reception.

It is therefore quite possible that DAB listeners inside dwellings could get adequate reception if they have sensitive DAB radios that are suitably placed in a spot in the room that can pick up the new MUX, even though they may be 20 miles or so beyond the intended service area.

As for the North side of Glasgow, I reckon a third transmitter would have improved coverage in that part.

The test transmissions for Go Radio are quite amusing. Fancy a Macaroon bar?

From Hong Kong I brought back home an extremely hi-spec computer (which worked out to be a lot cheaper than buying it over here, even after VAT is added on by Customs). So I spent much of the weekend listening to shortwave stations via the webSDR in Twente, through my PC, which is connected via an HDMI wire to the TV, which is connected directly to my hi-fi system, filling the living room with the sounds of, say, China Radio International.

Meanwhile, my trip to South Korea was also quite an amazing experience. One of the things that stood out to me was just how excellent their mobile phone coverage is for 4G.

I hired a (battery powered) pocket wi-fi hub from the airport. My wife and I (as well as other people in the group that we toured the country with) were able to have wi-fi at all times, indoors and outdoors, without having to use a mobile phone tariff. The hub constantly monitored the 4G signals, which I paid attention to.

South Korea has a terrain that is quite similar to the northern half of Scotland - it's mountainous. Despite this, 4G reception was excellent ...... EVERYWHERE! The signal never went below 4 bars (it was mostly at 5 bars), even on windy single-track mountain roads leading up to remote Buddhist temples.

So how come South Korea has it and works so well - yet in the UK we often struggle to get any kind of mobile coverage when we're out in the sticks, even for making emergency calls?

If the future of radio listening is supposed to also include listening to stations via mobile phones, then perhaps South Korea demonstrates that it is perfectly possible - provided you give near total blanket, rock solid coverage, regardless of terrain.

However, he did have some points that I considered warranted some investigation.

One of his comments was that "many" stations on DAB are in mono. This is indeed true. However, he also suggested that this is a "backward step," for which I was left wondering if that was really the case.

So, with the use of an excel spreadsheet and whilst referring to the most up-to-date entries on the Wohnort website, I decided to see how far "backward" has DAB actually gone.

So here's the maths.

Excluding the trial mini-MUX's, there are currently 159 of the UK's national and local FM stations broadcasting on DAB. Most of them are broadcast in stereo, with the exception of 24 services (around 15%). Those stations are:-

Angel Radio (aka Angel Digital), BFBS (Brize Norton), Bob FM, Bridge FM, Central FM, Citytalk, Connect FM, Fire Radio, Jack FM (Surrey), Jack FM (Berkshire), Kiss, LBC, Magic, MKFM, NECR, Pulse, Q Radio, Radio Essex, Radio X, Smooth Radio (East Midlands), Sunrise Radio (Bradford), Trax FM, Waves Radio and Wirral Radio.

That might look, at face value, to be quite a lot. However, included in that list are a few London stations, community stations and several small-scale stations. Whilst it's disappointing that they broadcast in mono on DAB whilst being available in stereo on FM, the truth is that almost all of those stations broadcast to a much smaller area in super stereophonic sound on the VHF band, often with a low powered transmitter. By broadcasting on DAB, albeit in mono, they are actually enlarging their service area quite considerably - or in the case of the London stations, going across the UK. In the case of Central FM, it may be available in stereo within reach of its FM signal but for many commuters who live in its area but work in Glasgow or Edinburgh, DAB provides the means for continued listening, whereas Central FM has virtually no FM signal in Glasgow and a patchy signal in some parts of Edinburgh. Therefore is being in mono on the Central Scotland multiplex a backward step?

Indeed, for all of the stations in the above list, only Citytalk (an intended speech service) and Smooth Radio on the Birmingham multiplex (only) appear to have gone "backwards" on DAB, whilst the rest have extended their service areas by being on DAB, even if they have chosen to be in mono.

Of course, there are some services who are broadcasting to larger areas by being on DAB, albeit in stereo:- Minster FM, Stray FM, Yorkshire Coast Radio, Compass FM, Capital Xtra, Smooth Radio (Scotland) and Juice FM (Liverpool).

How about medium wave and long wave stations?

Well, all AM stations in the UK broadcast in mono - they can't help it. So it would be quite a forward step if they broadcast in stereo on DAB, right? Let's see.

Excluding LP-AM services or AM-op-outs from BBC local stations, there are 53 AM-only stations in the UK. Most of them do indeed broadcast in stereo on DAB (the Bauer "2" stations, the Gold and Smooth stations and UTV's local AM stations). That leaves only Absolute Radio and Free Radio 80's as music services remaining in mono. LBC London News, Radio 4 LW, Radio 5 and Talksport are speech services, whilst Asian Sound, Lyca Radio, Lyca Dil Se, Panjab Radio, Radio XL, Sabras Sound, Sunrise Radio and Spectrum Radio have decided to remain in mono for the ethnic communities they serve.

What about those services that are only available on digital platforms and are not available on FM or AM anywhere in the UK?

Well, this is where it can be easily claimed that "many" stations are in mono on DAB. There are 62 services that are unique to DAB (and other digital platforms), some nationally. However, only 6 have chosen to be in stereo:- BBC 6 Music, Dee On DAB, Eagle 3, Pirate Oldies, The Arrow and Triple Hits.

Again, whilst it's disappointing that the remaining 56 services that are unique to DAB are in mono, is it a backward step? We probably wouldn't have those stations at all if DAB didn't exist and we were stuck with having only analogue platforms due to the lack of frequencies. Also, would it have been financially viable for some services to able to broadcast in stereo? I know I prefer to have choice, even if it meant that stereo was sacrificed to make it possible. I really enjoyed TeamRock.

So, there's the seed of a subject that has many thorns for some people. In my next post I will compare the bit rates of stations on DAB that are also available on satellite and Freeview.

I'm wondering if, in the same way as we have micro-powered FM transmitters for use in the car, that we have a means of picking up a mobile phone signal from outside of the car using an antenna on the body work (or glass) and relaying it inside, with micro wattages (one website claimed to use a relay - in the car - with a power of 3 WATTS???!!!!).

In Scotland there are an awful lot of fringe areas for mobile phone coverage, so getting every ounce of a mobile phone signal, especially for radio listening (it's the future of radio, after all, right?), is now becoming a bit more important to me.

Does any expert on mobile phone reception know of any products that are legal and can do the job?

I'm wondering if, in the same way as we have micro-powered FM transmitters for use in the car, that we have a means of picking up a mobile phone signal from outside of the car using an antenna on the body work (or glass) and relaying it inside, with micro wattages (one website claimed to use a relay - in the car - with a power of 3 WATTS???!!!!).

In Scotland there are an awful lot of fringe areas for mobile phone coverage, so getting every ounce of a mobile phone signal, especially for radio listening (it's the future of radio, after all, right?), is now becoming a bit more important to me.

Does any expert on mobile phone reception know of any products that are legal and can do the job?

So, Aberdeen's truly local radio station is being live and local and dealing with the local subject by going outside of its main format for a bit. It is having a live debate in the studio for an hour on this very subject, during a workday as well. From 6PM, the station is putting its playlist to rest and putting out an hour of speech on what is probably one of the most controversial issues in the city just now.

Meanwhile, two of the other stations in the city, Northsound 1 & 2, who should have been all over this, continue to be mostly networked from Glasgow (or England), playing tunes. There was a time when Northsound would so such things as Original is doing but not these days.

Northsound has lost quite a lot of listeners, especially in the past 2 years. Last year Northsound 2 lost almost half of its audience in just 12 months. Northsound 1's reach has dropped from 41% to 37% in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Original 106 has seen its reach jump from 20% to 25% in the same period, despite being a specialist service with a distinct musical difference between it and Northsound 2 and more especially Northsound 1.

Of course, holding such debates would cost time and money. It would cost a large group like Bauer, who own radio stations, TV stations and magazines across the planet, a similar amount of money to what it would be costing the small, independently owned Scottish group who run Original 106.

Meanwhile, on listening to Original 106 this morning, I heard local news through the night and a (new) breakfast show host receiving quite a lot of text messages for the various features that he was doing, making his show sound quite busy and encouraging plenty of interaction with his listeners. Indeed, more than every second link consisted of a mention of at least one listener (often it was a few) responding to some of the things he was putting out on air. It's almost like a golden age that has quite gone away in that part of the world.

In (slight) fairness to Northsound, the 2 station is part of the Greatest Hits network, which also hosts Scotland's Talk-In on Sunday mornings, so the subject does get skimmed over by the presenter, with news packages on the subject and occasionally calls from people who feel inclined to speak about it. However, this is broadcast to most of Scotland, so it won't resonate as much with listeners beyond the Aberdeen area. If it was discussed solely on Northsound though, I'm sure the listener participation would have been fairly high. Northsound 2 does opt-out of the network for local football coverage.

All of the German LW stations (153 kHz - Deutschlandfunk, 177 kHz - Deutschlandradio Kultur,
207 kHz - Deutschlandfunk) are to close at the end of this month. The DLF frequencies on medium wave are to close next year. Meanwhile, Germany's NDR stations on 702, 792, 828 and 972 are closing in January. There is still no word of WDR2 on 720 Khz but I don't suspect it will be on for much longer.

This means that next year, the only German presence on medium wave will be RTL (for as long as the transmitter in Luxembourg is on air) and possibly WDR 2, Antenna Saar and Bayern Plus. AFN is said to be closing soon as well.

So, with France Info coming off air soon, as well as Radio 5 from the Netherlands closing in September, the band will be more open to more distant stations reaching the UK at nights, as well as improved fringe reception for some local UK stations.

I did some DX-ing yesterday at around 3.30 PM and I noticed that medium wave seemed to have fewer European powerhouse stations blocking out weaker ones. Consequently I was getting better reception of some UK and lower powered European stations than I can recall having before (Belgium's VivaCite being a good example). DX-ing was done on my Sony DAB car stereo (which I bought from Halfords and is super-sensitive on all bands).

Meanwhile, I've had to use RadioPlayer, which has been much hailed on this website and by some corners of the British radio industry. If only the reality lived up to the hype and it was as good as TuneIn.

So I've been trying to bear RadioPlayer for the past few days on my daily train commute. Using both the on-train wi-fi and 3G signal, I find RadioPlayer quite frustrating for long term listening.

Tonight, on my hour long journey back home, using the wi-fi signal, RadioPlayer lost the stream 19 times (I counted them). Last night, using 3G, the stream was lost 17 times. Granted, on most occasions when the signal was lost, it came back after just 2 or 3 seconds but it was still annoying to have happened so many times.

Whenever I use TuneIn, I have become experienced enough to use it so that I don't lose the stream at all - or at worst I lose it for a few moments on one occasion during my hour long commute, whilst in some larger not-spots I might lose a few seconds of the live stream and it suddenly skips to the next conversation being had by Radio 5.

TuneIn gives me the ability to rewind the stream (I set it back by two minutes) so that if I do lose the signal, I'm still hearing the stream whilst my smartphone reconnects with the wi-fi or 3G signal and the signal buffers in the background, usually starting again from where the signal was lost, giving me a near seamless stream of the news, conversation or song (as If I never lost the signal at all).

Unfortunately RadioPlayer does not seem to have this wee feature.

Don't get me wrong, both RadioPlayer and TuneIn are great when I'm sitting still and even in the great outdoors within sighting distance of a cell - but the former doesn't seem to cope as well with faster movements between cell masts, certainly not at 90 MPH on a local train service.

Also, the distinct lack of UK stations on RadioPlayer puts it at a disadvantage to TuneIn and I'm still surprised that quite a few ILR's are still not listed and most community, student and hospital stations aren't.

Ehm ..... when he was ..... ehm ...... introducing songs, he would ..... ehm ..... crash the vocals because he ..... ehm ..... took a few moments longer to ...... ehm ..... give us the name of the ...... ehm ...... artist and the ...... ehm .... song title. Other features ...... ehm ..... also suffered from random ehms.

Ehm ..... surely ..... someone responsible in programming would ...... ehm ....... give the presenter a bit of advice to ...... ehm ........ make him realise .......... ehm ....... his quality of presentation is ...... ehm ....... let down by this ..... ehm ....... one simple thing. Ir also makes for ...... ehm ..... uncomfortable listening ........ and after a few minutes of listening I ...... ehm ...... tuned into something else, where the presenters were much more professional and were able to hold entire sentences together for the duration of their links.

I used the Twente websdr server, based in the Netherlands, to try the longwave band now that the German stations have closed.

Oh my goodness - it's so quiet. In a way that's a very good thing because it means that the few stations that are on there now have very good reception over much larger areas, if not most of Europe.

If only history had been a bit different and that the bands weren't chopped up and allocated in the way they were. I reckon that the potential of a small number of very large, very powerful transmitters on the longwave band could have been put to good use by international broadcasters, for which they would reach most, if not all, of Europe and possibly Asia and north Africa. Each frequency could have been a dedicated channel to just one country only, with a single very high powered transmitter.

The international radio services would broadcast in various languages at certain times of the day (or entirely in English, German, French etc), with their signals beamed towards different countries at different times, if that was their intention.

Can you imagine a pan-European BBC World Service on a single long-wave frequency covering most (or all) of Europe and beyond, 24/7? There would not have been any need to chase the station up and down the shortwave band throughout the day, trying to get the best reception. We could also have had an international broadcaster in Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland and so on, with booming signals that would have been so accessible, so easy to tune into and comparitively more reliable than shortwave - and no other country would have been allocated those frequencies to serve smaller areas with local domestic broadcasters, whose signals would have interfered with the co-channel stations in another part of the continent after dark.

I will happily own up that I have submitted my complaint about it to OfCom because I don't think it should go unchecked by the same broadcasting regulator who has penalised other (smaller) radio stations for slightly lesser offences of swear words going out on air at a time when deeply religious grannies and even young children might be listening.

So, apparently due a technical fault, Heart Scotland didn't quite switch over to a clean feed form the networked show from London and instead listeners across the east of Scotland heard Robin Galloway and his side-kick Adelle having a private conversation, whilst also doing some production work for their show.

Unfortunately, also heard during that time was some very strong swear words, including what is perhaps one of the worst and most offensive words than any gutter-mouthed chav would use. You wouldn't expect to hear a professional radio presenter with decades of radio experience (on some of the biggest stations in the UK) say them into a live microphone, even if he thought that the studio was off-air.

So I have come to my point. Even hobby presenters in hospital radio, student radio and community radio know NOT TO SWEAR within the walls of a radio studio and treat every microphone as being live, even if you know for sure that it's not and the studio is dead. As Robin has found out, through his amateur behaviour, things can go wrong.

Of course, there are other underlying causes for this, all of which have the Titanic effect that if any one of them was removed, the disaster probably wouldn't have happened. If Robin had been in on off-air production studio instead of the main studio, if Heart was live and LOCAL with another presenter in the main studio who would have been able to react very quickly, if Robin had left the microphone faders down when having the private conversations and so on, ten it wouldn't have happened However, just like the sinking of the Titanic was ultimately caused by the human error of going too fast on someone's decision, then the ultimate reason for this disaster is that Robin left his professionalism outside of the studio. If it had been a simple conversation without swear words, this post would not have been written and no complaints would have been made to OfCom.

Yet...

We are now witnessing a radio station that is taking the "leap" from DAB to mobile app listening and by golly gosh, you ought to see the uproar from ordinary members of the public who are not radio forumites, not anoraks and are just the lowlife scum that are merely listeners who clearly know nothing about radio and how it works.

On TeamRock's Facebook page, it is stunning to see how animated their FB members (and listeners) are on the issue. Poor TeamRock can't even post a simple message to promote a single part of a program that is about to go on air, without it being commented on (with very choice language) that listening to it is going to be pointless because they're coming off DAB in 2 months. Even more telling is that it's not just one or two people who make the comments. I see new names appearing on their FB page all the time, making yet more comments about it, showing their disgust over the decision, with many of them saying that mobile coverage isn't good enough for App listening and others not prepared to sacrifice their data usage for the new service. There's even a petition on the go (as if that would do any good).

So, if mobile listening really is the future over DAB, do we need to transport ourselves a little further into the future to see for sure - or should we just wise up and admit that, for a considerable amount of time yet, this is not going to be the case?

Come on, this is one of the UK's best radio presenters that could be an asset for a station and its potential to increase its audience.

I'm currently going through the whole of my music collection, which gets played on a variety of devices these days. With the exception of CD players, almost all the other devices I use to play music are capable of providing a nice wee picture or fancy pattern. For much of the time the picture is an album cover, which is displayed whenever I'm playing music through my TV, my I-pod, my smartphone ... even my wi-fi radios when I tell them to stream music from one of my other music sources on my wi-fi network.

Then there are streamers like Spotify, plus the occasional radio station app that also shows nice pictures of the artist/album cover for each song that plays.

To make my music collection a bit more fitting for the 21st century, as well as upgrading the audio of all of my CD's to .WAV (which will take quite some time), then copying the files and down-converting them to 320K MP3 etc (for smaller hard-drives and flashcards), I am also adding ID3 tags of album or single covers. Most single covers of the past 40-odd years are available on the internet, for which I am glad because it would be a shame to lose some of the fine work of art there has been over the years.

This has got me thinking. Whilst some radio stations already do show cover art/artist profile pictures for each track they play, whenever you listen via their apps or occasionally when TuneIn is in the mood to show you, most stations still do not.

My wi-fi and DAB radio has RadioDNS inlcuded, which gives me slideshows on some stations, the occasional artist profile pic on one station and station logos for the rest.

Are radio stations being clever enough?

ID3 tags allow pictures to be added to music files .... or any audio file. We may be just around the corner from car stereos showing pictures, hi-fi systems (if they still exist) showing pictures, radio tuners doing the same, as well as TV's, smartphones, tablets and so on. It therefore makes sense, to me, that radio stations could go the whole hog and provide a kind of graphic for every type of audio item that goes out on air.

So - whenever you listen to the radio on your new hi-tech device, the radio station will not just play the audio but each song could have its own single/album cover on display, each commercial could show the company logo and an attention grabbing piece of text, a pic of the presenter is shown whenever they talk (which should be easy as voice-tracking becomes the norm), other images relating to news items, traffic news, audio packages, celebrity interviews and so on.

I believe that this could be done right now, rather than in some distant future.

The stereo is factory fitted and includes DAB, which in itself works quite well. Unfortunately, those clever people at Vauxhall have neglected the antenna again, leaving a spikey thing that sits at the rear of the roof at an angle of about 40 degrees.

Needless to say FM works as good as can be expected (some would say it works brilliantly but after years of listening to DAB in the car, I get annoyed when FM signals hiss and flutter because it's really noticeable).

DAB on the other hand works for more than 99% of the time but in the areas that I know are black-spots for FM, DAB also takes a dip. The experience, though, is a wee bit different to what I've had before with factory fitted DAB stereos in Vauxhalls. Instead of a total loss of signal for a few moments, I notice that the audio gets quieter, which is making me think that the aerial is getting some signal amplification. Whilst this does help, if the signal is too weak to be picked up by the non-DAB aerial, the stereo gives up and searches for a new signal. This takes 2 or 3 seconds until the signal comes back. It doesn't happen too often (I'm glad of that) but it still falls short of what I expect to get from a proper DAB antenna, sitting totally upright (not at a angle), for which I do get rock-solid reception, even in those black-spots.

So, compared to other Vauxhall cars that have had a DAB stereo fitted, with a non-DAB antenna, this is an improvement - but it still needs to be better. I have fitted a Pure stereo, bought form Halfords for £100, with a proper DAB antenna - and I don't get any signal problems with DAB. The car manufacturers need to wise-up.

Of course, in Scotland, the concept of a Heritage Name "2" station on medium wave, with a sister "1" station on FM broadcasting to the same area and both stations cross-promoting each other, was somebody's bright idea that came about 26 YEARS AGO, yet it's still going.

I laugh out loud when I see the inhabitants of Planet Radio Forum say that the "2's" won't work, it's all stupid, the old brand was better and so on. According to radio forumites, the new 2’s will lose loads of listeners as a result of the changes, which would be a bit more convincing if it hadn’t been for the fact that the RAJAR’s for the local Magic stations showed that they didn’t have “loads of listeners” in the first place and that the Scottish Heritage Name “2” stations were performing better.

Scotland expanded the concept of "1's" and "2's" throughout the 90's, whilst England copied the idea for a couple of stations (owned by a different company) in more recent years, so I guess the 1 & 2 stations in Bradford and Stoke-on-Trent are also doomed to fail because calling them that is such a terrible idea, if you believe the forumites.

Like almost a quarter of the population of West Central Scotland I was a big fan of Clyde 2 for many years, until I heard changes to its output that took it away from it's friendly sound and occasional LOL moments, to become a brand-tastic, in-yer-ears tagline and slogan that was repeated to death, with the occasional song in-between, whilst presenters were telling us some great facts about the songs they've played using info extracted from Wikipedia. It might not have been entertaining or fun to listen to anymore – but I certainly knew that it was “playing the best of the 60’s, 70’s and more” because it kept on telling me that 20 or 30 times an hour. In the end that particular format annoyed me so much that I headed over to Radio 2 – as did many other people. Networking across Scotland seemed to make matters worse, with more listeners tuning away. The figures for Clyde 2 and its sister 2's in Scotland have never been so low.

So here we are in 2015 with an entire network of 2's, now sharing programs, many of which are coming from studios in Scotland whilst others are shared from people's home studios in England. So, with the changes, I decided to give the new network a try, even allowing a couple of weeks for it to bed in and gradually reduce the gremlins that come about when considerable change happens to something overnight.

I have to admit that I am pleasantly surprised. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. However, I would still say that whilst it's good, it's not quite Carling! I still hear some presenters during daytime (especially John Leslie) saying very little other than mentions of the songs they’re playing. Ally Bally is a good presenter, I know that - but I often catch him doing some very dry and flat links, as if he's being distracted by doing other jobs within the station, instead of focusing on presenting the show he’s doing. Strangely, the ladies I hear on late nights and thru' the night have caused me to stay tuned for much longer than I normally would have, mainly because of the things that they talk about. If only the same kind of presentation that was being used at nights was also carried during the day, I would give this station a bigger thumbs-up than I am just now. I certainly can't complain about the music, it seems right for the demographic, which I am now falling into.

So, I reckon that the 2's might be able to arrest the decline in Scotland at least (for a wee while) but I would strongly suggest that more personality and program features are included, to make me want to tune away from Radio 2 and Radio 5 a bit more often.

Well, that’s my opinion. Putting aside daft notions expressed by others that putting a number 2 after a heritage name will be a total failure, are the new 2’s in England any better? Are the programming changes for the existing 2’s in Scotland making the stations more listenable?

The erosion could be caused by lack of maintenance, unwillingness to invest and maybe just a need to cut costs, save money and ensure that any monies that would have been spent are being used elsewhere, such as lining the pockets of the structure owners (it's probably called "profit").

However, some people will notice the erosion, comment on it, have doubts over the structure's integrity and they may even feel a need to stay away from it because it's not as sound as it used to be. Over a longer period of time, more and more people start to notice and you have an accumulative effect of more and more people having the same feelings.

Then one day, due to natural laws of physics, the structure comes crashing down. It does so very quickly, in a blink of an eye. The people who owned it probably wished they had invested and spent monies on maintaining it - but now they're out of pocket due to monies owed, the clean-up bills, the liabilities and so on.

In 2014, I saw the gradual erosion of what was once a thriving local radio station in my area, with full local programming, a newsroom that was occupied 24/7 (putting out news almost every hour round the clock), a very healthy audience that meant it was much easier to count the poeple who didn't listen than those who did and a station that had its rivals bounce off it as if it wore a rubber suit because they just couldn't make any considerable damage to it at all. However, in 2014, the same station now lends some of its news output to Sky News at nights and weekends, its music policy centralised from outside of the country, there are increased amounts of networking (even from England) and there's been quite a few other means to shed off various bits and pieces of the very things that the station excelled in.

Granted, the slick 24/7 operation that it once was, with its wee golden gems of programming and other services that placed it No.1 in the area it broadcast to, did mean that it was expensive to run, which is not the ideal way to run a business in the short-term, especially when bills have to be paid and more especially when shareholders need to have bigger, fatter profits.

However, each decision to cast off something, reduce costs, sacrifice programming elements and so on seem to have an impact on the number of listeners they have. That station, which once boasted that every 2nd person in its service area was listening, can now only claim that its listener base is now less than every third person, despite its 40 year heritage and a brand that people readily identify as being their own station for their own area.

Unfortunately, this station is not unique. It's happening all over the UK, with more and more commercial radio stations, including very long standing heritage brands, reporting lower amounts of listeners, lower amounts of hours for those who are still listening and lower market shares, yet they still have the same level of local radio competition that they had only a handful of years ago, before this orgy of reducing costs and reducing the service requirements to the bare minimum that they can get away with, before somebody in regulatory authority gives them a telling off.

Erosion.

In any other kind of business, making radical decisions to ensure you have fewer customers would be treated with disdain. Making even more decisions to ensure that the customers you have left consume less of your products would ring alarm bells. Continuing to make decisions that do not arrest the decline (or erosion), for which it is easy to predict a trend of a forever declining customer base and declining amounts of consumption with those who are sticking with you, would send the shareholders, directors, management and others into a need for calling to question the decisions being made, for what could be considered as business suicide. Fine, they would make profits in the short-term, for hardly any cost - but at what point will it all tip over and finally come crashing down, when you have so few customers consuming so little that it just isn't sustainable anymore?

I see some commercial radio stations going in that direction - I just know when it would happen but when it does it could happen quite quickly.

Of course, it'll be the competition that's to blame, right? It'll be nothing to do with literally handing disaffected customers over to other operators because you could no longer be bothered or want to afford to provide the kind of service that you once did. In the case of commercial radio, it's all BBC Radio 2's fault, seemingly.

Having access to WiFi on my daily commute now means that I need only use 3G when I’m outdoors or in the office (with the latter probably changing once Glasgow City Council provides Wi-Max across the city centre), which also means that my Spotify is even more stable (it struggled to buffer songs if I was out of range of 3G for a long period), plus the fact that I can now stream radio and video much more reliably.

So here’s the situation. I have WiFi access for most for most of my day. I have a smartphone, I have PC’s, laptops, tablets, wi-fi radios and I also have Android-for-TV dongles that give me full internet access via my TV’s in almost every room in the house. I have never been so connected.

While we now have big radio companies in the UK streamlining their brands, with a greater possibility that some of those commercial brands are going to offer a distinctive style of music or music that is better aimed at particular demographics within their brands using sub-brands, I still can’t help but notice that the overlap between many of them is quite broad as far as music goes, which still means that more discerning listeners get left out. James Cridland has written about “brand extensions” in the past. However, if you compare what’s going on in the UK to what his happening in Germany, the Netherlands and even in Ireland, then the UK’s efforts of extending brands and offering more unique content for the listener have been a bit weak.

Granted, we are now getting the likes of Heart Extra and Smooth Extra owned by Global and the various 1, 2 and 3 Place/City brands owned by Bauer for their stations in the North of England, which are catching up with stations in Scotland that have been doing that for the past 25 years. However, between them we still have more of the same but with a slightly different slant to appeal to certain age groups. The only exceptions, so far, appear to be Absolute providing a bouquet of decades stations, Free Radio playing 80’s, Capital Extra playing urban music, and Kiss providing Kisstory and Kiss Fresh as fairly distinctive brand extensions.

If we look to our neighbouring countries, things are a wee bit different.

Take for example Radio 6 in the Netherlands. Their main service is a soul and jazz station, with presenters, news, views, entertainment and so on. If you look deeper into their app or website, you will find that they also offer more eclectic non-stop automated music streaming services which drop in news bulletins at the top of the hour, play the occasional advert and are not heavy on ID’s. The secondary services that compliment the soul and jazz played on their main service include a blues channel, a “jazz long” channel, a grooves channel (contemporary soul), a world music channel, an old-school soul channel and an easy listening channel.

Meanwhile the oldies services "Gold" Radio 10 (Gold) also offers specific 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 80’s and disco classics channels.

Radio 538 also offers dance, party, Top 40, contemporary hits, Ibiza, and comedy channels, as well as a channel called NL which plays nothing else but Dutch Europop and Eurodance.

Other dutch stations also offer complimentary secondary services for their more discerning listeners.

Meanwhile, Germany’s Sunshine Live offers just about every make, colour and breed of dance and electronica I could possibly want with their bouquet of secondary channels.

Ireland’s Radio Nova has secondary streaming channels playing rock of the various decades and a Rock Chill channel playing rock ballads.

Is the UK getting a bit left behind?

So, since it’s being done abroad, I have suggestions of complimentary secondary services that stations could put out as part of their apps and websites, for the growing number of mobile and internet listeners. These would be automated services, dropping in news (perhaps), playing a small number of adverts and idents and maybe providing the occasional VT’ed program if there was new music to be promoted or perhaps an interview or specialist program. The main services on FM and DAB could promote the secondary services and even have the occasional 2 or 3 hour show at off-peak times in their own schedule (as they seem to do just now) to give a flavour of what is available 24/7 on the secondary service.

At the moment Kiss has Kiss Fresh and Kisstory but it could also have a rap/hip-hop channel, a dedicated RnB channel, a dance/trance/electronica/house channel, an EDM channel, a nu-soul (Hed Kandi) channel, a reggae channel, a dubstep channel, a drum’n‘bass channel, a funky house channel and so on.

Heart could have other secondary channels, such as an 80’s channel, a 90’s channel, a 00’s channel, a love songs channel, a party classics channel.

Capital could have a dance channel, a d’n‘b channel, a house channel.

Smooth could bring back the popular 70’s channel, have a smooth 80’s channel, a 90’s channel, an easy listening channel, a soul channel and so on.

Absolute would probably keep their decades channels as online only services, though Classic Rock could probably close to allow for Planet Rock to be further pushed as a brand.

Planet Rock could offer various types of rock.

X-FM could offer an indie disco channel, an indie-electro channel, an American modern rock channel, a Hip-Hop channel, an old-school indie and modern rock channel, a (hard) rock channel, a comedy channel and so on.

Magic could also provide a mellow magic channel and soul channel.

Jazz FM could provide as many of its niche services as it wanted.

I can also imagine the Baeur Place stations also provide secondary services, such as Uncut, Old School Dance, In Demand, decades channels and so on.

We know secondary services do work in the UK, it certainly helped Absolute Radio boost their brand and RAJARs, even though some of their services are not available to the whole of the UK on DAB and are confined to satellite, cable and the internet. Even Free Radio are having some success with their 80’s channel (on medium wave as well).

With the relaunch of the cluster of "1" and "2" commercial radio stations in Scotland (e.g. Clyde 1, Clyde 2, Forth 1, Forth 2 etc), the launch of "1" & "2" stations in the North of England, for which England catches up with what Scotland has been doing for the past 25 years (i.e. City 1, City 2, Rock FM 1, Rock 2, Metro Radio 1, Metro 2, TFM 1, TFM 2 etc) and the launch of "3" in Scotland and the North of England (i.e Clyde 3, City 3, Rock 3, Metro 3, TFM 3 etc), the new schedule for the "2" stations has just been released, ahead of launch on January 5th.

Much to my surprise, most of the programs that are going across the network of the "2" stations (aka The Greatest Hits Network) in both Scotland and England will in fact be coming from Glasgow and Dundee.

The breakfast show will be separate for Scotland and England.
Mid-mornings will come from England.
Mid-afternoons from Scotland.
Drivetime will be separate for Scotland and England.
Mid-evenings will come from England.
Late-nights will be from Scotland and through-the-night will come from Scotland.

In the weekends, most programs will come from Scotland, except when England has Mike Read in the mornings, as well as its own phone-in program on Sunday mornings (called England's Talk-in, when Scotland continues with Scotland's Talk-in).

England will also get its own sport and music program on Saturday afternoons, in-line with what already happens in Scotland.

There's to be a party show and soul show on Saturday nights (so no more traditional Scottish music on Saturdays in Scotland).

Sadly, music mogul Billy Sloan has lost his Sunday show in favour of a country show on Sunday evenings.

All stations will still have their own dedicated local news bulletins, Whats-On's, travel news, adverts (of course) and a few other local features.

The "3" stations will only be available on DAB digital radio and on the internet - not FM or medium wave. The "1" stations will be on FM, DAB and internet. The "2" stations will be on medium wave, DAB and internet.

It's an interesting development because the AM stations in Scotland have historically done better than their sister stations in England with bigger audience reaches. This could have been due to maintaining their local heritage brands and local programs prior to networking. It was only when the Scottish stations networked most (and eventually all) programs that we saw considerable drops in the audience. Of course, the AM stations in England had already lost their local heritage brand and were renamed as Magic, for which most stations barely had more than 3% reach. When Magic became increasingly networked, the audiences slipped again. I wonder if resurrecting the Heritage brands will see an audience recovery in England. In Scotland, with a promotional campaign, I think there may be a slight increase in reach for a wee while - but the figures will eventually head southwards and downwards again.

Orkney’s Superstation, as community radio goes, was probably one of the slickest, most professional and upbeat sounding of them all, sounding not that different from a very large ILR – but then that’s probably the point.

Whenever I tuned in to the station, aside from all the good things above, the station did NOT sound like a community station – or even a local station.

Despite being in the very far north of Scotland, it sounded very, very, very English. There were almost no Scottish dialects on it (except for a small number of commercials) and there were certainly no local dialects on it. Most adverts were also produced in England, using English voice-overs.

The station’s attempts to put out local information, especially for travel and weather, could only be praised – except that those English presenters (who made almost all of the schedule) often got the pronunciation of the local place names very wrong.

Such was the schedule of the Superstation that Dave Pearce had a show on it. An English dance DJ playing styles of dance music that are NOT popular in the north of Scotland – Scotland has its own dance music scene, even in the far north.

Also, whilst the station had “studios” in Kirkwall, for most of the time the building was in darkness. The shows were distributed to it from other parts of the UK – even the daytime shows. Also, very recently, the island suffered from appalling weather and drastic powercuts, which was acknowledged by the BBC (Radio Scotland, Radio Orkney – and even Radio 2) – but in the Superstation’s world, nothing unusual was going on. It was still churning out the hits with presenters doing very slick, generic links and the occasional reference to what they watched on TV last night.