Something I had missed until last week. There is a large group of local commercial radio stations that used to be part of the UKRD group. In April these were finally bought by Bauer These include Dearne FM and The Eagle (my local station) along with many others Almost all of these will now become Greatest Hits Radio and take central programming with maybe one local drivetime program per weekday. I dont know about the others but Eagle was a really good local station - running local appeals, supporting local events and charities and providing really good information eg school closure information, flooding information etc - It seems all this will be gone along with most of the staff -it seems there will still be local advertising and news. Eagle and the others all effectively disappear at the end of this month - already many of the Eagle Staff are saying their goodbyes I suspect its the same for the other stations Its not had a lot of publicity but this lists the affected stations https://radiotoday.co.uk/2020/05/most-of-acquired-bauer-stations-to-become-greatest-hits-radio/ Really not sure how offcom can allow local commercial stations to just be merged into one national station in this way
Yes, I have noticed this. My local station, Trax FM, will become part of the "Greatest Hits Radio" network from September 1st, covering South Yorkshire, rather than Doncaster and Bassetlaw
Dearne FM has good local news, a programme dedicated to the Reds, Red All Over. I won't be listening to the new station. May have to tune in to Radio Sheffield
Winchester, it’s a tragedy that our local radio has gone. I’ve heard on Twitter & Facebook somewhere that the Red All Over show will continue as a podcast next season - it did after the re-start but was uploaded onto the Dearne FM site.
There’s just not enough people listening to radio to make it viable. People prefer to listen to podcasts, Spotify, audiobooks etc. Or just CDs.
