Radio Category

The Boat That Rocked DVD is out on DVD today. If you haven’t got a copy yet, why not? If you didn’t get to see the film at the cinema when it was released in April, you may want to watch the DVD. From the pen of Richard “Four Weddings” / “Notting Hill” / “Love [...]

The Digital Britain report is finally out. On the 16th of June, Lord Carter’s long-awaited report into plans for our digital future were revealed. There’s been lots of media chat about this already, but in case you’ve missed it, what we think are the three headlines are as follows: 1. Analogue Radio off by 2015: [...]

According to a report on Brand Republic, the third and final round of Global Radio owned local radio station re-brands to “Heart” are set to be complete by the 22nd of June 2009. By this date, the following stations will lose their local name, and become part of their “Heart” brand: 2CR Buzz 97.1 Coast [...]

As reported recently, Global Radio is planning to scrap a bunch of local radio station names, replacing them with the generic “Heart” brand. Phase 1 of the re-brand kicks in at the start of January. The following nine stations will be “Heart” by Monday 5th January 2009: Chiltern FM, Bedford – Heart 96.9 Chiltern FM, [...]

As we’ve covered in recent podcasts, all is not well with DAB in the UK – specifically with commercial radio stations on DAB. The commercial national multiplex, owned by Digital One, is sounding decidely empty since the departure of the GCap stations, and with Channel 4′s decision not to launch the Channel 4 Radio stations… [...]

Rock and Roll on May 2009… there’s a Britcom about Pirate Radio coming soon. “The Boat That Rocked” is a comedy film based on a 1960′s pirate radio station ship moored off the UK coast. The film’s from the makers of Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Love Actually, with an all-star cast, and if the [...]

Good news for Virgin Media customers. The Sky channels withdrawn from Virgin are set to return after an 18 month absence. It seems that Sky and Virgin have met, and resolved their differences, and the following channels are set to return to the Virgin platform: Sky 1, Sky 2, Sky 3, Sky News, Sky Sports [...]

We’ve just released a 5 minute ‘update’ podcast, looking at Channel 4′s decision to pull out of the digital radio business, meaning bad news for the future of national DAB radio in the UK We also feature a couple of questions on eBook readers, some BT Vision news, and several ways to save money on [...]

FrequencyCast Update 12 Oct 2008 - DAB News [ 4:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As we’ve covered in our podcasts on many occasions, Channel 4 has been planning to make a big splash in digital radio. Today, they announced that those plans are now dead. The proposed stations e4 Radio, Channel 4 Radio music station Pure 4 no won’t go ahead, with Channel 4′s Andy Duncan blaming the economic [...]

Channel 4 Radio Update [ 4:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The most popular of the BBC digital radio stations, BBC 7, rebranded itself to BBC Radio 7, last Saturday, the 4th of October. With TV stations rebranding to names like Dave, Alibi and Watch for no readily apparent reason, this is quite an innocent change. According to Mary Kalemkerian, the Head of Programmes at BBC [...]

Global Radio own more local commercial radio stations in the UK than any other company, and in a bid to consolodate, they’re looking to re-brand nearly 30 of their local stations to either “Heart” or “Galaxy”. Local radio stations set to lose their identities include: 2-Ten FM, Chiltern Radio, Essex FM, GWR, Hereward, Invicta FM, [...]

Planet Rock, originally set to close a few months ago, has been saved, and is set to continue broadcasting on DAB digital radio. Entrepreneur Malcolm Bluemel has bought the station, with the backing of rock names Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Gary Moore and Fish.

It’s the first of March, and Show 24 of FrequencyCast has just been released. Yes – 24 shows… we’ve reached our second birthday. Thanks for being with us for the ride! Here’s what we cover in today’s show: News Updates: An end to the High Def DVD format wars, BBC on the iPhone, the US [...]

FrequencyCast Show 24 [ 31:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

More bad news for DAB digital radio this month – theJazz and Planet Rock, two of the national DAB stations, are due to fall silent soon. Owners gCap recently switched off digital station Core, and are now axing two more stations. With OneWord going too, this will leave just three national commercial DAB stations, Virgin [...]

On the 31st January, the TV-over-DAB service, provided by BT Movio, was finally discontinued. Users of Virgin Mobile’s Lobster 700TV handset, the only UK handset to offer TV-over-DAB, are now greeted by the message “this channel is not currently broadcasting” when they try to tune to a telly station. The phone still works perfectly well [...]

Digital speech-based radio station OneWord is to shut down on 12th January 2008. The station started back in 2000. Owners UBC Media laid off staff back in December, and the station will fall silent in a couple of days. Another national station is also about to vanish - Music station Core, owned by GCap, is also set to [...]

If you’re a fan of the extra radio channels you can get on digital radio, note that there’s now a cheap way to get DAB in your car. Pure has brought out the Pure Highway. Requiring no special installation, it’s powered by the cigar lighter and sticks onto your windscreen like a satnav device and [...]

UK radio firm Revo has launched the world’s first ever combined DAB, FM receiver and Internet radio, that’s also ready for the new DAB+ standard. Called the Blik RadioStation, this can also stream your music from a PC or Mac using Wi-fi. The brick-shaped Blik is available now, offering offers well over 9,000 stations. The [...]

Channel 4 are to launch 10 national radio digital radio stations. Ofcom today granted the licence, and plans are for this new network to go live by July 2008. It’s expected that Disney, Sky and Chrysalis will be operating stations on this new network.

Virgin’s just halved the price of the Lobster 700TV phone. This means that for under £50, you can get a DAB radio and a phone (plus 5 channels of TV), on Pay-as-you-go (no contract). A bargain well worth nabbing, while stocks last. More on our Lobster 700TV page