GWR And Scottish Radio Unite In London Licence Bid

The GWR group has joined forces with Scottish Radio Holdings (SRH) to apply for the second digital radio multiplex licence for London. The first licence was awarded to the CE Digital consortium, which comprises Capital and Emap Radio, earlier this year (see Capital And EMAP Win First London Digital Licence).

Awarding the first licence the Radio Authority decided to make two further licences available for the London area. The first of these was advertised in September (see Radio Authority Advertises Second London Digital Multiplex). At the time only Chrysalis announced that it was to put forward a bid for the second licence.

The new GWR/SRH consortium is to be called Score Now and it is currently devising a bid which will include around seven different services. BBC’s GLR station will gain an automatic place on the multiplex as a condition of tender.

Both members of the consortium have applied for licences for local digital multiplex services already: Score Digital, owned by Scottish Radio, will operate the local service for Glasgow; Now Digital, owned by the GWR group, has submitted unopposed bids for the licence for Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Telford.

The GWR group also has a 63% stake in Digital One, the national commercial multiplex operator which launched Britain’s first digital radio services yesterday (see Digital Radio Launches In The UK).

GWR Group: 0171 284 3000 Scottish Radio Holdings: 0141 306 2242