GMG’s Smooth Radio launches on digital platforms

Smooth Radio launched on Freesat today. This news follows a week after it joined Digital One, a national digital audio broadcasting platform (DAB).

The radio operator is turning its five regional stations in England into a single national station, and launches as a this national service on 4 October. However, Freesat and national DAB listeners can hear Smooth Radio’s London station before the national launch.

The newly national Smooth Radio will be located in Manchester, and the switch from local to national is expected to lead to around 60 redundancies.

Smooth Radio, owned by GMG Radio, has been given permission by Ofcom to locate its new Real Radio service in north Wales, along with its existing Real Radio station in Cardiff. In effect, it will be creating a new national radio service for Wales.

This new station is due to launch some time next year, broadcasting to both north and mid Wales. The terms of the agreement allowing this move mean that the amount of locally produced programming can be cut from 10 hours to seven hours a day, and in return the station must provide hourly local news bulletins during peak times at weekends and weekday daytime.

Three of the six Smooth Radio stations recorded their largest ever listening figures for the second quarter of the year, in last week’s Rajar statistics. However, its London station’s audience fell by almost a third year-on-year.