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New Blackpool radio station aims to fill gap left when Radio Wave became Greatest Hits Radio
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 16 September 2022
With a lot of local radio stations in the UK being gobbled up in recent years by national networks like Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio, it’s always interesting to see people attempting to launch and successfully run new truly local radio services.
One of the local stations that was merged into the Greatest Hits Network back in 2020 was Blackpool’s Radio Wave. Now the former Station Director at Radio Wave, Paula Davies, is launching a new station on the DAB network in the seaside town called Coastal Radio, and she has hired a number of former Radio Wave DJs to present shows on it.
Before Bauer started merging both existing and newly acquired local stations into its Greatest Hits Radio network, rival radio firm Global likewise started focusing on a small number of national networks, switching local AM and FM frequencies over from old local radio brands so that they became outposts of things like the Capital and Heart networks.
There are still some local or at least regional programmes on those networks, often in the drive time slot, and news content and ads will often differ from region to region, but most of the shows on the networks go out nationally.
Unlike Global, Bauer does still operate a number of truly local radio brands, though most of the programmes they air are also networked, ie all the different local brands around the country actually air the same shows for most of the day.
So, fully local stations like the new Coastal Radio are becoming the exception rather than the norm. The new Blackpool service, due to go live on 26 Sep, will feature shows by former Radio Wave DJs like Ged Mills, Hayley Kay and Scott Gallagher.
Davies told Radio Today: “I understand the value of being truly local, because the people and businesses really matter to me. We live and breathe the Fylde Coast, so we know what matters to our listeners. We aim to provide great local content including news, weather, traffic and events information and to be entertained with music from the last five decades!”
“Being local and having the connection to our listeners is the reason I’ve set up Coastal Radio DAB in the first place”, she added. “We are here to fill the gap that Radio Wave left when it ceased all local content”.
