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Media
NME Radio closes
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 26 March 2013
NME Radio has shut down again after another franchisee decided that it couldn’t make a radio spin-off of the music magazine work. Unlike the radio station equivalents of Bauer-owned magazines, which are run by Bauer’s own radio business, the NME radio service has always been run by a third party which licenses use of the name off publisher IPC.
The station was originally set up by DX Media, led by original Xfm founder Sammy Jacob, in 2008. Although a third party operator, it worked closely with the magazine’s editorial team, with a base at IPC’s London HQ. But two years later DX Media stepped away from the venture, saying it just wasn’t commercially viable.
Welsh radio company Town & Country Broadcasting launched a revamped NME Radio in 2010, and continued to operate it until yesterday lunchtime, though by the end much of the service was back-to-back music with an evening show hosted by Michelle Owen.
It was she who confirmed the station was off the air by tweeting: “To those asking, it’s with sadness I inform you NME Radio is no longer on air”, adding “A massive thanks to the bands and artists who did sessions and chatted, thanks to you for listening to new and real music. [I’m] still on air every day on Nation Radio, weekdays on Bridge FM and Sundays on Q!”
The MD of Town & Country subsequently confirmed that his company had handed back both NME Radio’s OfCom licence and its licence from IPC to operate a service under the music mag’s brand, telling Radio Today: “NME Radio isn’t part of Town and Country’s core media business in Wales and we’ve decided to concentrate in expanding Nation Radio (which is now testing on DAB in Wrexham and Chester) and launching DAB transmissions in Mid and West Wales later during 2013”.
NME Radio was available via various digital platforms over the years as well as online, though the nmeradio.com domain as of today is linking straight through to NME.com.
