GCap Media's South Hampshire station Ocean FM has been issued a yellow card by Ofcom for not operating within its Format. The station has failed to play predominantly current Adult Contemporary tracks, instead concentrating on adult and alternative modern rock.
The Format requires Ocean FM to play predominantly current AC tracks and those from the previous twelve months. However during a three day sampling period in mid-October, Ofcom found that less than 10% of the station's music output met this criteria.
Ocean FM was instead found to be playing Adult Rock including a high number of alternative and modern rock tracks from artists including The Arctic Monkeys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Clash and the Buzzcocks.
Ocean FM has lost nearly half its total listening hours over the past four years, and currently reaches 16% of the 988,000 adults in its TSA.
Programme Director Richard Wilkinson was unavailable for comment this afternoon.