Nation Broadcasting has submitted an application for the re-advertised Ceredigion licence as Nation Radio.
Radio Ceredigion currently shares programmes with its sister stations, Radio Carmarthenshire, Radio Pembrokeshire, Bridge FM and Swansea Bay Radio from Nation Broadcasting’s St Hilary studios. The service achieves 16% reach and a market share of just under 5% via three frequencies of 103.3, 96.6 and 97.4FM.
If the new application is approved, it will become part of Nation Radio’s national coverage, which can be heard via a network of FM and DAB across Wales with the exception of Ceredigion.
This move would fill in the coverage gap for Nation Radio.
Nation said: “We reviewed our options to provide a viable service and concluded that the best use of a new licence term is to extend availability of our national commercial service, Nation Radio. Ceredigion is the only area of Wales where the popular and profitable Nation Radio cannot be heard. If licenced, we will be a truly national service, available right across Wales on a mix of FM and DAB.
“Nation Radio does not require additional funding to continue its operations since it carries all overheads, excluding transmission and research in Ceredigion, in the Group’s existing cost base.”
The company says, with the upcoming launch of a community radio station in the area, it does not believe the available revenue in the market can support more than one local service: “Having operated Radio Ceredigion since 2010, we know its economic limitations and we have proved our ability to maintain it.
“Prior to our ownership, every operator of this licence failed to complete its licence term. There is no evidence to suggest that this licence could be run as a standalone business. Nation Broadcasting can maintain this licence with ongoing access to national revenue streams – essential for viability – alongside our existing local commercial relationships.”
Nation Radio is also currently applying for the Bristol 106.5 FM licence as JACK fm.
Not a surprise could see this coming.There’s nothing very local about the Radio Ceredigion service anyway as it comes from the other side of Wales (as does Nation of course)and with a local community service opening in Aberystwyth I doubt if anyone else will apply.
I am surprised that Nation Broadcasting did not come forward to buy the Your Radio station to save it, and help keep Your Radio going on both 103 and 106.9 FM for the area that Your Radio serves.
Your Radio at the moment is in a right mess, and needs the likes of Nation Broadcasting to come forward to help and rescue it.
In my last contribution I explained that I live in “deepest” Mid Wales. Perhaps that’s what made me become so enthusiastic about broadcasting of all kinds -Sitting up til after midnight on a Sunday listening to Radio Luxembourg’s “Top Twenty”. Being mostly manual workers my family just had to get as much rest as they could at the weekend and went to bed early on a Sunday. In this part of Mid Wales it was a merciful relief to hear some of the imported dj’s deploying their mid-Atlantic accents. It was just great to slide away from the heavily accented Welsh spoken word. I didn’t dream that one day I’d be applying for jobs with the BBC’s Wales myself. I blame no-one other than myself. Perhaps my Exam results weren’t good enough or my audition was rubbish. I finally ended up as a Primary School head teacher. Incidentally one reason for not taking me on was that as a teacher I would not be able to deal with the hurly burly of the journalistic experience and would soon scuttle back to the classroom (and -ooo- yes) the holidays, of course. Back to Radio Ceredigion in its glory days – one of the things that put me off was that the Cardiganshire English doesn’t sound very nice on the Radio – especially when there are plenty of English-speaking stations out there. There might be a good reason why R.Ceredigion soon hired someone with a mid Atlantic accent to “sit in”. He sounded great too. However, I’m sure that my mid-wales diction would have irritated many people during my years DJaying around North and Mid Wales and the western bits of Shropshire
It really didn’t have much to offer after it moved to Pembrokeshire (and later even further away) after being taken over.I really don’t think you can run a local station in such an area from the other side of Wales.
Here I am again – rather greedily taking a second bite of the cherry. In yesterday’s “few words” (careful Phillips!) I mentioned Radio Luxembourg without mentioning the other significant development to radio in the UK – Of course it was Radio Caroline and the other pirates that opened up the marketplace to a different style of presentation. I understand (don’t you know Phillips?) that the founder of Radio Caroline was Rohan O’rahilly and that he
named the “Caroline” Radio Station after Caroline Kennedy (US President John Kennedy’s young daughter) because he wanted radio stations to be more like Caroline – mischievious and full of fun. I couldn’t agree more. One of the BBC’s offerings on the Light Programme at the time was “My Top Twelve” at around lunchtimes on a Saturday. It was there before Radio Caroline and allegedly it continued to be there after the full flush of broadcasting. It would be “shame on me” if I didn’t also mention Brian Mathew and the “Saturday Club” show that may have been the British pre-cursor to Caroline Kennedy.
I remember listening to “Tony Brandon’s top twelve” on a Saturday afternoon.
Now I ‘ll try and make a valid contribution to the discussion – i.e. for or against
against the idea of “downloading”. My first confession is that I rather like the spoken voice along with my favourite style of Music. The former Radios Ceredigion and Maldwyn made a valiant attempt to provide a wide variety of speech and music for their listeners. I’m not sure how or why R.Ceredigion closed but I know that it was a shortage of advertising revenue that did for Radio Maldwyn. I suspect that all day music with no presentation doesn’t
go down well in the rural Welsh Counties – i.e. Maldwyn and Ceredigion – but there again – Music with no speech is better than nothing at all.
Radio Ceredigion hasn’t closed yet Alun-the licence ends in May after which the frequencies may carry Nation radio or another service if anyone else applies and is awarded it.The station current carries the same programmes as four other stations in Wales with local,adverts and inserts.Most of the music is modern and I suspect that doesn’t go too well-at any rate it is one of the reasons being given for changing the service to the older skewed Nation (although that only changed about a month ago) which now plays music from the last 50 years and only a few current songs.Of course just relaying Nation will also save a lot of money presumably!.
There is a new station launching soon for Ceredigion called Radio Aber and it will broadcast from Aberystwyth and will have the same format as the old Radio Ceredigion when Nation Broadcasting did not own the station, Radio Aber will broadcast from the same transmitter has Radio Ceredigion and will have loads of various shows like it used to be.
A third very brief cherry please – I meant Radio Ceredigion in its original form – oh yes, I was there on launch day. It was raining cats and dogs in Devil’s Bridge. I was sorry for the novice Newsreader. She did very well with her very first bulletin
live! I suspect that the present offering is courtesy of whoever they imported to change the format. Do the merry-go-rounds still come to Aber in November?