The first four awards in Round Six of the small-scale DAB awards have been announced by Ofcom.
The winning applications have been confirmed in Bournemouth, Poole, Isle of Wight and Warminster.
The Isle of Wight and Warminster areas only attracted one licence per area, and the single applicants – West Wiltshire Digital Radio CIC and Wight Digital Radio CIC – were awarded with their respective area licences.
In Bournemouth, three applications were submitted, with the winning bid being owned by BH Community DAB Limited – a joint venture between Hope FM, Hot Radio, Hospital Radio Bedside and Wide FM (communications company).
In awarding, Ofcom said Hope’s shareholding had to be cut down from 35% to 5% as per the ownership rules surrounding a religious company being involved in a small-scale DAB service, to which BH Community DAB were happy to do as its business plan was not reliant on funding from Hope FM.
And in Poole, out of the two applications, the licence was awarded to Wide Digital, which contains mostly the same shareholders as BH Community DAB, albeit with different amounts.
As a result, the shareholding needs to change to reduce Hope FM to 5% as per paragraph 2 of Part II of Schedule 2 to the Broadcasting Act 1990, where such participants are limited to a maximum 5% shareholding in a small-scale multiplex licensee.
All new licencees have 18 months to commence broadcasting.
The other 23 areas for Round Six are yet to be announced.
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