Global is building on the Riviera.
Just over a year after buying Riviera Radio, its first station acquisition outside the UK, the group has switched on a sister station for the Côte d’Azur. For founder Ashley Tabor-King it is a full-circle moment. He began his broadcasting career at Riviera Radio, a station that was once part of the Capital Radio Group that Global now owns.
It is also the newest chapter in a very old British habit. Some of the best-loved English-language radio of the last century came from small places just beyond the UK’s borders, and nearly all of them are famous for something besides broadcasting.
Monaco Gets a Second Riviera Station
Global launched Riviera Relax on 106.3FM on 29 September, on the Monaco frequency previously used by Riviera Radio, with Smooth’s Paul Phear presenting daytimes from 10am to 2pm and music running around the clock. Like its sister station, it covers the principality and the South of France from Nice and Cannes to Antibes and St Tropez, sits on DAB and streams worldwide. Riviera Radio’s English-speaking audience on the coast is a ready-made base for a second brand, and the move shows Global treating Monaco as a market worth building in rather than a one-off purchase.
Global is not the only one broadcasting from the principality. The Sound of Monaco, an independent online station run by former drummer Jan Fabricius-Kristensen, made around 100 original tracks to play instead of joining the thousands of stations already playing classic hits. “We didn’t see much point in creating another one,” he told Radio Today. Its spin-off, Christmas from Monaco, does the same for the festive season with 83 original recordings in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Danish.
Building a distinct identity makes sense in a place that already has one of the strongest in the world. Monte Carlo’s name carries its casino as much as its coastline. The Monte-Carlo Casino has stood since the 1860s, run by the Société des Bains de Mer, and for most visitors it is the image of Monaco long before the radio dial is.
Luxembourg and the 208 Signal That Shaped British Pop
No station did more to define offshore listening than Radio Luxembourg. Its English service began in 1933, and for decades the 208 medium wave signal was where British teenagers found pop music after dark, often on a transistor under the bedclothes. The 208 service finally closed at 3am on 30 December 1991, and the last record it played was Van Morrison’s In the Days Before Rock and Roll, a song about exactly that kind of late-night listening.
The Grand Duchy keeps its gaming as tightly as it once kept its frequencies. Luxembourg has just one casino, Casino 2000 in Mondorf-les-Bains, which opened in April 1983 and draws almost half a million visitors a year. What you can play has always changed at the border, much as what you could hear on the dial once did, and a look at casinos by country shows how different the line-up is from Monaco to Luxembourg to the UK.
Isle of Man and the Summer of 1964
The Isle of Man had two very different stations arrive in the same summer. Manx Radio, the island’s own broadcaster, went on air in 1964, and on 6 July that year Radio Caroline North began broadcasting from the MV Caroline anchored off the island. One became a fixture of Manx life, the other a pirate legend, and both put the island firmly on the British radio map.
Douglas carries the island’s other night-time draw. The Palace Hotel & Casino is where the island keeps its casino, so a visitor can spend an evening at the tables in the same town where Manx Radio has been broadcasting for more than six decades.
Gibraltar and the Birth of GBC
Gibraltar’s broadcasting story starts in 1958, when Radio Gibraltar began regular programmes. In December 1963 it merged with Gibraltar Television to form the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation, which still serves the Rock today. Its other modern calling card has been online gaming, with many of the industry’s best-known companies running their businesses from the Rock.
The Old Pattern Still Pays
Small places, outsized signals. Luxembourg gave Britain its late-night pop, the Isle of Man gave it a pirate and Gibraltar built a broadcaster from scratch, and now Global is betting that Monaco can carry more than one English-language station. Through December, Christmas from Monaco will be adding its own chapter, with 83 songs written for the season playing to listeners wherever they tune in.
