More DAB Radio Stations Close

Perhaps a sign of a worsening economy, or a realisation that there is excessive duplication, several more DAB (and/or DAB+) stations have now closed.

On the Surrey local DAB multiplex, the service Full FM Radio has been removed. The Polish language service does continue online.

Full closure has occurred for All Oldies Radio, which was broadcast on the Herts Beds Bucks local multiplex. This station was on oldies music led service, that initially broadcast online before restructuring as a local service aimed at the Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire it broadcast to on DAB.

In Scotland, the three Scottish Sun branded services Sun 80s, Sun Chilled, and Sun Hits have now closed. These three services were largely fillers utilising a large amount of vacant capacity on the Central Scotland regional DAB multiplex, with Sun Chilled initially launching as Sun Greatest Hits (prior to the Bauer Media owned station of a similar name).

The three Scottish Sun services were largely automated, but did feature comprehensive travel bulletins, and some news bulletins, though latterly the news bulletins appeared to be more of a promotion of articles on the Scottish Sun website. Despite this, all three stations broadcast in high quality 128 kbps joint stereo DAB, something of a rarity for commercial radio.

With the three Union Jack stations having already closed, it seems that more DAB stations are likely to follow, despite the new small-scale, hyperlocal DAB multiplexes starting to launch.