Metropol

A whole host of changes to Bauer's line-up from today (Monday 5th Jan). Magic London went national on DAB, and the old Magic AM network has been rebranded as Bauer City 2, so your normal Bauer FM station with the letter '2' on the end. For example in Liverpool, we now have 'Radio City' on 96.7 FM and 'Radio City 2' on 1548 AM. Although it does mean that for some of the stations, it's a bit awkward, such as 'Rock FM 2' a station which is neither pure rock or on FM.

There's also going to be a Bauer City 3 network, basically a localised version of the current The Hits Radio station available on DAB. Same idea as the Magic rebranding, with your local station name and the letter '3' on the end.

It seems a bit of a mess to me, because it means the presenters on the Bauer City 2/ex-Magic stations can't refer the station to its actual name anymore, and that will presumably be the same for the Bauer City 3 stations.

Absolute Radio has also gone to mono on DAB (although it does sound better than the poor stereo bitrate it had before) in order for Magic to fit in.

The '2' naming scheme originates from Radio Clyde, which split into Clyde 1 FM and Clyde 2 AM in 1990. Northsound split into 1 and 2 in 1995, and Forth One and Forth 2 gained their current names in 2000.

Philip wrote: the letter '3'

Alexia wrote:

Philip wrote: the letter '3'

Ugh, that'll teach me! Was trying to get the post written out quickly.

I thought Rock FM was a reference to the sweet food stuff associated with one of it's broadcast area's principal towns?

I treated myself to a DAB radio in my car when my old one popped back in October. Kerrang (embarrassingly) found its way in to one of my presets and I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) to see it disappear back in December. Apparently it's now only available in London on DAB and on Freeview. Are Bauer killing it off?

A station called "Teamrock" now sits in the same preset - on the plus side, they don't seem to bother with adverts - but it does tend to veer more in to the unlistenable side of stuff that Kerrang tended to avoid in the day. I'm not sure if "TEAMROCK" or "KERRANG!" is a more embarrassing thing for somebody to glance at my dash and see.

WillPS wrote:I thought Rock FM was a reference to the sweet food stuff associated with one of it's broadcast area's principal towns?

I found this old post on Digital Spy from a former EMAP employee:

To clear a few points up -

Red Rose Rock FM and Red Rose Gold launched at 8am on 1st June 1990, a split of the popular Red Rose Radio service.

The features/presenters/programmes from Red Rose Radio were kept on Red Rose Gold while Red Rose Rock FM was a totally new concept (in Lancashire anyway!) designed to hook the younger listeners fed up with older playlist songs and lengthy news of Red Rose Radio.

It was all based on American pop stations, hence the American voice over and classic jingle package.

The name "Rock" has nothing to do with Blackpool rock, its rock meaning rocking, good, fast, pacey modern - "rocking" an 80's expression which sounds dated now hence confusion with people thinking the station plays rock music.

When I worked there, EMAP was taking about the possibilty of renaming ALL its FM stations to "Metro" - That would have been interesting!

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost ... stcount=10

I hadn't really been paying attention to the Bauer schedules, but I've just noticed (courtesy of barcode post on TV Forum) that John Leslie has a mid-afternoon show on 2, overlapping slightly with his brother Grant Stott's show on Forth 1.

Rock FM 3 (and I presume equivalents in other areas) launched this week. I'm guessing it's a regional version of The Hits Radio (does that still exist?) - seems to be a hell of a lot of overlap with Rock FM though with stuff like In Demand. I think that, other than branding and adverts, there is no local content.

Edit - just reread the first post, answered my own question about The Hits

all new Phil wrote:Rock FM 3 (and I presume equivalents in other areas) launched this week. I'm guessing it's a regional version of The Hits Radio (does that still exist?) - seems to be a hell of a lot of overlap with Rock FM though with stuff like In Demand. I think that, other than branding and adverts, there is no local content.

Edit - just reread the first post, answered my own question about The Hits

I think it's similar to what they've done with Magic, replace the national brand with a local brand, but it's still the same nationally networked station. 'The Hits' is still used as the tagline, so for example 'Rock FM 3 - The Hits for Lancashire'.

Not Bauer but I cba with a new topic. XFM is leaving DAB in Yorkshire, but not Nottinghamshire it would seem. Combined with TeamRock leaving, I'm now at the point where I think I'm going to put the integrated stereo which came with my car back in and enjoy Spotify over Bluetooth, plus Absolute on MW.

What a bloody pointless platform if the only vaguely indie/alt station on there is Absolute (in glorious mono) and 85 clones of Capital.

When I bought the radio I was really looking forward to 6Music but I've found that their breakfast and drive-time programmes are unbearable. Shaun Keaveny in particular is so self indulgent - just play some fucking music man, the clue's there in the title of the station, surely?

As you may have seen, the revamped xfm, Radio X, will be joining DigitalOne in glorious 80kbps mono.