[madmusician]

Apologies that I'm a bit late to this thread - this news passed me by a bit last week. My perspective from somebody who has lived in Worcester for 5-and-a-half years, now: it's high time for the Hits Radio brand to be used here instead of Free Radio.

I remember moaning some time ago (on the blue place) about how terrible the dual-branding split links used to be, with the 'It's Free Radio' tag from the presenter so *blatantly* not matching the inflection of the following link, or having the tag being played in completely the wrong place in the link. To be fair, this has been sorted out over the last couple of years so that it's now really slick - but there's been little point, as they refer to the individual shows as 'Hits in the Afternoon', 'Hits at Breakfast' etc (obviously preparing for this move), and Free Radio is hardly a heritage local name (unlike some others that are getting impacted in this change) so the clunky approach to networking was just a millstone around more creative links, with basically no benefits (IMHO).

I personally found that the shift in emphasis of the playlist over the last 2-3 years has moved it away from what I want to listen to, so I've been a bit less fond of the station for that reason - and I don't think it's an especially good listen (certainly in comparison to Heart and Capital, which I guess are its primary competitors, not that we have a local Heart or Capital here on FM).

As for Radio Wyvern (as briefly mentioned upthread) - it's become a *really* good listen recently in my view. I'm torn, because I think it is a flagrant breach of the community radio license under which it operates (although it does play quite a bit of specialist dance music in off-peak slots, which I guess is a license condition?) but it's a far better fit for a 'modern local radio station' than Free has been. It's slick, a good contemporary playlist (very much in the Hits idiom of 'contemporary bangers plus throwbacks', but I think there's more variety in both the modern tracks and the throwbacks), good local content and some really good presenters now (compared to what we used to hear on Youthcomm only a few years ago). The imaging is more than a bit indulgent (as you might expect from a Muff Murfin operation) but it makes me giggle, and I do appreciate it really!

Long may it continue, and it's a bit sad that this kind of station can only operate under a slightly dubious use of a 'community radio' license - it's basically trying to be a 100% local ILR-style station in a modern idiom and it's really succeeding IMHO and is my 'chart music' radio station of choice whenever I'm out in the car (which only gets FM).