[cityprod]

Yes, GHR and DAB aren't even getting a mention in the pre publicity for the changes. It's very different to what happened with Wave, as its one station moving platforms and changing name and a totally different one replacing it. It's the same as happened with Lincs FM, except all in the same day rather than over a year.

The messaging is awful, just being honest with the audience will save a lot of goodwill from them. By not promoting GHR on FM they're almost seeming like they're doing it in secret.

I'd disagree that FM is a legacy platform, there's still a lot of people listening to it especially in vehicles. If there weren't then why is Bauer spending so much money buying up and converting so many FM licenses to their national networks? If they wanted Hits and GHR to be national DAB networks then that's a lot easier and cheaper.

It's a shame to see Pirate go, it's a sad end for what was a huge station down there. Whenever I was on holiday down there it used to be on everywhere, it's logo was everywhere. Had quire a mixed playlist and really useful to have on on holiday too for the local information too. Now all the local content is reduced down to 3 hours a weekday off peak.

Im not sure the term 'throwback' works so well in an area with lots of fishing either :-D

For commerical radio, FM is definitely a legacy platform. Only around 21% of listening is done on FM, down from 29% a year ago, with 46% on DAB, up from 38% a year ago. Online listening in that same time has gone from 28% to 29%.

BBC Radio listening on FM is not dropping so much with just around 1-2% changes on any platform in the past year. 37% to 36% on FM, 39% on DAB, stable over the past year, 19% to 21% online. I estimate that within a year, over half of all commercial radio listening will be on DAB, and we'll see FM listening drop below 20% sooner than that. I don't think it will be too long before they start considering closing down FM transmitters, as much as I don't want that to happen yet. We're talking about 5-10 years in the future here. BBC and Community Radio stations will probably still be on FM for a while after, but the clock is pretty much already ticking on commerical radio's future on FM.