[lookoutwales]

Kingdom FM / Original 106 / Pure Radio - Wouldn't be surprised if Bauer is eyeing them up as a way to move GHR from AM to FM in these areas. Global could be interested, but it's difficult to know without knowing how their networks do on other platforms in the area.

The DC Thomson stations are an interesting case study - Kingdom is a strongly local and successful station in Fife and Original, to its credit, has held its own against the heritage Northsound 1 in Aberdeen.

I’d have thought they might make a better fit for Global to expand Heart, personally (Bauer did close Northsound 2 on AM a few years ago - and this was after the end of local output)

The outlier is Pure - which in Dundee and Perth is an FM relay of the Central Scotland DAB station with opts for local news.

It gets about a tenth of the figures on FM that Tay gets (bear in mind this replaced the local Wave FM) and on DAB, it struggles to get beyond 30k in the central belt.

FM aside, it did have a ‘no news’ policy as part of its personality-led format (Robin Galloway is both breakfast host and programme controller) but that was dropped last month and they’re now going for a tighter’ more music’ format outside breakfast.

It is of an acquired taste to say the least (even before Pure, I’m sure Galloway pledged not to do any crank phone calls when he was at Heart - he quickly backtracked on that…)