News trickling out with some sad news about Rock Radio Scotland – it won’t be happening, at least not in the form originally envisioned and now with the same creative team behind it.
It was announced a couple of days ago that Nation Radio had bought the license from Rock Radio (RockScot Ltd.), and they have until October to have a station broadcasting live before the license is revoked. The people behind Rockscot including Ciaran O’Toole and Paul Mcmanus, have left the board in the last few weeks.
The RockScot crew published the following statement on their website earlier. The facebook page has already vanished. Sad news, but we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for any future plans from them.
Hello,
This news might feel like it’s from out of nowhere, but the truth is it’s been coming for months now.
Sadly, we are not able to launch Rock Radio on FM in Glasgow. Why? Well, there are many reasons, but mostly it was down to financial pressures – the market has changed since we applied and won the license and today the numbers just didn’t stack up for a completely independent radio business that would have significant operating costs.
We all really, really wanted to make Rock Radio happen and we did everything possible to find a solution, but we’ve come to the conclusion that we need a new plan!
Our new plan is simple. We spoke with many of the radio groups and discussed investment and partnerships. After a long process, the company best suited and willing to work with our existing team to launch a station on 96.3FM are the team at Nation Broadcasting.
Nation run a group of radio stations and are committed to investing and operating a Scottish rock station. It won’t be called Rock Radio, it will have a new name and the style of music will be soft popular rock, classic and contemporary. We wish them all the best with launching their station on 96.3FM and we will help them along the way in the coming months.
What does this mean for Rock Radio?
It’s not actually the end of the dream! We are now exploring a different route to launch our radio station and that might well be on DAB digital radio or perhaps online only. We don’t know yet, There is still work to do and with the help of Nation broadcasting we will find a way that works in good time.
This has been a long journey, more than two years, and it’s not a tale of negativity and woe, many paths were explored to make this work properly. We could have gone on air and just as quickly been off air – that’s not the right thing to do. Ofcom have been supportive in our journey as were the original investors in Rock Radio.
As time has passed, some of the team have moved on to other things and some will also now move on to other opportunities. The ones that are still involved will help Nation to launch their station on 96.3FM. After that, we will turn our attention back to Rock Radio and see how we can create a Rock station different to anything else out there.
That’s the next chapter in the story, We will keep going and one day we’re all going to get there,
Thanks so much for all your support. Keep rockin’
The rock radio crew \m/
