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Smooth Radio coming off national DAB
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As confirmed earlier this year, Smooth Radio UK is coming off national DAB. It's now confirmed to be making way for Smooth Christmas from 15th November until 27th December then over to Smooth Extra (working name) after 27th.
http://www.a516digital.com/2014/11/smooth-radio-coming-off-national-dab.html#more
http://www.a516digital.com/2014/11/smooth-radio-coming-off-national-dab.html#more
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It's an outrage.lets start a petition >:(
I can appreciate that this must be a disappointment to Gold fans, but clearly Global see more of a future for Smooth.
I guess that if the second national commercial Mux really does come to fruition, there might be scope for Gold to go on that, and maybe get Kiss moved over from D1 so that it can broadcast in stereo?
I can see it being a jukebox station, with maybe a few voice tracked shows. I wouldn't mind betting that Andrew Castle's breakfast show still goes out on the new station with back to back music the rest of the day.
It was never going to be Gold.
Smooth 70s got 804,000 reach last year - must be a way to monetise that.
http://soundcreative.co.uk/q3-2013-rajar-update/
Many thought it would be Heart Extra but instead we get even more of a yawn fest.
Disappointed.
I wish they would take it off all together.
However, living in the real world I suspect you are correct and the 'drivel show' will be networked across both stations.
The proposed 70s, 80s and 90s station is no more then, as Global has replaced that station on D1 with Smooth Xmas and then Smooth Extra.
Smooth Extra is described as 'A melodic music station playing songs from a broad range of decades and targeting an audience aged 45+'. I'm intrigued then as to how Smooth Extra will differ from Smooth musically - a 'refreshing music mix' as opposed to a 'relaxing music mix'. At least we won't have 2 Smooth Radios on DAB anymore.
They had a perfectly good station targeting 45+ with Gold.
It went up in rajar last book !
Maybe, just maybe Smooth on FM will change slighly to try to appeal to say 30-45 year olds with Smooth Extra being a little more like Melody FM was back when it first launched.
Whichever way I can see Smooth Extra being a non stop Jukebox station in a similar way that Gold is now run with possibly a live Breakfast Show hosted by Eamonn Kelly maybe.
True, true, true.
Is that the personality free tennis player who used to (inexplicably) turn up on breakfast television, and continues to flog some dodgy sounding ambulance chasing outfit 82 times a day on Freeview ?
And now he thinks he's radio material ? If so, how utterly depressing.
No reason why they can't put the London version of Smooth on the local mux here, like hey did with Magic a few years back. Loads of space available, especially now that Citybeat has dropped it's bit rate from 128 kbps stereo to 64 kbps mono.
Still, Smooth Extra still sounds OK.
In many parts of the country, you can get a local Smooth (or the London version) plus the "Smooth UK" national version, so there's two stations which are more or less the same thing. This will put an end to that duplication.
I am thinking exactly the same. Why do we need even more of the same dross that we already get from Smooth. Why not put Gold back on DAB and provide a proper alternative.
Well, yes, for those within local mux coverage areas it will.
OK, that sort of makes sense then, thanks
What we might see is spin off from specialist shows like 1 hour non stop of The Great British and American Songbook on weeknights as well as decade shows like Smooth 60's and Smooth 70's.