Yes, Absolute Radio have announced they are launching on 105.2FM in the West Midlands on Monday 7th September - they're taking over the analogue frequency of Planet Rock, which itself picked it up from Kerrang! just over two years ago.
There's an announcement detailing the news on
Absolute's website, which includes this line:
Quote:
“If you're a Villa or Baggies fan we'll be doing live Barclays Premier League commentary every Saturday afternoon with more coverage of the West Midlands teams.”
Surely this heavily hints that a gut feeling I had last season is true - namely that Absolute were picking games involving the Premier League's five London clubs on a noticeably regular basis (going by my records, 21 of the 33 Premier League fixtures they did commentary on last season involved at least one London club) due to them having an FM platform in London.
With them now having an FM platform in the West Midlands, I think we can expect Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion to appear in commentary picks on Rock 'N' Roll Football Live considerably more than the respective two and one occasions they were chosen last season.
Indeed I remember Connor and others bemoaning BBC Radio 5 Live and Absolute for not having picked a derby between the two teams that kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday last season - were that fixture to take place in the same timeslot in 2015/16, I expect it'd be a nailed on pick for Absolute given the new platform.