There was once a time when most towns and cities had a local commercial radio station. In Liverpool we were lucky, there were two, City and Juice. Both of these have now become part of much larger national stations. Most of the programming comes from outside of the City. Station names have changed and main studios have been relocated.
Thankfully local radio is still alive and well. There are a number of smaller operators that have emerged. Stations like ‘Zest Liverpool’ and ‘Liverpool Live’, ironically with transmitters on St John’s Beacon, former home of the old Radio City.
The newer stations broadcast on DAB as opposed to FM. That’s not a problem though, according to research DAB surpassed FM listening a while ago. Of course most new stations are also available on smart speakers and apps too.
So Liverpool now has much more listening choice than the two commercial stations of old. A wider choice of content too, upbeat music on ‘Zest’, local talk on ‘Liverpool Live’, there’s even a station dedicated to issues around dementia, ‘MDFR’ (Merseyside Dementia Friendly Radio). A quick scan on your DAB radio will reveal pretty much every format you could imagine.
Phil England, founder of Zest Liverpool said: “We started back in 2017, we could see that the big names were planning to network nationally – since then we’ve built a strong listenership across the city region, now we can forecast further and even faster growth”.
Similar developments are taking place all over the country. With so much available choice though, once again Liverpool is leading the way.
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