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Media
Absolute launches two new decade stations
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 18 October 2011
Absolute Radio is launching two more decade-specific digital services, Absolute 60s and Absolute 70s. Like the company’s 80s, 90s and 00s sister stations, these will broadcast only music from their selected decade, except during breakfast when they’ll take the Christian O’Connell breakfast show, with all its pesky modern music (I mean, for God’s sake, they just played Ed Sheeran), from the main Absolute station.
Much of the output of the new stations will be back to back music, though Pete Mitchell will host a morning show for the 60s channel and Richard Skinner will present a programme on Absolute 70s. Both will also be part of the previously reported experiment Absolute has been conducting with its Saturday morning Frank Skinner show, which airs on all the Absolute stations, but with music varying from channel to channel.
Confirming the new stations, Absolute big cheese man Clive Dickens told The Guardian: “The beauty of [these stations] lies in their simplicity. Absolute Radio 80s is now the eleventh biggest radio station in the UK and it is not even two years old. Around 50% of the Absolute Radio audience is now enjoying one of our digital services. [And] like our other digital stations, the spirit of these services will be the music of the 60s and the 70s through the lens of Absolute Radio. They won’t replicate Gold or Magic or Smooth Radio. You won’t find Herman’s Hermits or The Searchers on Absolute Radio 60s”.
With that in mind, Dickens added that there would never be an Absolute 50s station, adding: “Real music began in 1963 with the Beatles and the Stones. Prior to that it was great music, but it wasn’t Absolute music”.
The new stations will be available via DAB in some parts of the country, and online via the Radioplayer.
