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Business News Media
Five Bauer digital stations to come off Sky
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 22 May 2009
Bauer Radio has announced it is taking five of its national digital radio stations off the Sky satellite platform, preferring instead to concentrate on building audience and advertisers via its Freeview broadcasts.
One of the issues for radio firms dabbling in the various different outputs for digital radio services (ie Sky, Virgin, Freeview, Freesat, DAB networks, the internet) is that each additional platform costs money to operate, and the longer it takes for any one platform to take off as consumers’ preferred service, the more costs are associated with developing what are in the main loss-leader digital services.
Bauer’s Q, Heat, Kerrang!, The Hits and Smash Hits services will be withdrawn from Sky, though the Kiss and Magic services will remain. Confirming the decision, Bauer’s strategy man Travis Baxter told Radio Today: “We have fantastic coverage and huge audiences on Freeview. We can’t be in everything. We can’t invest in every platform that’s going”.