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National commercial radio stations will qualify for five year renewal of AM/FM licences
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 19 August 2016
The UK’s three national commercial radio stations operating on AM and FM – so that’ll be Classic FM, Talksport and Absolute Radio – will all qualify for a five-year renewal of their licences from media regulator OfCom.
According to Radio Today, OfCom has confirmed that as the three radio stations’ respective AM/FM licences come up for renewal in 2018, it will repeat the process employed last time, which is that the station’s owners – Global, Wireless and Bauer – will be able to apply for a five year renewal, rather than having to compete against other bidders.
There has been a lot less bidding for analogue radio licences in recent years because of uncertainty over how long the traditional analogue networks will be operational as radio slowly shifts over to the DAB digital network.
Though given how long that process seems to be taking, and a reluctance in political circles to do what they did with TV – ie force digital on everyone by announcing a switch-off date – it now feels like good old fashioned FM will still be here for the foreseeable future.
Global, Wireless and Bauer will be able to begin the process of applying for a renewal of the Classic FM, Talksport and Absolute licences later this year.