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New Welsh radio station to share veteran DJ shows with Thames Radio
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 1 September 2016
A new national radio station is launching in Wales which will share some programming with Thames Radio, the London-based station that launched earlier this year with a mission to recreate the sound of Capital Radio circa the 1980s and 1990s, partly by hiring some of that station’s former DJs for weekly shows.
New Welsh station Dragon Radio will take over the slots currently used on various local DAB digital radio networks in Wales by Nation Gold, which is a sister station to Nation Radio, the service that took over the Xfm channel in South Wales in 2008 and which has since also spread out across the rest of Wales via DAB (as well as becoming a bit more pop).
Dragon Radio will play music from the 1970s through to today, and will share weekly shows hosted by Tony Blackburn, Pat Sharp and Neil Fox with Thames Radio, which is also operated by Dragon Radio owner Nation Broadcasting.
Given the Capital Radio nostalgia fest that runs throughout those shows, it’s perhaps ironic that the new station is called Dragon. The main Cardiff FM station was previously called Red Dragon FM, but it was rebranded as Capital in 2014 as part of Global Radio’s strategy of realigning all its local stations under a small number of nationwide brands.
As Radio Today notes, there is actually a student radio station in South Wales already called Dragon Radio, and a Cardiff-based digital station called 100% Dragon Hits. Because they love dragons in Wales, and no Global Radio brand harmonisation strategy will keep those dragons off the airwaves forever.
Says Nation Broadcasting’s Group Managing Director Martin Mumford: “Dragon Radio is a great new Welsh brand that complements our existing national and local radio services. It offers listeners and advertisers across Wales a significant extension in choice”.
