Category Archives: northeast wales and west cheshire

Then and Now.

Last week Pure held an event to celebrate 10 years of making beautiful functional DAB radios. Matt, Greg and I attended and enjoyed seeing the display of Pure Evokes from across the last decade, from the first blue nylon-fronted limited run to the smart 2012 union flag issue. We were pleased to celebrate the distance covered with the team from Pure and toast their successes.

It was appropriate timing for us, looking back and forward – not least because earlier the same day I’d had our kick off meeting with our transmission subcontractor, lining things up for the launch of Muxco WCL later this year.

At GCAP (as was) between 2001 and 2007 Greg Matt and I operated over 20 DAB multiplexes and oversaw the launches for a large amount of those.

I became pretty used to launches and multiplexes but that was then. All sorts of things have changed, not always the obvious stuff.  Here’s an example.

The more multiplexes you launch the more transmitters there are to inexplicably go on the blink at odd times, like, say 3am.

Back then in 2002 or 2003, as now, I’d always have the phone to hand, and after waking with a jolt to hear what had gone wrong, I would notify station engineers instantly, them similarly half asleep. I think it is fair to say they didn’t always give a flying toss that a DAB transmitter that covered 6 sheep in a field had gone down 3db for four minutes. The sheep could still tune in on FM if they so chose and that was the engineers priority. And could I please get off the phone because did I know it was 3am? Consequently we got better at managing that information in a way that suited the radio stations who are our clients, and the ones who pay the bills.

However in this new landscape here in 2012 a station engineer might actually care very much that his DAB feed is affected, even a small amount. DAB is of greater importance than ever and so I can’t approach things the same way as we used to. We will be using new telemetry, which will be customised to our new requirements – so what requirements would we like?

The radio stations, our clients will be the ones at the centre of this process.  Whilst our transmission team crack on with the big pointy mast side of the build, I’ll be getting in touch with the radio station’s tech teams over the coming weeks to work through some practical stuff, and to get a feel for what they need from us.

Multiplex Launch for Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool

I’m pleased to be able to announce the launch of our first multiplex – for Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool in November 2012. Clearly, this has taken a little longer than we hoped. At the point we applied for the licence we didn’t necessarily expect a global financial crisis, ownership changes for the vast majority of UK radio stations and the long-running industry discussions between Ofcom, Government, the BBC and the radio groups.

I would hope that you would believe me when I say that the frustration has been felt most keenly in this office, as launching multiplexes is what we want to do!

We’ve announced an initial list of services for this mutliplex, we hope that we’ll be able to add to it over the coming months. We’re talking with many potential operators, but are always keen to hear from  more. You can email me, [email protected], if you would like more information.

You’ll be able to follow more of the multiplex’s progress here and we’ve also created a twitter account for it as well – @MuxCoWCL.

We don’t have any news to announce about the other multiplexes at the moment, but we’ll update the blog as soon as we do.

The picture here is Gregory signing the 12 year transmission contract for Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool:

We issued this press release this morning:

MuxCo announces launch plans for a New DAB Digital Radio Multiplex serving Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales

MuxCo today (23 April) announces its launch plans for the new DAB Digital Radio multiplex that will serve Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales from November 2012.

Using transmitters at Moel-y-Parc, Wrexham Rhos and St.John’s Beacon, the multiplex will serve around 1.8m adults (15+) enabling a range of existing and new services to broadcast on DAB Digital Radio.

The multiplex will broadcast BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, 107.6 Juice FM, Real Radio and Dee 106.3, allowing these existing services to both broadcast in digital quality and be heard by a wider audience than can currently hear them on FM Radio. The multiplex launch will also see Nation Radio become Wales’ second national commercial station as it moves into the north of the country for the first time.

The launch of the multiplex means there’s also space for new radio stations to broadcast across the area. All that prospective operators need to do is visit www.muxco.com for more information.

Gregory Watson, Managing Director at MuxCo, said “We’re excited that some of the area’s favourite stations and some new radio choices are going to be available for listeners across Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales. Half the country listens to stations on digital radio each week, we’re pleased that listeners can now tune in to stations on digital radio locally from November.”

ENDS

MuxCo updates plans for a New DAB Digital Radio Multiplex serving Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales

MuxCo updates plans for its new DAB Digital Radio multiplex that will serve Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales.

Using transmitters at Moel-y-Parc, Wrexham Rhos and St.John’s Beacon, the multiplex will serve around 1.4m adults (15+) and enabling a range of existing and new services to broadcast in digital.

The multiplex will carry BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, 107.6 Juice FM and Dee 106.3, allowing these existing services to both broadcast in digital quality and be heard by a wider audience than can currently hear them on analogue. In addition, the multiplex will carry a number of new services, only available on DAB Digital Radio. These will include Traffic Radio, a 24/7 traffic news and information service from the Highways Agency, a new music service from Town & Country Broadcasting and a range of data services from Folder Media.

The multiplex has opportunities for additional radio services to join this exciting multiplex.

MuxCo is currently finalising its contract with Arqiva, with proposals for the multiplex to launch in the second half of 2010.

More news to follow soon.

Ch..Ch..Ch.. Changes

Interesting to see our competitors, NOWdigital, changing their application a couple of months after submitting it. They said they would be provide a religious format – UCB UK. UCB, however, no longer want  to provide the station, so it’s been removed from their application with NOWdigital saying it will be replaced by an “unspecified local digital sound programme service… within one year of the multiplex going on-air”.

It seems quite a late change, especially as we think the licence will be awarded on September 6th! It’s also not the only change, since submitting the application we’ve seen them change their transmitter configurations and which versions of services they’ll be launching in the area. We’re obviously sure that this has nothing to do with a better bid from MuxCo! But then we would say that, I suppose…

In response to this change (well, the first one anyway) Ofcom have said whilst they have accepted the UCB amendment they’re interested in citizens views about it.  You can write to Neil Stock, Head of Radio, Ofcom, Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HA or email him – [email protected].

Northeast Wales and West Cheshire is in!

We’ve given ourselves the afternoon off here at MuxCo HQ as we’ve just submitted our application for the Northeast Wales and West Cheshire DAB Digital Radio licence. It’s an interesting area as we’re able to cover a decent stretch of Liverpool as well as Northeast Wales and West Cheshire. This is good news for the new digital only services as it means they can cover a larger area and have a better chance of supporting themselves financially. At the same time, people a little further afield will be able to tune in to their favourite analogue services. We think this is especially useful for people who work further away from home as they can keep listening to their local home station.

We’re also pleased that we’ve got a stellar bunch of shareholders. Town and Country, Dee 106.3 and UTV ensure that the local radio stations will collectively benefit from being involved with digital radio, reducing their costs and ensuring that their stations appear on DAB.

As always, we’re interested in your views, so if you want to get in touch, i’m [email protected].