BBC Sounds

They could easily just automate it and run it as a web stream through a server.

They don’t need to have DJs or spend any real money on these spinoff stations.

I'm imagining that there'll be elements of curated archive material, linking content already available on Sounds but they'll also need some element of 'new' material. I'd expect a 'jukebox' overnight service, if indeed the 'services' are intended to go 24/7. A Radio 2 service could see typically Bob Harris' Country show repeated but in an extended format.

A BBC Radio 3 Timeshifted Proms Station would work well during the festival replaying primetime evening concerts during the daytime and the late evening and lunchtime concerts in the primetime slot. Curated Proms feature shows of which there thousands in the archives could pad it out.

There are a number of genres and formats that the BBC don't cover well which could see this work for them.

But I'll add the rider that a major expansion does seem at odds with all we've heard about BBC Finances from 2020 onwards.

There are already the pop-up stations that I think are available on Sounds whenever they're around, such as with the Radio 2 Beatles pop-up recently.

Yes ... agreed. What is being suggested is much more than a pop-up, in my Radio 3 example it'd run for weeks not days. The idea in the article seems to be for much more permanent or semi-permanent ones.

It looks like the individual radio station sites (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk/radio2) are set to merge into BBC Sounds website (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_two). Probably explains why the radio station pages have never had a 'BBC Sounds' header navigation added when the old Radio one was removed.

The station homepages now do indeed redirect to the listen live pages which seems a bit of a shame. The old homepages were much better - the new pages look a bit basic and empty to act as radio station homepages, with nothing to reflect the personality of each station. I suppose they have been designed primarily for mobile devices in mind, rather than for looking at on a computer screen. I'm also not keen on the idea of having the audio start to play as soon as you arrive at a radio station website.

I've just looked at BBC Radio London's and it's atrocious. Considering local radio is currently undergoing an editorial and imaging revamp over the next two months, the fact the websites have been scrapped for basically a listen live player is retrograde.

I guess they will keep the base URLs - as the BBC still has (I believe) a policy of only ever using one level of URL address after the bbc.co.uk

As an example : bbc.co.uk/radio2 would be OK, but bbc.co.uk/sounds/radio2 would not.

Increasingly using URLs on-air is seen as a bit out of date, given so few people type URLs into their browser bars and instead type them into Google search - so a more generic 'Search for BBC Radio 2 on your favoured (*) platform' may be more likely, though at the moment 'Listen to Radio 2 on BBC Sounds' is more likely.

(*) As long as your favoured platform is, itself, favoured by the BBC because it provides listener metadata / metrics.

Music, radio and podcast fans can now enjoy over 80,000 hours of audio content on their connected TV with the launch of the @BBCSounds TV app: https://t.co/JmNHLhClpY pic.twitter.com/zplU1mL6UI

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) March 24, 2020

..... Working well too.

It looks nice but is quite limited with no search function, or schedule listing. As far as I can tell I can listen live, get recommendations, continue listening to something from before or browse categories. If I wanted to catch up with something specific I wouldn’t get very far.

It'll be expanded in due course. I believe it's been released. due to you know what, very early. There are other platforms due in the future as well as expansions, given present circumstances that could be a while off.