The Times’ Radio Station after “BBC News Stars”

Thing is that it would never be on FM, that's just the way analogue radio is. Their only option would be to replace Talk Sport on MW, but that's got an established proven audience.

It's only digital that has allowed these stations to exist. Odd though that there are so many national stations these days the launch of another isn't the big deal it once was. The days of Classic FM building a new transmitter network and transmitting birdsong all day to much excitement are long gone


When it started it had quite a few quirky or original programmes, albeit some sounding very cheap - as well as Iain Lee there was Jon Holmes in the afternoons and Jake Yapp at weekends both doing a lot of comedy skits and fun items, and there was a discussion show about comedy in Saturday evenings.

All gradually axed for bland newstalk format.

The morning presenter I've only heard of because his 'fans' (or possibly bots) seem to comment on every thread in twitter that mentions LBC saying how good his show is and how big his audience has got (it isn't and they haven't)

One issue I had this morning were the beeps, Google hangout notifications and Outlook dings heard in the news bulletins. Thought they solved the problem but it resurfaced at 1pm.

Hard to believe now that there was a time where one show would have Akinbola regularly phone in to share his ridiculous ideas with the world.

Quite like what I have heard so far, nice to have a new speech station that doesn't have phone ins.

It will be interesting to see if other Times podcast make it onto Times Radio, something like Walking the Dog wouldn't seem too out of place and be a nice break from news and politics.

DAB+ penetration today is quite high. DAB+ has been in use for over 10 years abroad, Australia rolled out a completely DAB+ network in 2009, so the majority of DAB radios sold in the last 10 years are compatible.

As soon as support was added to Digital 1 and the regulatory hurdles were dropped, Global quickly switched their national stations to DAB+, and it seems to have gone without any major complaints for them. I know there was some complaints when Radio X switched, but most of them were fixed by a full retune.


In the BBC's case it's automatic, they've developed software which takes raw audio from each mic, and when it detects someone speaking it switches to the appropriate camera. Each studio has a 'remote' which allows it to be manually overridden.

I believe Global's is mostly manual, they have what is essentially a TV gallery which looks after the video coming out of each studio. Knowing Global technology it would not surprise me if they've also developed an automatic system to complement it.

At least it meant he wasn't sharing them here.

Interesting write-up by David Lloyd on the first morning and how the BBC might respond:

https://www.davidlloydradio.com/post/times-radio-day-one

As usual, Mr Lloyd seems to have summed it up perfectly.

Unexpected boost in ratings for Times Radio Malawi!

“Many of those trying to tune in to the station via Amazon’s smart speakers, Alexa, were baffled to be directed instead to Times Radio Malawi, a music and talk station based in the east African country” https://t.co/DVUvnMLCLb

— hmu. (@_hariett) June 29, 2020

Interesting that Phil Williams is doing his show from Manchester. Do News UK have an office up there or is he presenting from home I wonder?

Also seems to be some talking in the background on the news bulletin just now. I assume it’s just being done from a desk in an office rather than a dedicated studio? I imagine that’s partially that’s to give a sense of coming from the larger Times operation.

I'm inclined to say that he's presenting from home, given the audio quality. At least I hope he is.