Apologies for the slight delay on writing this post but yesterday I was at the Student Radio Association‘s Conference in Bath, talking about digital stuff on a panel with Nick Piggott from GCap, Will Jackson from Ofcom and Ben Perreau from sky.com. It was a really good session with some excellent questions from the students. Indeed, student radio is probably the first sector to truly engage about which platforms they need and should be on. Most of their listeners are now broadband enabled and their traditional distribution is limited to low powered AM or short-term RSLs.

Talking about DAB with them was quite fascinating and it was great to hear how Xpress Radio felt about simulcasting their FM RSL on DAB. It sounded like they had been overwhelmed with positive reaction from new local listeners across Cardiff and Newport and that it’s really made them think about the scope of the station. They also felt that being next to XFM on the dial also helped too!

Anyway, hopefully they’ll be more opportunitites for a variety of broadcasters as Ofcom awarded the Mid and West Wales DAB Digital Radio multiplex to MuxCo Wales Ltd yesterday, something which we were obviously pleased about. As I talked about when we submitted the application, this multiplex is still very much work in progress, but we’re looking forward to developing our offer over the coming months.