MuxCo Launches Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool Multiplex

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We officially launched the multiplex today at events in Wrexham and Liverpool. Here’s the press release that accompanied the launch:

DIGITAL RADIO BOOST FOR WREXHAM, CHESTER AND LIVERPOOL

Today at Wrexham Football Ground, local politicians Ian Lucas MP and Lesley Griffiths AM switched on two new DAB digital radio transmitters for the Wrexham and Chester area, meanwhile in Liverpool, Juice FM’s Ian and Leanne turned on the transmitter at St John’s Beacon. The switch-on means that 2.2 million people in North East Wales, West Cheshire and Liverpool can now listen to BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, Real Radio Wales, Nation Radio, Juice FM and Dee on DAB on DAB digital radio for the first time.

Nation Radio, Real Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Wales and Juice FM are currently available on FM and are launching on DAB in the area for the first time, while Dee on DAB is a new service being launched by Chester-based Dee 106.3. To receive the new stations, listeners with digital radios may have to re-tune their sets – find out more at getdigitalradio.com/retune

The switch-on was marked by a unique collaboration between public and commercial broadcasters, with BBC Radio Cymru, BBC Radio Wales, Juice FM, Nation Radio and Dee on DAB, at the home of Wrexham FC and at Juice FMs studios. The switch-on also means that listeners will be able to follow Wrexham FC on DAB in the area for the first time on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru, as they battle to regain their Football League status.

Ford Ennals, CEO of Digital Radio UK, who hosted the event, said: “This is great news for 2 million people across the Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool areas as until now they have not been able receive all their favourite local stations on DAB.”

Ian Lucas MP said: “As the town’s MP I’ve pushed for better radio coverage for Wrexham, so I’m honoured to be switching on the new digital radio transmitters today. This is excellent news for radio and football lovers in the area who will now be able to enjoy coverage of the top local matches in digital quality sound for the first time.”

Assembly Member for Wrexham, Lesley Griffiths said: “Boosting local coverage for Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool means the excellent range of local DAB digital radio stations can be received by even more listeners, at home, at work and in their car.”

The 3 new transmitters at Wrexham Rhos, Moel-y-Parc and St John’s Beacon take local digital radio coverage from zero to 74.3% of households, and bring the local DAB stations and the national BBC services for Wales on DAB digital radio to the area for the first time. Coverage for local and national services in Wales will be further expanded as Muxco will also be launching DAB services this year in Mid and West Wales, with North Wales to follow soon.

Local road coverage is also improved, adding hundreds of miles of roads into local DAB coverage for the first time. Digital radios are increasingly becoming available in cars and according to new industry data 35% of all new cars now have digital radio as standard. A third of all new Toyota vehicles, whose engine manufacturing plant is located at Deeside in North Wales, has digital radio as standard.

Digital radio in NE Wales and West Cheshire is popular with over 35% of homes having a DAB radio but until now listeners have been unable to listen to all their favourite local radio stations and the BBC’s national radio stations for Wales on DAB. The importance of local radio stations to listeners has been shown in research carried out by the radio industry regulator, Ofcom. Listeners can check which stations they can receive by inputting their postcode at getdigitalradio.com

This switch-on comes as Government announce they will make a decision on digital radio switchover later in 2013. Digital listening in the UK represented 33% of all listening in Q4 2012 and in 2012 UK digital radio sales reached the second highest level ever with over 2 million sets sold. A cumulative total of 17 million digital radio sets has been sold to date in the UK.

The radio industry communications campaign featuring digital radio evangelist D Love, who encourages everyone to spread the love for digital radio, is currently on air on BBC TV, BBC radio and commercial radio.

Gregory Watson, Managing Director of MuxCo said: “We’re delighted to be able to bring these services to digital radio in Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool. Research has shown how much people value their local radio stations, so we hope this will make a big difference to the digital radio listening experience in the area. We’ve also got exciting plans for further new radio stations over the coming months.”

Steve Austins, Editor of BBC Radio Wales, said: “We’re always looking to improve the way our listeners are able to receive BBC Radio Wales, so I’m delighted that we’re now available on digital radio in north east Wales. Today is Radio Wales Music Day – a celebration of the best of new Welsh talent – so we’re particularly pleased that listeners in this area will be able to hear this and all our programmes on their DAB radios.”

Lowri Davies, Editor, General Programmes for BBC Radio Cymru, said: “We’re delighted that BBC Radio Cymru is now available on digital radio in Wrexham and across most of north east Wales. We know that our listeners want to be able to listen to Welsh language content across all platforms, so today is a significant step forward.”

Graham Sarath, Station Director Juice FM said: “Boosting local coverage for Liverpool means the excellent range of local DAB digital radio stations can be received by even more listeners, at home, at work and in their car. It gives Juice listeners the opportunity to hear the station on another platform and one which I’m sure they’ll enjoy.”

Final WCL Timetable

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St John's Beacon

We’re entering the final furlong with our Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool launch with the final service going on-air and the final transmitter launching.

Juice FM will start testing on the morning of the Monday 15th April on the existing two transmitters – Moel-Y-Parc and Wrexham Rhos.

It, and our other services, should then start testing at St. John’s Beacon late afternoon on Wednesday 17th April.

The multiplex will then officially launch on Friday 19th April with events at Wrexham FC and Juice Liverpool.

A reminder that test transmissions are just that – tests – so timings can be affected by a number of different things. However, these are our current plans.

Pic: Karen_O’D

More Testing

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We’ve just made the latest update to our test transmissions, by putting live BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, Real Radio Wales and Nation Radio alongside Dee on DAB. Looking at the snow, it’s a good job we can do it remotely!

As these are tests, they are subject to interruption and general strange behaviour as we fiddle with settings and such. This is the first MuxCo multiplex so it is somewhat of a guinea pig for us trying out new ways of doing things.

This should mean, however, that you’ll be able to follow Wrexham FC’s progress against Grimsby Town at Wembley on BBC Radio Wales on DAB this Sunday.

The Nature of Tests.

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The Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool multiplex is the first launch for MuxCo and we’re using a variety of new systems to bring the stations to your radios. That’s the good thing about test transmissions – they let you try some different things without it interrupting listeners’ enjoyment when the multiplex is properly live. It’s why, in this test phase, you should be aware that services/barkers may stop, be reconfigured and do strange things!

Our current outlined plan is to to test some more services on Monday. I wanted to flag up, though, that this definitely won’t be happening at midnight tonight – so no need to wait up auto-tuning! Whilst we’re still looking to do something on Monday, some of the things we’ve been doing over the weekend may mean that the next bundle of changes may happen a little later – please don’t be too disappointed – this is just what happens with tests!

WCL Tuesday Update

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Wrexham Rhos has passed Ofcom’s tests this morning so now joins Moel-y-Parc in becoming passed and on the air.

If you’re in the area, we would love to hear your transmission reports. Please send your postcode/location and the signal level/quality to us at [email protected]. You can also guess who our Test Transmission announcers are too…

If your DAB Digital Radio has, er, a few years on the clock, make sure you do a full scan rather than just a UK scan to pick us up.

WCL Monday Update

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I’ve just got back from Chairing a brilliant Radio Academy session on RAJAR. I’m sure it’ll be online soon, definitely well worth having a listen.

Whilst I was there, I got an update from our transmission contractors on how today went and I wanted to share it with you.

So… Moel-y-Parc was tested and approved by Ofcom. We had it on for much of the day, but powered it down early this evening. Ofcom will test Wrexham Rhos tomorrow and, should all be fine, it should be on by late morning. The team will then re-activate MYP, meaning  both should be on by around 2pm.

If I don’t see transmission reports on Digital Spy, before I hear from the engineers, I’ll be disappointed.

WCL Test Transmissions Week

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Hopefully, it’s going to be a busy week for our Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool multiplex.

At the beginning of the week Ofcom will be working with us to do the testing on our initial two transmitters. They should be working on Moel-y-Parc on Monday and Wrexham Rhos on Tuesday. When this has been completed we expect test transmissions to begin from these two sites.

In the test transmissions we’ll be broadcasting six ‘barker’ channels. These are pre-recorded loops that explain that six new channels will be launching soon. These barkers will often be interrupted with gaps and also live feeds of the stations that will replace them.

We’ve got six different presenters to read our announcements – but can you name them all?

If all goes to plan, our tests continue on Friday when we’ll replace one of the barker’s with Dee on DAB and then the following Monday (18th) when we test with live output of Nation Radio, Real Radio, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru.

Juice FM (and the official launch) will be when we add the St. John’s Beacon transmitter in the coming weeks.

Gloucestershire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire Update

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Some news about our Gloucestershire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire multiplexes.

We have been backwards and forwards a bit with these multiplexes. They were initially advertised and awarded as two separate areas. We then explored with Ofcom the opportunity to simulcast a mutiplex across two areas, which, in the early years, would provide the best coverage of local listeners’ favourite stations.

Since then, as part of Ofcom’s digital radio working group, we’ve been working on both the launch configuration and also the roll-out plan of more transmitters across the licence term. Whilst doing this work, it was announced that MXR would be handing back many of their licences over the next two years. This has now prompted Ofcom to re-distribute MXR frequencies to some local multiplexes.

This has meant another re-plan of our networks as new frequencies change the interference we will generate and also receive from other networks.

We have therefore decided to launch two separate multiplexes, with separate line-ups.

The Gloucestershire multiplex is currently scheduled to begin test transmissions in June this year. The Herefordshire and Worcestershire multiplex is going to use the MXR West Midlands frequency (and indeed their Bromsgrove transmitter) so will launch at a point shortly after their licence has been handed back to Ofcom. We expect our tests to start in September 2013.

Wrexham, Chester and Liverpool Update

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This weekend our transmission team and Microwave Link supplier successfully completed the next part of the work necessary for the launch of the WCL mutiplex. They have one more piece of work to do later this week and then we are expecting some commissioning work with Ofcom at the beginning of next week.

Should all of this go to plan, our intention is to start test transmissions from Moel-Y-Parc and Wrexham Rhos on the 13th March.

There is some more work to do on our St John’s Beacon installation, before it (and Juice FM) join the network. We will hopefully be able to update the blog on firmer dates in the coming weeks.

WCL Update

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Apologies for the radio silence, the status of the multiplex build has been changing quite frequently over the past few weeks and we haven’t wanted to put up lots of conflicting messages.

We’re very close to launch but have a very basic technical problem to overcome before we do that. Sadly it’s not very exicting, it’s very dull. What we need to do is install a microwave link between two sites to get the ETI feed (that’s all the radio stations) to the transmitters.

The sites that we’re broadcasting from have lots of other users on them and there’s special agreements needed to send our guys up them. The team we’re using for this are specialist riggers who, as they’re great, are very busy (oddly doing lots of 4G installations at the moment).

We’ve had a couple of bumps with getting everyone’s timings to work together – ours, our riggers, our transmission contractors, the site owners and the site’s users – which means we haven’t been confident to talk about launch dates.

I know this is incredibly frustrating for you and it is to us and our service providers as well. When we’ve got some firmer information – and dates – we’ll share them here.