New digital radio stations dedicated to music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s will launch at the end of this month.
The new stations are Greatest Hits Radio 70s, Greatest Hits Radio 80s, Hits Radio 90s and Hits Radio 00s. Greatest Hits Radio 60s is already available on DAB digital radio.
The news, unveiled today at the Radiodays Europe conference in Athens, follows last week’s announcement that four national stations would switch from DAB to DAB+. The move creates capacity which allows the owner to launch the new stations.
Gary Stein, Director of Audio for Bauer Media Audio UK said, “We’re really excited to launch these four new stations and provide even more personalised, passion driven content for our music-loving audiences, while increasing opportunities for our advertising partners to target highly engaged, specific audiences.”
When Greatest Hits Radio 80s launches listeners will be able to choose from four stations playing music from the decade. There will also be three stations playing music from the 90s and two with music from the 70s. In London up to six 1980s music stations will be available.
Spin-off stations have become a fixture on digital radio with Heart, Magic, Capital, Radio X, Absolute, KISS and Smooth all having at least one national ‘brand extension’.
In recent years stations have undergone changes to bring them into a parent brand, with Scala and Choice FM becoming parts of the Magic and Capital families. Standalone brands The Arrow and Chill also disappeared with new outlets from Smooth and Radio X appearing.
Existing station KISS Fresh will become KISS XTRA on the same day.