Star Radio North East to cease transmission Darlington-based Star Radio is to
close and hand its licence back to Ofcom.
UKRD confirmed the move to
RadioToday, with Chief Executive, William Rogers saying it was a difficult
decision but needed to be made as the station wasn’t making any money.
He
said: “The station has struggled to deliver commercial viability for a number of
years and in spite of the considerable efforts by those involved and a good deal
of time, money and resource allocated from the group, the station has simply
been unable to deliver commercial viability, hence this decision.”
Star Radio
is made up of three Ofcom licences – which launched as A1FM (then Alpha 103.2),
Durham FM and the more recently licenced Minster Northallerton. It also took
over the Richmond/Catterick frequencies from Fresh Radio, whilst the rest of the
station changed to Stray Dales. The merged station launched in November 2009 and
uses six frequencies around Thirsk, Richmond, Durham, Darlington, Northallerton
and Bishop Auckland.
William continued: “These things are always difficult
and I had hoped that we might be able to see success in the longer term but the
reality is that success has proved to be far more elusive that we had hoped and
so we now need to draw a line under those efforts and focus our resource on our
other stations and the range of new initiatives we are working on.”
The
station will close within the next two weeks.