News

Pure Dance, the 2000s dance music station, is set to relaunch this September on small-scale DAB in Milton Keynes and Loughborough. The station first launched in 2004 and quickly became a central part of UK club culture, reaching close to a million monthly listeners while supporting music launches and campaigns with major labels. It was home to well-known DJs including Stu Allan, Slipmatt, Lisa Lashes and Matt Darey before going off air in 2006. Station founder Alex Kinch said: “The end of Pure Dance always felt like unfinished business. What started as us uploading archive shows turned into a full rebuild. Dance music deserves specialist radio made by people who live and breathe it – that’s what we’re bringing back.”

The Federal Council is turning a deaf ear to the National Council's Transport and Telecommunications Committee. On 1 July, the committee submitted a motion asking the government to abandon plans to switch off FM radio on 31 December 2026 and instead extend the current licences or even launch a new call for tenders for 2027. Bern has just responded with a resounding ‘no’. It points out that the industry itself is behind the planned end of FM. " More than ten years ago, private radio stations agreed on a migration plan with the SSR and decided to abandon FM by the end of 2024 at the latest,‘ it points out. It emphasises that it has already extended FM until the end of 2026. ’Between now and then, broadcasters have the opportunity to find individual solutions to successfully migrate to digital."

The Metro Group has launched Power Rock Radio, a new radio station dedicated exclusively to rock music. The station broadcasts around the clock and focuses on rock tracks from the 1990s to the present day. The focus is on well-known bands such as Foo Fighters, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Muse, Audioslave, Paramore, Kings of Leon and Green Day. Yvonne Stikbakke, managing director of the Metro Group, explains that Power Rock Radio was created in response to demand for a pure rock station in Norway. The aim is to offer uninterrupted music that focuses exclusively on rock. Power Rock Radio can be received via DAB+ in parts of eastern and southern Norway.

FD Mediagroep will broadcast the radio station BNR Business Beats nationwide via DAB+ from 1 September 2025. This has been confirmed by Marc Adriani, editor-in-chief of BNR. BNR Business Beats has been operating as an online radio station since 5 September 2024 and broadcasts non-stop pop, soul and funk, aimed at listeners at work. Like BNR Nieuwsradio, BNR Business Beats focuses on well-educated working professionals in the B2B, AB1 and HBO+ groups. BNR Business Beats contains advertising and will also broadcast the ANP radio news every hour from 1 September 2025.

WorldDAB, the global industry forum for DAB+ digital radio, has published updated guidelines for automotive manufacturers and broadcasters, aimed at ensuring the best possible in-car digital radio user experience (UX). The new version builds on extensive research and collaboration across the digital radio ecosystem. Produced by WorldDAB’s In-car User Experience Group, the guidelines provide essential recommendations on how digital radio should be presented and accessed in vehicles. Formed in 2016, the group brings together leading car manufacturers, broadcasters, and in-car technology providers with a shared goal: to place the user at the centre of digital radio design in the car.

In the first of this year's series of short interviews with WorldDAB members exhibiting at IBC2025, Ulrike Lauterbach, Sales Director, AVT Audio Video Technologies GmbH says the company's main focus for the Show is solutions for emergency warnings via DAB+ networks. AVT is a leading manufacturer of professional audio equipment for radio and television broadcasters.

Paneda is pleased to announce its selection as the supplier of a new Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) head-end platform, currently being developed by the Estonian network operator, Levira. Levira has successfully operated a DAB+ pilot programme for over three years, which has now transitioned into a fully licensed broadcasting service. In support of this milestone, Paneda has delivered a comprehensive server infrastructure featuring full redundancy and all advanced functionalities, including its proprietary intelligent redundancy switching. The initial deployment comprises a 2+2 multiplexer configuration. However, the platform is engineered to accommodate up to ten multiplexers and can be scaled seamlessly without further hardware investment.

Gold Impuls took the last program slot in České Radiokomunikace's nationwide digital radio network. The fourth radio station of the Londa group began broadcasting on Monday morning as a music format focused on popular hits from the 1950s to the turn of the millennium. The station, which targets listeners aged 40 to 70, is moderated and offers its own news and interesting facts from home and abroad. It is the only radio station of the Londa group that broadcasts exclusively digitally. "Our national DAB+ network is already fully sold out, which testifies to the strong demand and bright future of digital radio," commented Marcel Procházka, director of the CRA's regulation and legal department, on the launch of Gold Impuls.

České Radiokomunikace has begun broadcasting the Gold Impuls program on its nationwide DAB+ digital network. This is a music radio station owned by Londa, which already operates the Impuls, Český Impuls, and RockZone stations. The program is intended for digital distribution only. It broadcasts in stereo on the ČRA network with a bitrate of 48 kbps. It targets listeners aged 40 to 70, offering popular music from the 1950s to the 2000s. There is a minimum of spoken word, with the operator calculating its share in the license application at 4% of total broadcasting time. The planned Gold Impuls project was confirmed by Londa director Jiří Hrabák at the Digimedia conference in May. It received a license from the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting at the beginning of August.

In recent weeks, various local/regional broadcasters have started broadcasting via digital terrestrial television (DAB+). Broadcasters that have applied for a licence to broadcast on DAB+ must have started broadcasting before 1 September. As of this week, RTV Katwijk can be heard via the digital DAB+ network for the Leiden region on channel 9D. This network had already been on air for some time, but RTV Katwijk was still missing. Since Wednesday 20 August, RTV Katwijk can also be heard via DAB+.Regional broadcaster SRC (the regional broadcaster for Buren, Culemborg, Neder-Betuwe, Tiel, Vijfheerenlanden and West Betuwe) has been available since Friday in a large part of the central Netherlands on channel 11B.