Iconic brands leaving the dial today

Today is the final day of quite a number of iconic radio brands across England as “Hits Radio” and “Greatest Hits Radio” is rolled-out by Bauer Media on even more former commerical ILR licenses.

Not sure recent derivations like Free Radio or GEM 106 in the West/East Midlands will be missed much, but there are many more iconic heritage names which I suspect will be. Hallam, Viking, TFM, Rock FM all gone, but I think Radio City, METRO and Pirate FM are the saddest to see depart the dial..

Pirate was one of the reasons I actually got into all this radio geekery after seeing their brand new Redruth “digital studio” featured on “Tomorrows World” in late 1992. And Metro, the soundtrack to so many journeys - always happy to be in range after a long drive north and of course 97.1 was on the Astra Radio cassette (driving below the Pilgrim Street studio in December 2004) when I decided Newcastle was the city for me. And who’s not going miss Radio City, its iconic St John’s Beacon studios an outstandingly European structure - Liverpool welcoming the world for a “proper scouse party” in-lieu of Kiev for Eurovision 2023!

They all mean more than the sum of their parts while City and Metro would have marked 50 later this year. Sad to seem them go.