Local radio company Nation Broadcasting has abandoned two of its UK FM licences in Scotland and will switch off two of its FM transmitters in Wales next year. The broadcaster has told UK media regulator OfCom - which handles radio licensing - that it expects that its two affected services, Nation Radio Scotland and Radio Pembrokeshire, will see DAB listeners overtake FM audiences at some point during the next licensing period.
While there are still a large number of commercial FM stations broadcasting in the UK - 246 according to OfCom’s licensing portal - shifting consumption has made FM less important than it once was. With many cars now coming with DAB radios installed as standard, many people are naturally shifting to DAB stations when on the go, while at-home radio listening is increasingly app-based, via services like BBC Sounds, TuneIn’s radio aggregator, or Global’s Global Player.
With a broadcaster now handing back licences as that shift continues, it’s likely that the number of radio stations broadcasting on FM will decline over the next few years, following a trend already seen elsewhere in Europe. Norway turned off FM entirely in 2017 and Switzerland is in the process of doing the same right now.
The two FM licences Nation has already handed back to OfCom were used by its Nation Radio Scotland service in Helensburgh and Dumbarton. The station still broadcasts on FM in Glasgow and West Central Scotland, and on DAB across all of Central Scotland.
In Wales, the company will switch off FM transmitters used by its Radio Pembrokeshire station in Tenby and Fishguard. Most of the people living in those towns can actually also access that station via its other FM transmitter, with OfCom reckoning that about 8.5% of the population will be affected by the switch off.
According to Radio Today, Nation provided a list of reasons to OfCom for why it needed to cut the number of FM services it offers, including “declining local revenues, declining audiences and increasing costs”.
Fifteen years ago, some in the radio industry were pushing for a rapid shift from FM to DAB, proposing either a total switch off of FM or the removal of all but community radio stations from FM frequencies. Doing so, it was argued, would allow commercial radio companies to invest more heavily in developing new DAB services.
However, there was opposition to that approach because of the relatively slow uptake of DAB at the time and the high number of listeners still relying on FM to access radio services. Ultimately, the UK government decided to take a slower approach than Norway and Switzerland, announcing in 2021 that FM services would be able to continue operating until at least 2030.
In fact, combined figures for total digital radio listening - DAB, online and via TV - overtook listening on AM and FM back in 2018. And in the second quarter of this year, DAB alone accounted for 43% of radio listening hours according to RAJAR, the UK’s radio stats organisation.
Despite the government’s timeline for FM switch off extending to 2030, it seems likely that an increasing number of stations will start to disappear from FM in the coming years, with listeners able to access the same services on DAB.
A number of UK radio companies have already switched off AM transmitters in recent years, arguing that the costs of broadcasting on AM are not worth it given how few listeners still tune in on those frequencies.