Friday the 3rd of April 2009 – a sad day for two London radio stations, Time 106.8 (serving South-East London and Greenwich) and South London Radio 107.3 (for Lewisham and Bromley), as they vanished from the airwaves.
It’s a tough time for the UK commercial radio industry at the moment, and we’re sure that these two stations won’t be the last to shut up shop this year and fall silent. The story of the demise of Time is a sad one though. The station has been around since 1990, first as RTM, then as Millenium Radio. Most recently, the station was owned by the Sunrise Radio Group, but was sold towards the end of 2008.
According to Time’s website, a buyer was found in February, but after owning the station for just seven days, informed the staff that he couldn’t fund it. Station staff had been working for free since February hoping for a last minute rescue… that never came.
Our two podcast presenters, Carl and Pete, come from the world of commercial radio, and in the office this morning, they were looking at www.time1068.com and reading the “farewell from the station to its listeners”. Particularly sad was the “listen now” button just beneath the story of the station’s closure…
Out of morbid curiousity, we clicked “Listen Live“. The feed from the station is still streaming away, broadcasting silence, punctuated with occasional bursts of tone.
Always sad to see the end of a station, and rare that two vanish on the same day. With other local stations losing their identity in Global’s Heart re-branding excercise, and the outlook for national commercial radio looking bleak (birdsong anyone?), we hope and pray that those predicting the end for commercial radio have got it wrong.
Our thoughts and best wishes to the staff of Time and South London Radio, and to the listeners that have lost a local voice.