CityLIVE Radio was created in the spare bedroom of my home as a hobby station. I wanted to create a station that played a better variety of music than what you hear on the mainstream national stations. You know the ones. Yeah, those ones where you hear the same five songs every hour of the day until you get fed up of hearing the damn thing! Sorry, but you know where I'm coming from. I was beginning to hate listening to radio. It was too commericalised and local radio was becoming extinct. After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I called in a few favours and spent a fair bit of money. The result was CityLIVE Radio and it launched in November 2019.
As time went by and the pandemic hit the world hard. This gave me a lot more time on my hands, so where else to spend it other than with my family (house only of course), and to do more with the radio station. As the lockdown commenced, more people turned to radio while working from home and this helped us as our listeners went from a couple of hundred a month, to now over 250,000 listeners, as our output went from only being heard on our website to now smart speakers, roku devices and our android app (iOS will be available soon). Again, all this without any funding given, apps created in-house, servers and licenses paid out of my own pocket.
So what now? We are looking at creating a training hub where anyone wanting to train as a radio presenter, want to create podcasts or learn about the technical background of broadcasting, our station will become the place to do just that. We've also been offered a slot on a small scale DAB multiplex in the Teesside and North Yorkshire area, that will allow our station to be broadcast on digital radio for the first time. In addition to this, on the 31st of January 2024, we launched on Freeview channel 277 in the North-east of England. So our station can be listened to on digital television by anyone in the Tyne-Tees region with a firestick, smart television and Freeview HD receivers.
Not too shabby eh? But for us to get there we are reaching out for support from our community of listeners. If you want to show your support for local radio, then be a sport and buy our team a coffee. It will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!