Second service

It seems Ofcom's as leaky as the current Shadow Cabinet. Their 'decision' on the BBC's bid for new 'spin-off' radio stations started appearing yesterday evening. They seem to have allowed the BBC to go ahead with a new '00s,10s' service allied to Radio 1 and a 'chill' service allied to Radio 3, but have required plans for a new sister Radio 2 service to go to a full 'Public Interest Test'. 

The BBC announced their proposals in February. Incredibly, under the stringent controls of DG Tim Davie, Director of Music Lorna Clarke had made the case that she could produce these rabbits from the hat of the existing radio food/money supply. The bid said the services would run both on BBC Sounds and DAB+. 

Ofcom has to decide first whether the bid for a new service is 'material', and, if it is, requires a full Public Interest Test. So it looks like they've decided that the Radio 1 and 3 'sister' stations will have little impact on commercial competitors (which makes you wonder why the BBC is putting them forward in the first place). 

But there's been enough noise around the Radio 2 bid (apparently designed to reach more C2DE listeners) for the commercial Radio Centre to crow success in the requirement for a full PIT.