The DAB and online stations will go live on 1 January 2018 and will each be targeted at a different audience demographic. Listeners can choose from Scottish Sun Hits, featuring back-to-back chart hits, ScottishSun 80s, focusing exclusively on tracks from the 1980s, and ScottishSun Greatest Hits, which will feature classic hits from the 1970s onwards.
The launch of the three stations follows the successful trials of other Scottish Sun pop-up stations in the last year, with The Scottish Summer Sun and The Scottish Sun Xmas Radio proving popular with listeners and advertisers alike, says News Scotland. The Christmas station will make a return later this month, broadcasting festive hits from 17 November until 27 December, before making way for the three new channels in January.
A new marketing campaign will promote the stations, including promotional activity in The Scottish Sun and its Sunday sister title and on thescottishsun.co.uk.
Wireless Group and News Scotland are also developing increased Scottish-only content on talkSPORT’s output north of the border with a view to investing in a new weekly Scottish football show. Broadcasting live on the talkSPORT Scottish signal every Thursday evening from 7pm until 10pm, the show will review the midweek football action and look forward to the weekend’s fixtures.
The Scottish Sun editor, Alan Muir, said: “People love The Scottish Sun for many different reasons, but at heart it’s a desire to be entertained and to enjoy a bit of light relief in a fast-moving world. We see these new stations as a great opportunity to apply that renowned Scottish Sun fun factor to a slightly different audience, and to provide our followers with three new sources of feel-good music through digital radio.”
Richard Bogie, general manager of News Scotland, publishers of The Scottish Sun, said: “The Scottish Sun audience loves commercial radio, as we saw when we trialled the two pop-up stations last Christmas and this summer. That experience has given us the confidence to launch these new stations next year and we believe they will be effective vehicles for growing our reach, while creating excellent opportunities for advertisers and commercial partners.
“News Scotland is the fastest growing media brand in Scotland, boasting market leading newspaper titles and now with a real desire to boost our radio presence supported by our colleagues at Wireless Group. These new stations will be key to that strategy over the next year and beyond.”
