Rock Radio – the latest station to take over what is seeming more and more like a tainted Glasgow licence – has announced that it will now not be broadcasting in Glasgow.

A statement on the station’s website blamed “financial pressures”, admitting that the news had been “coming for months”.

The owners of Rock Radio have instead decided to sell to Welsh company Nation Broadcasting, who they feel are best suited and “willing to work with our existing team to launch a station”.

Alternative radio in the West of Scotland has a long, complicated and unfortunate history going back as far as Beat106, which morphed into XFm, eventually taking on a frequency occupied at various points by Capital / Global and RealRadio.

The new station had seemed likely to offer programming involving some of XFm’s presenters such as Jim Gellatly, as well as more classic rock-oriented broadcasters like Tom Russell, but the lineup is now uncertain.

However, there is likely to be some sort of change in the style of music broadcast, which may go against the original agreement with Ofcom – according to the Rock Radio statement, the new station “won’t be called Rock Radio, it will have a new name and the style of music will be soft popular rock, classic and contemporary.”

A spokesperson for Nation conformed the purchase saying “we will launch 96.3FM Nation Radio later in 2018”.

When pressed on the format, he was keen to reassure fans of rock music, saying: “Whilst we already operate a service called Nation Radio in Wales, I can confirm that the Scottish station will be entirely separate and will broadcast a different music playlist in line with our format commitment”.

More at www.rockscotland.com