Over-50s specialist Saga has beaten off 12 rivals to become Scotland’s newest FM radio channel – broadcasting to around 1.6 million people in and around Glasgow.
Saga 105.2FM, in which Saga Radio has invested £2.5m, will compete with five existing independent stations. It will create 33 new jobs when it launches next summer, and is looking for premises in Glasgow.
Glasgow-based Scottish Media Group, which wanted to launch a local version of its national Virgin station, maintained that Saga’s target audience was “commercially unviable”.
But Ron Coles, director of Saga Radio, claimed: “The people with the disposable income are aged 50 to 64”, and are currently “least well served by commercial radio”.
Saga FM’s high speech content – roughly 40 per cent of the schedule – will be geared to listeners over 50.
Among the companies whose bid for the station also failed were the Guardian group’s Jazz FM, Emap, Virgin Radio, Capital, Scottish Radio Holdings and Wark Clements.
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