Central Radio North West exists because of a piece of technology most listeners never think about. The station launched in Blackpool in 2022, one of the first wave of stations to take advantage of small-scale DAB, an Ofcom initiative that made it cheap enough for genuinely local operators to get on digital radio at all.
A Cheaper Way Onto the Airwaves
Small-scale DAB uses low-cost transmission hardware and open-source software to broadcast to a single town or part of a city, rather than the wide regional coverage traditional DAB requires. According to Ofcom, within a year of the first small-scale multiplex launching in Tynemouth and South Shields, 148 stations were broadcasting under the scheme across the UK, with the regulator projecting room for up to 4,000 new local stations nationwide. Central Radio, launching in Blackpool, was named directly among that first wave of new local-interest stations.
From Blackpool to a Lancashire Network
The expansion moved fast. Central Radio spread across Preston, Leyland and Chorley within months of its Blackpool launch, then reached further into East Lancashire in November 2023 when it went live on a new small-scale multiplex covering Blackburn, Darwen, Accrington, Burnley and Colne, a rollout RadioToday reported could reach around 350,000 additional listeners. Nathan Hill serves as the station's Station Director, overseeing broadcasts from studios based in Preston.
A Direct Answer to Consolidation
Central Radio's own framing of its mission is pointed. The station describes itself as filling a gap left as larger commercial groups absorbed local stations into national networks, trading local identity for shared national playlists and presenters. Its stated position, that local radio should be just that, local, is less an abstract slogan than a direct response to a UK-wide trend that had quietly reduced how many stations still produced genuinely local programming by the early 2020s.
Strength Through a Local Partner
Central Radio works alongside Beyond Radio, a volunteer-run community station based in Lancaster, and the two together describe themselves as forming one of the largest independent local radio footprints left in the North West. Rather than competing for the same small pool of hyperlocal listeners, the pairing lets each station cover its own patch of Lancashire while sharing the broader mission of keeping local radio local.
A Regional Station Built on New Infrastructure
Central Radio North West is a useful example of what small-scale DAB was actually built to enable: a station with no national ownership and a genuinely regional focus, reaching real Lancashire towns because the technology finally made that kind of operation affordable. Its rapid expansion from Blackpool to a five-town East Lancashire footprint in under two years shows what that shift in infrastructure made possible almost overnight.