A new Cornish radio station has begun broadcasting to Cornwall and the Plymouth area - and it features some very well-known voices.
Rewind Radio was given permission to broadcast by Ofcom in September and hit the airwaves on October 7, covering all of Cornwall and Plymouth and as far as Ivybridge and Okehampton.
The commercial station, transmitting from a studio in Constantine in Cornwall, features a hit list of presenters who will be familiar to the region’s radio listeners.
They include breakfast presenter Victoria Leigh and drivetime host Matt Rogers, both formerly of Heart; and two veterans of Plymouth Sound and Radio Plymouth: daytime’s Gavin Marshall and evening presenter Martin Mills. They are backed by other talented presenters including Mark Hill, Jamie Reed, Richard Woods, Matt Tidball and Shane Solomon.
The focus of the station is to play hits from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, or, as Mr Marshall put it: “The songs you were dancing to in the nightclubs 20 years ago.”
It is described on the Ofcom website as: “An open, accessible radio station made by and for people who live and work in Cornwall.”
Rewind Radio broadcasts on DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) via the Cornwall-wide multiplex, on which multiple radio stations are bunched together. But its internet reach is global and already the station is being enjoyed by pop fans in Australia.
The company was incorporated in June 2021, with directors Richard Woods and Jamie Reed, formerly of Plymouth Sound, and a registered office in Redruth.
It is the first new radio station to launch in the area since rapidly expanding Bauer Media took over Radio Plymouth and rebranded it under its Greatest Hits Radio network in September 2020 and brought in national content to replace indigenous city presentation.
Rewind Radio was created during the Coronavirus lockdown and began test streaming on its website and on an Alexa Smart Home skill.
“They started to play some music on internet radio during the lockdown, found a demand and thought ‘why not make a go of this?’,” said Mr Marshall.
“It’s now the first new radio station in the region in a long time. Many others have been bought by national companies and are not broadcasting locally. We wanted real, truly local radio, with great music, and the audience feedback today (launch day) has been staggering. We have had so many messages including from people listening online from Africa, Barbados and Australia.”
