NOW Home Counties

Now Digital (Home Counties)
Licensed area	Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Milton Keynes & Luton
Frequency	10D (215.072 MHz)
Air date	Yet to Launch (Delayed)
Owner	Arqiva
Website	www.now-digital.com

Now Digital (Home Counties), is the name of the DAB multiplex operator for the counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire as well as the Unitarian Authorities of Milton Keynes and Luton, serving an area similar to the analogue area served by BBC Three Counties.

The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of GCap Meida PLC until it was bought in 2009 by Global Radio who later sold the DAB licences to transmitter company Arqiva.

The DAB licence was advertised by Ofcom on December 14, 2006. At the close on March 28, 2007, the regulator had received two applications, one from MuxCo (Home Counties), the other from Now Digital, a wholly owned subsidiary (at the time) of GCap Media PLC. On June 12, 2007, it was announced that Now Digital (Home Counties) had won the licence.

At present, all that's known is that there will be seven transmission sites used although non were listed at the time of the award, or since. All that is known is that of the requirement of having to carry the BBC Local service, BBC Three Counties, on this platform.

Services expected to be on the platform

^[1] (Adjusted to reflect the way UK radio is now)

Service	Service Type	Signal	Bit-Rate	NOTES
BBC Three Counties	BBC Local service	Joint Stereo	128 kbit/s	Also on FM & AM (Various frequencies)
Heart Home Counties	Chart Music	Joint Stereo	128 kbit/s	Also on FM - 96.9, 97.6 and 103.3
Gold Bedfordshire	Golden Oldies	Joint Stereo	128 kbit/s	Networked from London with local opt-out's.
Chill	Easy Listening Music	mono	96 kbit/s	Provided by Global Radio.
Jack FM	Variety Pop & Rock	mono	80 kbit/s	Relay of Oxfordshire service (0600 - 0000 only).
UCB UK	Religious	mono	96 kbit/s	Currently on Digital One.

A number of changes have taken place to radio services locally and nationally since the original application: UCB UK is now carried on the national Digital One multiplex; slots it had used on existing local/regional multiplexes were largely taken by sister services UCB Gospel and/or UCB Inspirational following the main service's move to D1. A reorganisation of the Heart network by Global Radio in 2010 saw Heart Milton Keynes, Heart Northants, Heart Dunstable, and Heart Bedford merged into a single Heart Home Counties with one local service across the four licence areas (local breakfast and drive shows, other programming from London) - this would reduce the need to have several versions of Heart available and thus free up space on the multiplex for other services. Global Radio has also removed Chill from many of the DAB areas in which it broadcast and replaced this with a relay of the now-defunct Galaxy Digital (or 103.2 Capital FM South Coast, formerly Galaxy South Coast, in southern England); as a result it is unclear if Chill would appear on this multiplex.

MuxCo application

Had the licence been awarded to rival bidder MuxCo, the stations carried would have differed slightly; the Heart services for Bedford and Milton Keynes would have been carried, alongside Gold Bedfordshire, Hertbeat FM (now Jack), a relay of Jack FM from Oxfordshire, Easy Radio (now defunct, from LMC) and Mercury Plus (from Adventure Radio, operators of Hertfordshire's Mercury 96.6 - now Heart Hertfordshire). There would also have been two further services, unnamed in the application: a "family-focused hit music" service and a "news, views & information" service.

Transmitter sites

These are the only confirmed transmitter sites at present:^[2]

Transmitter	KW	AREA
1	?	TBA
2	?	TBA
3	?	TBA
4	?	TBA
5	?	TBA
6	?	TBA
7	?	TBA

None of the transmitter sites have yet to be announced.

References

1. ^ radiotoday.co.uk
2. ^ muxco website 2009