Gay gone

Somehow (with the trauma of going back to work, and all that) I managed to miss this!

From the BBC:

Sony Award-winning Gaydar Radio has stopped broadcasting after 11 years.

The station, which had 750,000 listeners per month, was launched in 2001 as a service aimed at the gay community.

Owner QSoft Consulting blamed the cost of investing in digital audio broadcasting (DAB) for its closure. Its two radio licences have been transferred to another station for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, Manchester-based Gaydio.

Understandably, its former news editor Scott Roberts is upset - read his piece in the Guardian.

As radio stations go, Gaydar was at times infuriating, sometimes downright unlistenable, and we always used to get annoyed with the inanity and regularity of the advertising breaks - but it was (at its peak) probably the last home on our airwaves in London of good uplifting dance music (rather than the urban, hip-hop shit every other station plays).

Many a time one of us would hear Simon Le Vans or Phil Marriott play a new choon, or a new remix of a popular song, and rush to the PC to see if we could download it. Some of our DJ friends got their broadcasting break via the Saturday night "Club Nation" segment. Gaydar provided a slab of mindless background entertainment to many a sunny afternoon in the garden, or before a house-party here at Dolores Delargo Towers, or while preparing to go out. It is, or was, station #4 on our DAB radio. We even listened to it via satellite in Spain!

I will miss Gaydar Radio.

RIP.

[PS It would seem Q-Soft is not only closing the radio station - its Soho bars Profile and Lo-Profile have closed down as well!]