Welcome to Chelmsford Digital Radio, we're applying to run the SSDAB Multiplex for the Chelmsford Area

Our bid is being managed by Martin Steers from Steers Media, with the support of Chelmsford Community Radio

We are currently looking and delivering coverage for the Chelmsford area, and are looking for parties who are interested in serving the area with a Radio Station.

If you're interested in expressing an interest in operating a service (Radio Station) in the area please do get in touch to be included in our bid submission, the deadline is the end of June 2023.

What is SSDAB

SSDAB stands for Small Scale DAB and was designed to help deliver DAB radio services to local areas such as towns and parts of cities as part of a national rollout. These services are quite often local independent radio stations, niche radio stations, and community services such as existing community radio stations, new community stations, hospitals & student radio stations.

Why DAB

Currently, 39% of all radio listening is DAB, higher than any other method of listening and this is set to continue to grow, broadcasting on SSDAB can quite often be a cost-effective way of broadcasting to a local area, and for some services their only means to mass broadcast.

What's involved

We are currently securing possible transmitter locations across the area, and putting a list of services that would want to broadcast with us from the launch, the application will be submitted in June 2023 and we suspect Ofcom will take around 12 months to access and announce who is successful across the entire round (this area is one of 32 of a Macro area all being decided at the same time). We would then have 18 months to launch the MUX although we would hope to launch it much sooner than that.

Who is involved

MARTIN STEERS

Martin Steers is leading on the BID and bringing partners together and will be managing the MUX day to day. He was born and raised in Colchester, and attended Anglia Ruskin University (then Anglia Polytechnic) for his undergraduate degree at the old central campus in the centre of Chelmsford and prior to the University moving to the Rivermead campus.

He's been involved in radio broadcasting for over 15 years after first starting with work experience at SGR Colchester before going off to Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge to continue his studies where he ran his Student Radio Station and even wrote them a successful Community Radio licence that they are still broadcasting on, he's worked in Commercial Radio, for the BBC, and in Community Radio.

DEAN KAVANAGH

Dean Kavanagh has been a director at Switch Radio since 2013. Switch Radio has held multiple broadcast licences (DSP, CDSP) and transmission licences (SSDAB Trial and SSDAB ‘proper’). During that time, Switch Radio has an exemplary track record in compliance and operation of the licences it holds. Dean has also been an advisor to a number of SSDAB applicants and is involved in a range of applications across the country.

Dean has been responsible for the day to day management of the North Birmingham Small Scale DAB multiplex (currently the largest small scale multiplex in the country by population coverage) and is the lead developer for Optimux Digital Ltd – a DAB software and development company which provides multiplexing solutions for a large number of SSDAB multiplexes in operation up and down the country. In addition, Dean Kavanagh is a director of the UK Community Radio Network CIC.

Coverage

We are looking to secure coverage across the Chelmsford area, due to the nature of this macro round it may be hard to provide coverage across the full polygon area (especially with outgoing and incoming interference), without a significantly expensive and elaborate network of transmitters.