When I was in business Stephen,

Selling motor components, the business peaked and then demand declined. So I had to cut my costs as we have done with 648 via the Solar panels. Returning to the motor business I trimmed my prices to get more of the custom that remained and when rivals went out of business I picked up their customers which I hope is what we are doing with displaced AM listeners from BBC local etc.

What I should have done in business, but failed to do as I was then too immersed in Radio Caroline, was to diversify. I kept selling the some components until nobody wanted them any more. But Caroline has diversified with various SS DAB and a toe hold on Freeview but always within budget. There is a spare channel on Muxco Surrey for sure. But if a station that told us it had a full and expanding client base of top end advertisers, and was forging ahead in leaps and bounds could not keep DAB viable, would we do any better ?

As an aside I have 8 or more SS DAB stations asking if we would like to join their platform. Worryingly, even when I say no, some of them ask me to express an interest anyway so as to help with their application, which smacks of desperation. I can see that some SS DAB operators will fail when they find as with Community Radio that under the T's and C's they agreed to in order to get a licence they could never break even.
As for publicity, when I had a boss he told me that 50% of what he spent on advertising was wasted. But that he did not know which 50%.
However you can't go wrong with publicity when it is free. Retro Electro Workshop did us much good and also Four In A Bed. Next we will feature in Abandoned Engineering. When Ray Clark finally rejected the BBC it made the papers from Essex to North Norfolk.

I guess we are not doing too badly while we decide how to celebrate the 60th. I might wish to celebrate by taking a longish holiday and coming back when It was all over, but I doubt that my colleagues would thank me.

PM