Colourful Radio

Colourful Radio is a commercial radio station located in London, broadcasting via the Internet. Colourful Radio's output is split between news, current affairs and soulful music - soul, reggae, and jazz-funk. It has also formerly broadcast to the Greater London area on DAB Digital Radio.

History

Founded in January 2004 by Kofi Kusitor MBE, Colourful Radio was one of the UK's first internet audio streams. Legal commercial broadcast licences for London-wide and UK DAB were also gained in the same year.

In September 2005, Henry Bonsu (former presenter of BBC London 94.9) joined the station as presenter of its Drivetime show.

Following a live presenter-led pilot in October 2005, Colourful Radio officially launched as a fully-fledged legal commercial radio station on 30 May 2006 with a mostly speech-heavy schedule online and on BSKYB satellite.

With commercial radio changing rapidly, Colourful Radio obtained its DAB capacity in May 2008.

In August 2008, Gordon McNamee (formerly director of Kiss FM) was invited by Colourful Radio to refresh its line up and help improve its music output.

Under a deal agreed by Mr Kusitor, Colourful Radio officially launched on London DAB on 2 March 2009,^[1] with Gordon Mac as Head of Station reporting to Mr Kusitor. Director and Head of Programmes was Henry Bonsu (former presenter of BBC London 94.9).

In March 2011, Colourful Radio parted company with Gordon Mac.

Colourful Radio has received great reviews from, among others, The Guardian.^[2]

The demise of Choice FM, in October 2013, left Colourful Radio as the only legal commercial radio station in the black music market originally dominated by Choice FM. On 25 January 2014 Colourful ceased digital broadcasting and launched a listener appeal to raise enough funds to take up a new one-year DAB contract.

Notes

External links

• Colourful Radio website
• Elizabeth Pears, "Is Ethnic Media Becoming An Endangered Species?" The Voice, 19 October 2013.