Ollie Cole: Leaving Radio Pembrokeshire due to ‘sad’ changes

OLLIE COLE has announced that after “4 years of fun” working on Radio Pembrokeshire, he’s off to pastures new.

In a blog post on his website, Ollie cites changes to Nation Broadcasting’s services as a large deciding factor for the move.

He said: “You’ll probably want to know why I’m leaving West Wales. I’ll spare you too much detail, but as you may have seen in local news reports etc, the way that Nation Broadcasting’s West Wales services (Radio Pembrokeshire/Carmarthenshire/Ceredigion) are delivered is changing. The main daytime presentation of the stations will soon be coming from studios at St Hilary, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

“Though I fully understand the reasons behind this change, personally I do feel this is a sad change for local radio across West Wales and within the industry itself. Networking definitely does have massive benefits to presenters & listeners, but I do feel these counties will miss out greatly on the knowledge and experience of presenters who know their patch inside and out. Something which is hard to replace, and yet should be the true lifeblood of a local station.

“Despite this, I wish the team well – there are some superb people there who I’ve had the great privilege to work with & I’m sure will continue making some great radio for the counties. The group has given me so much in the way of experience and happy memories and I’ll always be thankful for that. These stations have changed my life.”

Last month news broke that Nation Broadcasting was in talks over the future of its west Wales studios.

At the time Martin Mumford, who is the Group Managing Director, said: “At Nation Broadcasting we are investing in technology and resources and looking to improve our business all the time.

“At the moment we’re discussing proposals around the future technical delivery of our West Wales services and until that process is complete it would be inappropriate to comment in detail.

“However, I can confirm that there are no plans to re-brand any of the market-leading services in West Wales or diminish the specific local information we provide to thousands of listeners across the area every day.”

One of the original DJs for the station, Simon Williams, said: “As someone who was one of the original DJs on Radio Pembrokeshire, after it was trialled as Haven FM, I am deeply saddened to read that the station that was given the licence to broadcast permanently, on the basis that it remained firmly locally based, locally focused and run by local people, is now set to be farmed out of the county, indeed totally out of the area, to be potentially run from Cardiff.

“We were always told by the original CEO of Radio Pembrokeshire, Keri Jones, to mention local places, local names, local events etc in every show, as regularly as possible. It sometimes has the feel of a slightly amateurish station, as it did from the beginning, yet this is part of the charm and aesthetic sound of the station.

“Removing broadcasting to Cardiff and sharing programming with other South Wales stations such as Bridge FM and Nation will remove it’s Pembrokeshire identity to an extent that all the promise and initial foundations on which it was granted it’s broadcasting license will be betrayed.

“Pembrokeshire was one of the last parts of the U.K. to get its own, dedicated local radio station, and it looks like the Nation Broadcasting Group will cause it to be one of the first to have lost it’s own, purely devoted station.”