Reports this morning in regard to Ofcom’s approach to issuing new digital radio licences. Responses to the ‘Radio - Preparing for the Future’ consultation have just been made public.

Apparently GWR (soon to be GCap) have got their suit all wrinkled over Ofcom’s plans to allow rival radio operators to get their hands on national digital radio franchises even though they passed up the opportunity the first time.

The Independent reports, “the regulator’s latest proposals for digital radio will tear up an agreement under which one commercial consortium, Digital One, says it was granted a “sole” licence in 1998 to operate national digital services.”

GWR are looking into the legal implications and say they might take action if the regulator is beleived to be breaching the original agreement - setting the stage for a good old legal bust-up.

Ofcom has identified five additional blocks of spectrum that it plans to allocate for digital radio services and proposes to allocate three blocks of the spectrum to fill gaps in local digital coverage. It is also “minded” to allocate “one or two” blocks for national use - i.e. create a second commercial national multiplex.

Capital Radio, GWR’s merger partner have backed the complaint. But a number of key players in the radio industry are likely to support Ofcom’s proposals. Chrysalis and Emap are said to be particularly keen. They do not have slots on the existing Digital One multiplex. Now that digital is a proven entity and digital radios sales have picked up they are looking for a way into the national market.

But as GWR’s Ralph Bernard points out - rightly in my view - most of the risk has already been shouldered by others - “The only reason Chrysalis and Emap want more national multiplexes is that they want to try to find a way of peeking at the pie that someone else has cooked. They weren’t even prepared to go into the kitchen at the time.”

Things are set to get interesting on this one…keep watching.