Media in Aberdeen

Media in Aberdeen have long been published or broadcast. The city and surrounding area's main newspaper the Press and Journal has been made and printed in the city since 1748 making it Scotland's oldest newspaper.

The city has a number of regional radio stations and has local production facilities for the BBC and ITV.

Aberdeen is famous for the entertainers of Scotland The What.

Students from the University of Aberdeen produce Au Science Magazine once a term, which is a free magazine with a focus on science and is distributed around the university and city centre.

Newspaper

The main newspapers of Aberdeen are the daily Press and Journal and the Evening Express, both printed six days a week by Aberdeen Journals. There is also a job and second-hand advertising paper, Scot-Ads, and free papers Aberdeen Citizen and the new weekly paper City Life.

Television

For over 45 years, Aberdeen has been home to the ITV regional franchise for northern Scotland, Grampian Television, broadcast from a converted tram depot in the Queens Cross area. Since a takeover by the Scottish Media Group (now STV Group plc) in 1997, Grampian's identity and local programming output were gradually depleted until the present situation, where Grampian is now officially known as STV North and broadcasts from smaller studios in the Tullos area of the city.^[1] The local news programme STV News at Six is still produced from Aberdeen alongside regional commercials.

BBC Scotland also have a base in Aberdeen's Beechgrove area. BBC Aberdeen is most known for Tern TV's production of the Beechgrove Garden television and BBC radio programmes.^[2]

Local radio

Aberdeen has three local commercial radio stations — Northsound 1 on 96.9, 97.6 & 103 FM, Northsound 2 on 1035 AM, and Original 106 on 106.8 & 106.3 FM. The two Northsound stations operated as a single station, Northsound Radio, until 1995. BBC Radio Scotland broadcasts local news opt-out bulletins for Aberdeen and North East Scotland on weekdays.

Latest audience figures put Northsound 1 as the number 1 radio station in the area. Original 106 have increased their audience share to become the second most listened to local radio station , with 100% of programming output produced and presented in-house. All Northsound 2 programming output is generated from Glasgow and Edinburgh, with some from Dundee and is shared across all AM stations in the Bauer Media Group. Northsound 1 broadcast locally generated programming from their Aberdeen studios for 12 hours during weekdays, and shared programming from Glasgow and Manchester for the remainder.

There is also a community radio station called North East Community Radio FM (NECR FM), broadcasting from Kintore, Aberdeenshire whose signal reaches some parts of Aberdeen city.

The Station House Media Unit (based at Station House, a partially National Lottery-funded community project) runs a radio station broadcasting with a five-year community licence on 99.8 MHz FM, known as SHMU FM.^[3] Prior to obtaining the FM licence, the station was available on the internet.

From time to time, the Aberdeen University Students' Association has obtained a Restricted Service Licence (RSL) for temporary FM radio broadcasts; its station was first known as Slick FM but this is subject to change with each licence. In the meantime, a permanent station provides internet broadcasts.

In addition, a multi-ethnic community organisation entitled Multi-ethnic Aberdeen Ltd. runs Multi-ethnic FM (Me FM) on an annual basis using an RSL and has said it hopes to apply for a permanent licence. At other times, internet broadcasts are employed.

References