Southdown Media launched Health Info Radio on March 16th - a non-profit, public-information, national DAB service designed to address the COVID-19 outbreak.The station is funded by Southdown Media and uses a looped information sequence of the latest virus prevention and spread advice, alongside background information about the virus, and advice on how to cope with self isolation.

Southdown Media provided the DAB encoding infrastructure using the Open Digital Radio platform. A long list of community radio partners have helped with the project, which also had support from from web hosting company Aiir and extra script coding by Togglebit to enable remote working. Playout for the station is managed by PlayoutONE.

The pic shows the home / remote studio of Simon Hardwick, Director of Southdown Media (Sonifex S2 console). Pic by Simon Hardwick.

Health Info Radio website: https://bit.ly/snfx_healthinfo

Produced as a public service by Southdown Media in London, the station offers a mix of updates on COVID-19 symptoms, myths, and social isolation rules, plus interviews designed to help listeners through the shutdown and the pressure staying at home can put on their relationships.
 
“Health Info Radio is a nonprofit rolling information service broadcasting nationally from Sussex, England and is funded and technically supported by Southdown Media, which owns and operates two small scale digital radio stations here in the United Kingdom,” said Simon Hardwick, director of Southdown Media.

Its creation was spurred by the fact that Hardwick “Personally felt frustrated that the important science-based prevention messages that could save lives were being lost in the background noise of speculation, discussion and opinion of other broadcast media.”

Duncan Barkes uses his home studio based around a Sonifex Sovereign mixer to update the content on Health Info Radio. Credit: Lily Barkes.