Colourful Radio is a commercial radio station located in London, broadcasting on DAB across Birmingham, Manchester and due to return to London shortly, as well as online. Colourful Radio's output is split between news, current affairs and urban music hit-list.
History
Founded in 2002 by Kofi Kusitor MBE, Colourful Radio was officially revealed in January 2004 as 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 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 Mac was invited by Colourful Radio to refresh its line up and help improve its music output. Colourful Radio officially launched on London DAB on 2 March 2009, with Gordon Mac as Head of Station, and Henry Bonsu as Director and Head of Programmes. In June 2011, Gordon Mac decided to leave Colourful in order to start a new venture Mi-Soul. Colourful Radio has received great reviews from, among others, The Guardian. The demise of Choice FM in October 2013, left Colourful Radio as the only legal commercial radio station in the blackmusic market. After 5 years of DAB broadcast, on 25 January 2014 Colourful withdrew from DAB in London as increasing platform costs got too much for the burgeoning station. Within a week of launching a listener appeal to raise enough funds to take up its new one-year DAB contract, the station's founder withdrew the appeal preferring instead to grow the station organically. The station restructured, moved to new studios in Southwark and began a rebuilding process. In February 2017, the station joined DAB in Manchester, and in March DAB in Birmingham.
