Gaydio

Customer overview - Gaydio

Gaydio is the world’s biggest LGBT+ radio station.

Based in Manchester, the radio station Gaydio broadcasts to over 500,000 people a week across the UK in Manchester, Brighton, London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Portsmouth and Cambridge. They are proud to offer a unique station tailored to the LGBT+ community.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the station immediately wanted to ensure their colleagues were safe and adhering to social distancing guidelines by working from home. Presenters and DJ’s across the country were quickly set-up to present remotely from home with a single and critical aim of keeping the station on air.

Customer Challenge

As is typical for radio stations, presenters prepare and broadcast their shows by accessing vast libraries of music, pre-recorded voice links and shared files via an on-site server. With Gaydio’s server based at Manchester One, when presenters began to try and access the rack-based server from their homes the existing bandwidth connection into their servers of 20Mbps was simply not enough and was causing long delays for presenter and DJ’s.

These delays were making it hard to prepare and present shows and potentially meant the broadcast of the shows were at risk.

Key points

• Customer Goal: Upgrade remote access to on-site servers to allow presenters and DJ’s to prepare and broadcast shows from home during COVID-19 to over half a million listeners in the UK
• M247 Solution: 100Mbps Wireless Leased Line
• Time scale: 10 working days
• Results: Presenters can prepare and broadcast from home, keeping the station on air during this critical time

Customer Goal

To allow the full roster of DJ’s and presenters to access the servers and shared files at the same time, to enable fast upload and download speeds and to have the ability to send the shows to other broadcast areas to keep them on air (transmitting) without delay.

“We were experiencing long delays accessing files, it was a painful process. We needed to find a solution and quickly to ensure there was no impact on our transmission schedule.” Ian Wallace, Gaydio Business Director

Our solution

100Mbps Wireless Leased Line

An increase in bandwidth was needed. M247 simply provisioned a wireless leased line to facilitate the additional bandwidth, then switched the existing 20Mbps fibre connection to the wireless leased line as the primary connection.

Results and benefits

The upgrade has meant that Gaydio has stayed on air and maintained their usual high quality show. Importantly, it has helped continue the service on air for their audience, to keep them entertained and informed.

“The additional bandwidth has removed the pain of the upload and download delays which was making it really hard for our presenters to do their daily shows and keep us on air. Now we have the confidence and reassurance that our shows can continue without any risk of downtime or disconnection – M247’s reliability is outstanding.” Ian Wallace, Business Director

During COVID-19 Gaydio online listeners have doubled, demonstrating the importance this channel plays in the lives of their listeners at a time when communities want to feel connected. M247 were able to support Gaydio in their goal to ensure the technology infrastructure and connection could meet the demands of remote working, to keep their audience connected.

Pic: Gaydio’s fantastic team of presenters have continued to broadcast their shows from home during COVID-19