THE signal from a Swindon radio station is set to end this week.

Swindon FM the town's only digital radio station will stop broadcasting on Friday after five years.

The station was set up with the aim of winning an FM licence for Swindon. But the station's bid to the radio licensing body Ofcom failed and it has since struggled to bring in advertising revenue.

Station organiser Carl Humphreys said: "It will be a sad day for the radio station and all those involved but it is not viable to run a digital-only station in a market which is still very much in its infancy. We have managed to achieve so much locally, with some of our innovative ideas being used on other stations locally."

Swindon FM was set up in 2001, and has four studios in Old Town. It ran two trial FM broadcasts.

Mr Humphreys said: "The problem was that we were one of the only radio stations in the country operating a digital-only service, unlike others who provide one on the back of existing analogue stations, which are able to bring in advertising revenue.

He said that the audience of Digital Audio Broadcasting, better known as DAB radio, was very much an unknown and as such advertisers had been slow to come forward.

The FM licence bid was won by Now FM, which has since become Brunel FM. That station, based in the Lime Kiln studios in Wootton Bassett, is expected to go on air in the late summer.