Draft:Dance Revolution

Dance Revolution (often referred to as “Dance Rev”) is a radio station in the North East of England and broadcasts on DAB+ across Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Bishop Auckland and Darlington. It is also available through the Dance Revolution app,your Smart Speaker and www.dancerevradio.com.

Dance Revolution started life in 2009 as a radio show hosted by Scott McGerty on Sunderland’s Community Radio station 107 Spark FM (now Spark). Dance Revolution would broadcast for two hours on a Friday night followed by two hours on a Saturday night. Scott created this show when landfill indie was at its height in the charts and there was a lack of representation on the commercial dance scene. Scott has spoken at The Student Radio Conference about how the show was born because commercial dance music required a “Revolution” somehow.

The show on Spark gained lots of attention and in 2010 evolved in to one three hour show on a Friday night. The structure of “90 minutes of new skool followed by 90 minutes of old skool” was launched and the halfway change point was punctuated by “The Switch”, a dramatic piece of production throwing you back in time. Scott has publicly spoken about how he purposely only plays classics in the switch part of the show that are older than 5 years as other bigger radio brands play these songs frequently.

Dance Revolution went on to win and place in several Student Radio Awards including Best Specialist Music Show and Best Interview and also won and placed in several Community Radio Awards.

In 2021 the North East saw Ofcom approve a Small Scale DAB application for a multiplex covering Tynemouth and South Shields. Scott had toyed with evolving the Dance Revolution show into a full-time commercial radio station and after the announcement of small scale dab opportunities coming to the North East, Scott reached out to long time team member Nathan Ely to become a business partner. At the time Nathan had been fielding job offers from Merseyside and was on the cusp of relocating from The North East. Scott and Nathan created a 24/7 station that plays the “Anthems of yesterday, today and tomorrow” and was one of the first to launch on DAB+ across Tyneside.

Dance Revolution has since expanded on to more multiplexes across the North East and has built a loyal following on TIKTOK. The digital handle for Dance Revolution is @dancerevradio