Given that most people who listen to Heart will be doing so via their local multiplex, or on FM (it's on FM in a surprisingly large amount of areas - I can pick up at least 4 different FM frequencies), there would have been little to no problems taking Heart UK off D1 and replacing it with Heart Xmas. Plus, Heart FM is also available on the local multiplexes (e.g. D1 has Heart 70s, Heart 80s, Heart 90s, Heart UK and Heart Dance. I realise its on the Global player but last year I had three Christmas stations on dab. While I don't have a great joy for Christmas, Iam surprised that Global has only put Heart Christmas on local English muxes rather than across the UK. To be fair, it would probably end up being Smooth Country and Heart 00's. When it does happen you can be sure that it will be two new DAB+ services created, not increases in bit rates. Switching Classic FM to 40k DAB+ would free up 88k, 40k for the new station and they could switch Gold, Heart 70's, Cap X Reloaded, Heart UK, Capital UK and Smooth Chill to 40k from substandard 32k quality. Why Gold or Heart 70's? They could just switch Classic FM to DAB+ to squeeze it in if they really want to You'd think they would swap one of the lesser performing stations ( Gold, Heart 70's?) for Heart Xmas in December at least to give the station national coverage.

Lots of people on social media complaining how they can't find Heart Xmas this year.

That said, I’m surprised they didn’t steal some bandwidth from their other stations to squeeze it in. Maybe Heart on the D1 multiplex is proving popular, so they don’t want to flip this year. I wonder why Heart Xmas is only available in certain locations on DAB?

I heart christmas station