Radio Radio

A couple of worthwhile pieces in today’s Media Guardian for those interested in the radio industry.
Global’s Stephen Miron gives an interview. The subject of licence roll-over is brought up. Classic FM is the first of the three INR licences to be renewed, expiring in September 2011. Global would like an extension rather than the highest bidder mechanism – something that’s currently legislated.
The piece also highlights two speculated national services for DAB, including a talk station. Miron won’t talk about that, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The bit I’m unsure about is the comparison between the Heart network and Radio 2. Miron positions Heart as a Radio 2 that you can advertise on. Given the recent issues Global’s had with Ofcom in regard to contemporary music levels, I’m not sure that the comparison is quite there (although Radio 2 certainly does play a significant level of contemporary music). Many of the services that have recently become Hearts were actually more chart based than Radio 2, and they’ve not had their formats changed.
Meanwhile Martin Kelner – recently employed by TalkSport – addresses the marketing surrounding the introduction of Heart in the last week to lots of towns and cities west of London. Toby Anstis, who’s morning show is networked across all 29 Heart services, had been rolled out to places such as Oxford, Plymouth, Exeter and Reading to explain why his show was relevant to local audiences. His reasoning was indeed a little flawed – he’d visited some of these places before, been on holiday there, or his brother had been to university and so on.
The only way to really win this argument is to provide compelling programming to those audiences – something better than they’d been getting before.
Kelner, meanwhile, wanders off in an odd direction at the end, suggesting that the BBC scraps local radio to let commercial radio have a proper go. I’m really not sure that this is a great solution. In most parts of the country BBC local radio is targeting a much older audience – witness the furore surrounding Dave and Sue a few years ago.
Dave and Sue
As Kelner notes, many local services really aren’t doing as much journalism as they might once have, so is it a good idea to scrap the one type of service that is doing local news? Particularly at a time when local newspapers and downsizing or shutting down throughout the land.
The BBC Trust ruled against the BBC’s local video plans last year, amid great protest from local newspapers and radio services. Ironically, I can see there actually being a significant hole in coverage in the future, as many stations rely solely on the Press Association or Sky News for their journalistic requirements. David Simon in The Guardian this weekend pointed out that a loss of local media means it’s easier to get away with things like political corruption. While the nationals may catch Jacqui Smith’s TV viewing habits, do they catch agreements between local councillors and supermarket chains, or developers? Is that something that bloggers will catch if there are no journalists?
Any destruction of the coverage of local news is something to be opposed at every level. It’ll be bad enough if there’s only a single source of news – the BBC.
[As always, these opinions are mine, and do not reflect those of my employer.]


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