[cma-l] Media Guardian: Cut local shows, say radio giants

[Bill Best]

Hi

The story below from yesterday's Guardian could/should spell good news
for community radio broadcasters.

Regards

Bill
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Cut local shows, say radio giants
John Plunkett
Wednesday October 24 2007
The Guardian

Smaller commercial radio stations outside London cannot compete with BBC
stars such as Chris Moyles and Chris Evans and should be allowed to
slash their local content to three hours a day, leaders of the UK's
biggest radio groups have said.

The GCap chief executive, Ralph Bernard, and the Emap Radio group
managing director, Dee Ford, are among a group of radio bosses who have
asked Ofcom to consider a radical overhaul of radio regulations.

The overhaul would allow stations with a potential audience of fewer
than 500,000 listeners to cut local content to as little as three hours
a day in favour of networked programmes.

"We all agree that localness is important to our listeners. However, it
is also clear that quality of output is of greater importance," said a
letter to the regulator from the commercial radio representative body,
the Radio Centre.

"It is against [the BBC] that every local commercial station must
compete daily, on terms that are heavily skewed in the BBC's favour.

"Few local commercial stations have the resources to recruit the kind of
talent, or produce the kind of programme, that can compete with the
likes of Chris Moyles, Jeremy Vine or Chris Evans.

"Indeed, even if a commercial station did have this kind of resource,
the reality is that this kind of talent is rarely available based
outside of London. And even where such talent is available, local or
regional stations often present less attractive opportunities."

The appeal was sent to Ofcom earlier this month as part of the
regulator's Future of Radio consultation about the industry's regulation.

It was also signed by the Global Radio chief executive, Ashley Tabor;
the GMG Radio chief executive, John Myers; the chief executive of
TalkSport parent UTV Radio, Scott Taunton; and the Global Radio
chairman, Charles Allen.

Commercial radio bosses want the local programme quota reduced to enable
it to broadcast more networked shows across stations.

Under Ofcom's proposals, small, medium and large stations would be
required to broadcast four, eight and 13 hours respectively of locally
produced and presented content each weekday.

The Radio Centre wants this to be changed to a minimum of three hours
for stations with potential audiences of less than 500,000, and seven
hours for stations broadcasting to more than 500,000 potential listeners.

"Commercial radio could then have the best of both worlds: quality
programming to compete effectively with the BBC, but with something the
national BBC stations can't deliver - local output at the relevant times
of day," the letter said.

The results of the Future of Radio consultation were due to be published
this month. However, they have been delayed by the volume of feedback,
and are now not expected until towards the end of this year.

The latest Rajar radio listening figures, for the third quarter of this
year, will be published tomorrow. In the second quarter of 2007, the BBC
attracted a 54.3% share of the audience, against commercial radio's 43.5%.

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited