[cma-l] Ofcom publishes reasons for the award of four newcommunity radio licences

[Two Lochs Radio]

> On the idea that commercial licence holding stations might become
> community in practice - consider Heartland serving Highland Perthshire
> which set out its stall as a community channel but operating under a
> commercial licence 18 years ago.

Just to fill out the picture a little, there are also 7 other stations 
operating in the Highlands and Islands as fully licensed commercial ILR 
stations, but operated by bodies constituted not-for-profit and operated 
mostly by volunteers and wholly for community benefit.

These stations all went the tortuous route of persuading the Radio Authority 
to be flexible enough to advertise licences for these areas, even though 
their commercial viability was less than zero in conventional terms. It was 
to the RA's credit that it went out on a limb in its interpretation of its 
statutory duties in achieving this.

All the stations licensed in this way are still operating today. Ours, Two 
Lochs Radio (www.2LR.co.uk) is the smallest licensed radio station in the 
UK, with a TSA population of 1,681. At the time many years ago when we 
started petitioning for a licence to be advertised for this area, a 
population of 50,000 was the industry accepted figure for breadline 
commercial viability. We like to think that the Highland experience was one 
of the things that encouraged the Radio Authority to think that the 
community radio pilot was worth trying out.

There is only one commercially-operated ILR in the Highlands and Islands 
(MFR in Inverness), which started out with a strong community focus, but 
with one takeover after another gradually became pretty much just another 
local commercial station (imho).

Nowadays of course, with the coming of CR licenses,  we find ourselves in 
something of a Neverland - the smallest Highlands and Islands stations have 
very much less income to draw upon than any CR licensee I have come across, 
(and our eyes water at the number of posts and salaries offered by many CR 
stations!), but we have no access to the Community Radio fund of course (the 
*average* payout from which in an earlier year was more than our annual 
commercial turnover!). We are also in a slightly odd position in the 
industry, as members of the RadioCentre, but not operating for commercial 
profit in the traditional sense.

There have recently also been some Highland CR licence awards as well, such 
as Ness Radio, Superstation (Orkney) and Speysound, which is all brilliant 
news, and we all work together very happily in our own association, the 
Highlands and Islands Community Broadcasting Federation, which is also 
incorporated as a charitable trust. I know there are definitely some 
excellent CR stations out there, by the way, Rycharde. One of them, Angel 
Radio, gave an excellent presentation at our most recent HICBF conference, 
and I know a number of people up here who have become keen listeners to the 
station by Internet!

Only one of the community-based stations (Ness FM) is in the coverage patch 
of an existing ILR, and I haven't posted this to enter the debate about the 
CR rules one way or the other, though I'm finding the debate very 
interesting.  I just wanted to take the opportunity to remind folks that in 
the north of Scotland there is another tier of community-based radio that 
sits in between ILR and CR, some of these are in areas with significant 
commercial potential, others not.. I guess in reality we now have a whole 
spectrum of stations, despite the notional dividing lines. Diversity Rules!

Cheers
Alex

Two Lochs Radio
Serving the communities of Wester Ross on 106 & 106.6 FM

PS the ILR-licensed community-based stations I mentioned are:
 Two Lochs Radio
 Cuillin FM
 Isles FM
 Nevis Radio
 Lochbroom FM
 Argyll FM
 Oban FM

All based on the west coast or islands, and all operated by not-for-profit 
companies established for community benefit, but holding full ILR licences.