[cma-l] Commercial Radio Proposals for Change

[Karl Hartland]

FROM RADIO TODAY - POSTED FOR INTEREST ONLY, ALL OF THE BELOW IS QUOTE

Are you an A, B, C, D or E?
John Myers and his team have organised every radio station in the UK in 
to a particular category. The proposal to deal with radio stations via 
categories with appropriate regulation and rules for each seems a step 
in the right direction, and maybe even a little long overdue.

The move from output to input has been introduced over the last few 
years but the proposal now is to really concentrate on that idea, and 
make sure each local radio station is delivering local content, day 
after day. After day. The Local Impact Test has the thumbs up from most 
people, we would guess.

Whether you have read the report (not much work took place on Thursday 
afternoon across the industry then?) or just enjoyed the numerous blogs 
and reports about it, you’ll be aware that John’s proposals, in a 
nutshell, will make sure local radio stations are broadcasting local 
content (even if they are based 100 miles away, and co-located with 10 
other stations), and regional stations can group together (literally and 
physically) to form a national network.

Based on these proposals, let’s play a game of predicting the future of 
commercial radio, in a digital spy anorak type way.

Category B radio stations will be allowed to co-locate to anywhere 
within their region (or country). So Kingdom FM, Original 106, Central 
FM, L107, Northsound, West FM, South West Sound, Moray Firth, SIBC, 
Nevis, etc etc would, theoretically be able to join forces and create a 
super broadcasting centre in Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. Or the Shetland 
Islands. If all the independent owners agree of course.

Let’s just take a moment to think about that.

Once you get your head around the fact that local radio can be produced 
from anywhere, then the possibilities are endless Scary but endless.

In a constructive debate in the pub over the weekend, one presenter, who 
hosted the breakfast show on a local station for many years, argued that 
a local station needs to live and breathe the area it serves. This was 
the same presenter who lived outside the TSA, drove 30 miles in to the 
area on a motorway at 5am, entered the out of town industrial estate, 
and drove away again at midday via the same route. He could have very 
easily drove 30 miles in the opposite direction to a “hub”, and 
presented exactly the same show. Couldn’t he?

Hub’s are not ideal – but in times of crisis, it appears to be a 
sensible cost-saving alternative.

Take a typical county the size of Lancashire. You could quite easily, 
despite different ownership, have a local station for each major town or 
borough operating from the centre of the area. Or even, as suggested, 
merging the licences and retaining local news on each frequency. 
“Lancashire FM” could be broadcasting from Preston 24 hours a day, but 
with local news and feature opt outs for Blackpool (96.5), Lancaster 
(96.9), Blackburn (107), Preston (106.5), Burnley (99.8) etc.

Sounds too outrageous? If it was a choice between closing down, or 
joining forces, which one would you prefer?

The other proposal by John and his team which we’d like to theorise on, 
suggests category D stations, (regional’s) could broadcast from ANYWHERE 
in the UK. This would allow all Real, Smooth, Galaxy, Kiss and regional 
Heart stations to broadcast from one single location with all localness 
and location restrictions rescinded. (Providing that brand is available 
to 65% of the UK population on DAB).

Could this be taken too far? A smaller station (category C, over 700,000 
TSA) which is part of a national brand could be upgraded to category D, 
if the brand is available to most of the population on DAB. Such as 
Galaxy Manchester and Smooth Glasgow.

So, (play along here), in theory, Global Radio could own and operate 
three radio stations in Manchester, (Galaxy, Gold and Xfm) without 
having a studio in the city. All three would need to be “grandfathered 
to a category D station”, and available nationally, but these proposals 
could see situations like this developing.

But whilst all these ideas are just proposals, they have the backing of 
RadioCentre, and are not to dis-similar from other recent recommendations.

Is this the beginning of the end for local commercial radio, or the end 
of the beginning? Whatever it is, and whatever it turns out to be, we'd 
better all faster our seat belts because we're in for a bumpy ride.

-- 
Karl Hartland
209radio Station Manager

105 FM in the Cambridge City Area
http://209radio.co.uk everywhere else!

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