[comradio-l] Daily Telegraph: BBC blasted for planning 'death of local radio'

[CMA-L]

By Neil Midgley, Daily Telegraph, Assistant Editor (Media) 7:01AM GMT
11 Mar 2011

Staff at the BBC’s 40 local radio stations will be briefed today on
the plans, which would lead to each one producing only breakfast and
drivetime programmes, with 5 Live being broadcast at other times.

Trade unionists at the BBC fear that the proposals would lead to at
least 700 job losses, as well as decimating the BBC’s service to local
areas.

NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Local radio plays a crucial
role in keeping local communities informed. These proposals would rip
the heart out of local programming and effectively sound the death
knell for local radio.”

Mike Bettison, the head of Radio Nottingham, confirmed that “a merger
with Radio 5 Live is under consideration” - which, he added, would
“certainly end the service as we now know it”.

Staff also fear that some individual stations could close completely,
as even the breakfast and drivetime programmes become pooled into
bigger regions.

The BBC is already running pilot schemes for this kind of
programme-sharing in the south-east of England (for drivetime on Radio
Surrey, Radio Kent and Radio Sussex) and Yorkshire (for mid-afternoon
on Radio Sheffield, Radio York and Radio Leeds).

The plans are one of the first concrete proposals to emerge from
Delivering Quality First, a review which is underway across the BBC to
find the savings necessary to balance the books in the wake of the
six-year licence-fee freeze that was agreed by Mark Thompson, the
corporation’s director-general, with the Coalition last October.

As part of the deal, the BBC will take on responsibility for funding
the World Service and S4C, which will require cuts of 16 per cent or
more to existing BBC budgets across the board.

A BBC spokesman said: “No decisions have been made so it would be
wrong to speculate. It is of course only right that BBC staff have an
opportunity to input ideas about shaping the BBC’s future.

"The Delivering Quality First sessions are designed to provoke
discussion amongst staff about the way the BBC works and any decisions
coming out of the process would be subject to approval by the BBC
Trust.”

Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for Stockton South, said he was
“worried” about the plans.

Gary Dunion, a BBC local radio listener, said: “A world without
Lancashire Gardeners’ Question Time isn’t a world I want to live in.
Save BBC local radio!”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8374563/BBC-blasted-for-planning-death-of-local-radio.html

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