The latest OfCom Broadcast Bulletin is out, and it highlights a number of failings by community radio stations.
If you’re not familiar with the OfCom Broadcast Bulletin, it’s a PDF document released by the UK media regulator highlighting recent complaints about TV and radio stations in the UK. In recent months, the Bulletins have mostly been full of complaints about the various Babestation-style TV channels, and complaints that certain parts of the body shouldn’t be visible at certain hours of the day. Second to that tends to be the use of offensive language.
In the latest Bulletin, Number 188, some of the UK’s non-profit community radio stations come under the spotlight. You can read the bulletin for yourself at stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/broadcast-bulletins, or see our little summary:
Paperwork
Three local community radio stations failed to get their paperwork in on time. Community stations are under obligation to submit annual key commitments and financial reports to OfCom, but these three failed:
- Boundary Sound, Newark-on-Trent
- TMCR, South Yorkshire
- Voice of Africa Radio, East London
Live, or recorded?
Radio Sandwell, broadcasting to the West Bromwich area. In March, two listeners contacted OfCom to report that the station seemed to have stopped broadcasting live programmes. The regulator wrote to the radio station to see what was going on, to be told that everything was OK, and the station was broadcasting. An engineer from OfCom took a trip to the radio station’s transmitter site, to find that the entire station was being run from a laptop, playing out recorded programmes.
Further investigations revealed that the station had been running pre-recorded shows for seven weeks between February and April 2011 as a result of problems getting the signal from the studio to the transmitter. The authorities have acknowledged this as a breach of the station’s licence terms.
Knock on the door
Boundary Sound was the community station for Newark-on-Trent and parts of Nottinghamshire. The station stopped broadcasting in June when the bailiffs turned up to remove studio equipment. Ofcom ruled that the station being off-air was not “optimal use of the electromagnetic radio spectrum”.
Lightning Stikes Once
Angel Radio on the Isle of Wight also appears in the bulletin. The authorities were sent a newspaper article showing that the station was appealing for funds as it was off-air. This was news the OfCom, who are meant to be informed of outages. It seems the station was hit by lightning in July and resorted to running three days of a programming from a laptop hooked up to the transmitter, and not live shows.
Halloween in February?
One of our favourites is from a slightly older bulletin. Brick FM is a community station in Scotland. The authorities received complaints about the lack of live shows and asked Brick FM to provide recordings of broadcasts. It failed to provide these for three months due to technical difficulties. The station was asked to provide tapes for two random dates in February 2011. OfCom listened to the tapes of live broadcasts that were meant to be from February, to find that they seemed to be recorded shows referring to recent New Years celebrations and “last week’s Halloween party”. The station was deemed to be in breach of its licence.
Community Radio?
That seems a rather high number of complaints about community radio stations in recent months. We’re guessing times are tough for community stations, and some may be cutting corners to keep the service on-air.
Do you listen to your local community station? We’d love your views on how well they’re serving your local community. Please add a comment below
Bring back the pirates.
We must be lucky here. The south Devon station Soundart Radio creates original material all the time, some of it quite avant garde. They have real enthusiasts presenting a good spread of music, including classical, and (as I know from some fun-filled days in a village hall) encourage people of all ages to open up and broadcast.
When you think how many potential volunteers there are around, and how many people love radio, it seems incredible that any station could lose the will to live.
After reading you recent article about community radio I feel must voice a defense. I began volunteering with Ipswich community radio earlier this year. Every body there including me, is dedicated to providing original quality programming to the local community. We have live shows through out the day every day. And we engage with our listeners by getting them involved. The station manager is dedicated to the running of the station and works seven days a week, to keep the station running smoothly and professionally. I was said news to hear recently that a community radio station in Norfolk went under earlier this year, and I also believe the 1st ever community station and succumbed to the pressures of the recession. it’s hard for community radio as it has to rely on volunteers who have other commitments and poor funding. It’s a shame to read about the stations inn the off com report but I’m sure on the whole community radio is complying with the rules set by ofcom and give their community the best service possible. Let’s all help the community stations survive and continue to be there for us. They are more in touch with the community than Most local and commercial stations that are run a million miles away from the town they claim to be for. if your not sure ,then check to see if your community has a community station and give them your support for a few days, who knows you may realise , that community radio is worthy of your listenership after all!
Praise to the good stations out there, but too much CR I hear is slapdash and amateurish and appears to exist more for the benefit of those involved than providing any genuine service to the community.This is far more of an issue than the sort of thing outlined in the article.
The rather toothless regulation of output, quality and compliance with Key Commitments doesn’t help – what on earth can OFCOM usefully glean by effectively asking CR stations to write their own report card?
“This year we were brilliant, innovative and groundbreaking and had a 99% reach across all ethnicities and socio-economic groups”
“Oh, really? Here’s a licence extension – trebles all round!”
I’m not entirely convinced of the demand for some of the stuff out there – when I’ve checked out certain “innovative” atations I’ve been directed towards it seems to me that all they principally do is play obscure specialist music at bizarre times – often presented by people who sound as though they’ve just been chucked in a studio and told to get on with it. Yugoslavian polka music at drivetime anyone?
There’s nothing innovative, groundbreaking, or particularly brave about doing that – playing music nobody is listening to when you have no imperative to find an audience and few consequences if you don’t, does not make anyone some kind of broadcasting visionary.
I struggle to understand what social gain is provided by such stations. Surely someone has to actually listen if such lofty social objectives are to be achieved?
The purpose of broadcasting on FM is to enable the broadcaster to reach the maximum potential audience in the most effective way. It’s a means to an end in other words. If you are broadcasting obscure programming to a racially and culturally homogeneous TSA, where there is little demonstrable demand for it, as at least some CR stations do, why do it on FM?
It seems like overkill to go to the expense and hassle of the regulation an FM licence brings, simply in order to broadcast to an audience that barely troubles the scorers. It would be a cheaper (and possibly more effective) to put up posters in the town centre with web addresses to download podcasts or listen to streams. But then some people would be denied the ego trip of saying “I run my own radio station” I guess.