I have been predicting that Ofcom at some point need to review the way community stations can raise funds, this has to happen in the light of consolodation by the mainstream groups. Community stations are now the only truly local providers in many markets, yet the big boys are being aloud to co locate, programme share for most of the day and have formats changed to enhance and progress national brands. All this while community stations work under grants. donations and minimal true commercial activity, Change will have to happen at some point, why not sooner rather than later, before any more licences are handed back or stations go bust?

totaly agree

This a very interesting debate. On one hand Community Radio is one of a dying breed of ‘ways in’ to the industry. On the other it is a place where those ‘outsiders’ who became so frustrated by the big group mergers of the past 10 years, could attempt to run stations they think are better than the stations that ‘consolidated them out.’ However running any business in anger against the ‘big corporates’ is not a good model at all. A genuine want to serve the community of any area with something like the service Rutland Radio provides (a true community station in everything but name) is a good thing. I truly believe that with a small, strong dedicated team you can do great things on the radio.

Actually you can’t with goodwill alone, these stations need there status reviewed and quckly, by that I mean their commercial status. However I do agree about not pretending to be something your not but allowing those larger groups to change their business model while not doing the same down the chain is farcical! It’s like sticking a lightweight in with a heavyweight and then tying the lightweights feet together. Even commercially community radio offers a completely differnt proposition, Flowers by Iris against Coke, sorry no threat there.

They are ill conceived.

The rules on funding should be eased, but with safeguards in place to ensure that community stations cannot become network radio, like much of the United Kingdom’s FM broadcasters are today.

Community radio has the potential to be the only local radio in many areas for years to come, but it is suffering from a lack of investment. Even in a major city with larger listener reach like Newcastle upon Tyne, the community radio broadcaster isn’t particularly far in to the black.

As for XS Wales, I had always thought that Craig Williams and the team’s work there was a prototype for how community radio should be done, so I’m very surprised to see that it has ceased to be.

This is a massive issue. Sherbourne Community Radio has just been granted its license but they are not allowed to take any advertising at all. This is due to the footprints of local commercial stations. In the current climate how can a station survive with a lack of grants and a lack of donations? Sadly Community Radio is in for a harder few years than most other businesses I know.

I note Matt’s points about Rutland Radio, which is pretty much as close as the commercial sector gets to Community Radio. It does network quite heavily with Compass FM in Grimsby and Ridings FM in Wakefield and its’ drive show is automated by the breakfast presenter at Oak FM in Coalville, but that notwithstanding it does provide a good quality local service.

Crucially, what Rutland does is precisely the sort of service I’d expect a good-quality CR to provide, albeit with more live presentation. Having worked for Rutland, both presenting shows there live and also having remote voice-tracked a daily show for it for about a year, I know everywhere you go in Oakham and Stamford everyone listens to it. Its’ RAJARs, at least publicly, are published as part of a Rutland/Lincs/Compass mini-superstation but I’d wager it’s easily market leader.

My real beef with CR is the bizarre strait-jacket in place to “protect” existing services. Case in point: my hometown of Hinckley. I looked at setting up a CR in Hinckley a couple of months back, and basically can’t due to the presence of a station licensed to serve the town that is below a 150k MCA threshold.

But, wait. All programmes are networked with the Loughborough license up the M1! Not even smart-networked. Everything except the ads is shared between the Loughborough and Hinckley ILR licenses. Now, it’s no secret that the Hinckley ILR license has consistently under-performed throughout its’ 13-year existence. I can write you an entire report on why; let’s not go there now. But if the operator isn’t going to provide any local programming whatsoever (I class “local programming” as bespoke content for that particular TX) then why the hell should Ofcom be even thinking about protecting the licensee?

My view on the situation is this: if a town’s radio station is deemed unable to work on a commercial basis by its’ operator and feels that full programme-sharing is the only way, then a CR should be allowed to step up to the plate and have a go. If the ILR has a problem, then it needs to get its’ ass in gear and actually serve the area it is licensed to.

To protect stations which have chosen to share programming with neighbouring licenses however, is a case of having your cake and eating it. I agree with the bloke who said Ofcom need to stop worrying about how many album tracks Original 10whatever is playing and sort out the real issues in radio.

I would also add that there appears to be a disparity in philosophy as to what community radio should be, besides from local. Should it be a popular music, commercial-style format, but with local presenters and truly local content, or should it offer an alternative to commercial stations in every way, including broadcasting specialist music and content ignored by commercial broadcasters?

It would be interesting to see what the particularly successful community stations are doing in that respect. To survive, does community radio have to go down the route of commercial radio, and does that mean that it will be indistinguishable in the future?

The problem is that many community radio stations, when they do a commercial-style format, risk sounding like a cheaper version of other stations in the area. Therefore, there’s no real incentive to listen, or for that matter, invest. On the other hand, offering an alternative could mean less people are being reached. So it’s almost “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. It’s a dilemma I’ve been unable to figure out for some time.

My view is that all advertising restrictions for CR should be removed, as a concession ILR are allowed more relaxation eg. allowing Heart and Capital to become truly national.

Interested to see James Martin uses the term ILR, there is hardly any ILR anymore, only conceptually, and the vacum left by it’s demise has to recognised and addressed! CR is the most likely replacement but only if it offers a truly local alternative to the mainstream stations. Maybe along the lines of the old ILR stations of the 80’s, advice from experts, specialist programming, community action programmes and possibly using programme sponsorship initially while a review of funding carried out. Obviously these are on the hoof suggestions and a thorough review needs to be done but not by the usal suspects but an idependent panel from across the radio spectrum. The review should have very clearly defined objectives and should consult in depth with CR leaders as the model must be driven by them.

I can’t comment on XS’s output as I don’t know their output, however it appears four types of CR formats are the ones still on-air.

1. The ILR 70/80s format. This seems to work better in rural TSA’s, yet stations closer to larger towns/cities have closed.

2. The ethnic minority format. Tailoring your station to one section of the community, which tends to be in urban TSA’s.

3. The Youth format. Tailoring your station to one section of the community, however the music may be urban in South London, CHR in the East Mids or dance in Herts.

4. Underground Dance. Either ex-pirate stations such as Rinse FM and Kane FM or Bedford’s In2Beats.

As soon as the funding cuts were announced it was predicted that we’d see an influx of stations closing their doors. Funding is really hard to come by now, only this week I was told by one grant funder that they no longer fund CIC’s, which of course I remember being told was the way forward. I believe that the Government will look at this problem eventually but not before we see many more casualties, whether they care enough remains to be seen, but I do hope so. It is not the absence of listening figures or the fact that it is not for profit that make it challenging, it is the match funding rule, reduce that and we stand a chance.

Maybe they don’t want us to know how many are handed back, we still await the true reason the OFCOM reporting is being changed and what we will actually see being reported. Or maybe I am just a suspicious person.

Is Rutland Radio owned by Lincs FM?

Did you not have to prove how you were going to survive on a new application, i.e show where you were going to get your funding from?

It is.

I’m going to have to comment as an individual here as I am in the process of resigning my previous post as station manager of TMCR FM.
Quite simply, the funding is not available. Potential advertisers are put off putting their name to an ‘amateur’ station, which is how most see CR unless they are educated into what it is all about.
In my own case I’m having to leave as I simply cannot afford to do a full time job for nothing. All my savings, what I could get out from a pension fund, and chunks of what had been salary (when available) have been put into keeping my car going for the last 6+ years and it’s all gone. With the car off the road I can’t get to the studio, public transport is a joke.
Those left behind who say they can keep the station running don’t know much about the equipment, systems, regulations or the many things I used to do.
I believed in the concept, I believed in the location, such a shame that others didn’t.
Lottery funding proved difficult to gain, thanks to them pumping billions into the the Olympics, which I feel was wrong. Supporting commercial enterprise, consultants, construction, promotion and everything else is not a ‘good cause’ in my opinion.
Local councils and third sector bodies have tightened their belts and cannot give much support to CR, so how on earth is it supposed to exist?
In the case of TMCR, it was run on such a tight shoestring budget that even promotion of it’s very existence was well down the shopping list.
Community radio needs to be different, not ‘yet another’ radio station pumping out the same old… With the commercial stations regrouping and becoming more regional than local, the reductions proposed for BBC local radio and closure of local newspapers it is a great time to be in community radio, as long as it is being supported financially of course.

Well said that man

Interesting discussion.

This is probably going to sound quite bleak, but honestly I don’t know how community radio is going to survive in the long term. As others have mentioned, it’s impossible to pay the bills by goodwill alone and I just don’t see where the money is going to come from, unless the station is tied in to an institution of some description with the money to pay the bills and the existing staff resources etc to look after the admin and day to day running without incurring additional costs – ex-student stations, for example.

I’ve pondered the question of relaxing the restrictions on on-air spot advertising, but I’m not convinced it will make any difference. Let’s face it, a large part of the reason that we have community radio in its present guise is because a large number of small-scale licences are proving commercially unviable and are, in a lot of places, closing and consolidating. If established commercial stations can’t make enough money to stay afloat, why would a community station be any different? You may be able to keep your staff costs down by utilising volunteers, but unfortunately well-meaning amateurs are, with a few exceptions, exactly that and not really a substitute for having a professional line-up that the audience can count on being there every day. It’s a nice idea to have a different presenter doing a different breakfast show every day of the week, but it doesn’t exactly breed familiarity, and no audience = no advertising. Consistency is an issue – and without it stations are nothing more than an occasional curiosity for the average listener.

The other problem that a lot of stations seem to have is that they seem to have little understanding of – or interest in – their audience. You only have to look at the licence applications – so often the goal is, seemingly, to get as many people in through the doors of the station as possible and “train” them in broadcasting. Well, I’m sorry – a worthy objective that may be, but you don’t need FM spectrum to do it.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the idea of community radio – but I can’t see how the numbers stack up without a guaranteed, centralised source of funding from somewhere.

James Martin I have also presented on Rutland Radio. I totally agree with what james said about the station being connected to it’s community. Rutland Radio doesn’t work in big numbers. However, it works. As for Sherbourne Community Radio having just been granted its license but not being allowed to take any advertising at all. This being due to the footprints of local commercial stations. That is utter nonsense. That is like setting up a paper shop but not selling papers. I would like to meet anyone who backed that station!!

Maybe it is unique in the fact that it is the smallest county, so therefore can be relevant to Oakham and its villages. I lived in Oakham for many years, its tiny and its connected. We wouldn’t get that with counties like Lincolnshire… sorry but Radio Lincs can’t give the coverage to all its numerous villages, and feels detached.

“Potential advertisers are put off putting their name to an ‘amateur’ station, which is how most see CR unless they are educated into what it is all about.” <- or, dare I say it, how most CR actually sounds. (Sorry. But someone had to say it.)

I think you’re being a bit unfair James. SOME CRs, yes, SOME are positively amateur-hour, but for every Brick FM with it’s punani sandwiches, there’s an HFM doing a very professional job on limited resources. I know of ILRs that sound worse than some CRs!

Don’t think what you say is unfair at all James Cridland. I remember reading a couple of years ago that a number of community stations in Manchester had pooled resources in (I think) sales to fund a position that presumably brought benefits to a number of stations in the area. I’m not sure if this arrangement is stilll in place, but it looked like a really interesting way of working. What’s to stop the handful of stations in South Wales, for example, pooling resources to employ a couple of radio professionals with experience to work across all stations. I don’t believe CR suffers from a lack of eager people willing to lend a hand at ground level, but does lack the real depth of experience needed to make these stations work as businesses. Well meaning and enthusiastic will only get you so far. To answer your initial question – do the conditions (no RAJAR, not-for-profit) make it near impossible? Perhaps, but I’d love to see some more innovative thinking and smarter working before the concept is written off.

Much of CR sounds like an attempt to ape glory-days mid-nineties ILR. Why not a music service with quality local news twice an hour and well researched and produced local feature packages, rather than someone turning up and yakking aimlessly between records. Radio Scilly is a fantastic example of a well targetted, well executed, genuinely different and innovate service. No suprise that it’s been driven by Keri Jones – who has great experience in producing quality radio in a small market that gets audience and advertisers. If the CR sector could attract more people like Keri, it’d be in a better place.

So why was Community radio even started? It’s not meant to be dickie bow and frilled shirt radio but a means of allowing a local area to have some community focus. The big boys will be quick to say it sounds amateurish of course, but nobody said that a bunch of amateur presenters would sound any different. My own view is that it’s on a similar theme to the birth of the early ILR stations many years ago, I was listening to a clip from Pennine Radio in about 1975-76 only the other day. The difference is the backing, both financial and experience – although some CR people have probably had more experience than many of the early ILR jocks. Despite all the publicity given to the new tier of radio, it lacks support from Ofcom and so on. The Community Radio Toolkit was one positive move towards educating would-be station operators, but I’ve got a feeling many of those in self-appointed positions (ie, not presenters) have not read any of it, or the broadcasting code, or have any idea what it’s really about. I have met people who are only too happy to say they are on the board of such a group, but when you ask them what the group actually do they can’t tell you. My aim was not to try and be a rival to other stations, there was no point in churning out the same old stuff hour after hour as they do. We wanted to do local news, but it’s difficult finding a budding journalist who would give up hours on end to provide that kind of service, as a volunteer. Some CR’s are doing well, with loads of presenters, reasonable amounts of income and even paid staff to look after sales, news, training and so on. On the other hand there are those with very few people who actually want to help run the station who are outweighed by those who only want to play at being a radio DJ and will not do anything else. Trying to get through to them the simple rules like not bringing copied CD’s in to play is like swimming in treacle. Maybe there should have been some better control over running a CR station to ensure that the basic rules were followed and maybe then it would sound better too ?

James Cridland Catch 22 maybe that’s becausetghey can’t fund the operations properly?

I think there could be something to be said for pooling resources. Is the daytime output of community stations that are able to take advertising really compelling enough compared to fully commercial rivals? I don’t know, as I don’t listen to enough hours of community radio. The idea of having people working for very little or nothing seems to be very short-termist, if not a little exploitative.

Like @Simon Kelsey, I’m really concerned about the aims of some CR stations. I don’t know if some of the problems are due to the regulatory framework for obtaining a licence, especially given that a lot of it isn’t about running a radio station but about providing “media literacy” (whatever that is) and so on.

It is a shame to see any radio station close, even if there are a few that are just ego trips for failed ILR deejays.

It’s even more of a shame when it’s a station like XS, which has served it’s local area really well for many years and did launch the career of at least one now professional presenter. (Of course, community radio stations have seriously contributed/enabled the careers of people who are now professional but not necessarily on-air… ;))

To survive, it seems to me that stations are going to need to rely on commercial revenue if they can (and perhaps Ofcom needs to step in there..) and they need to be smart with resources; better to have local news or locally produced programming in the daytime (voicetracked) than a live presenter. Less fun, but probably better radio.

There’s an entire school of thought that suggests that community radio should be done by members of the local community – That is, by individuals volunteering their time, and not professional, paid presenters out of a commercial radio job.

While such thought of course lends itself to lower quality output, it also creates a “for the community, by the community” framework which a lot of stations take as gospel. I know of stations, for example, that scoff at the idea of voice-tracking. They’d much rather give a newcomer that air-time.

I still maintain that community radio should offer an alternative, and have since I was first involved with such a project in late 2006. I don’t believe that following the format of the ‘local’ commercial station and simply adding properly local elements will work, because it’ll almost always sound like a cheap rip-off of said station.

For example, just about every community station in the North East of England did a feature on Little Mix when they won The X Factor, but wasn’t every station across the country doing that anyway? Is that really radio for the community, or just more commercial content being done in a lower quality manner?

Furthermore, how much of the community content on stations is really important for the listener? Other sources of information exist now, and are more than likely trusted more too.

The problems that community radio experiences are not caused by not being an alternative, but I can’t help but feel that they’re not helped by it. Sure, community radio needs to be allowed to be more flexible in raising funding, with the restrictions lifted, but it has to be questioned as to how many said projects are offering something different to the other stations in the area.

Ultimately, if the local community station is just another station on the FM band playing hits and dealing in celebrity gossip, but with the odd local news story thrown in, does that really warrant such a station’s existence at all?

“For example, just about every community station in the North East of England did a feature on Little Mix when they won The X Factor, but wasn’t every station across the country doing that anyway?”

Not really, I’ve found commercial radio to be staggeringly apathetic to the lil’ muffins, with their song barely being played anywhere.

I suppose I’m only experiencing the North East side of it, then. When it looked like they might win the talent contest, local radio and television news seemed to make them headline news on a daily basis.

“The big boys will be quick to say it sounds amateurish of course, but nobody said that a bunch of amateur presenters would sound any different”

But what does the listener expect? I’d say that if they tune in to a radio station they expect it to sound as professional as everything else around. This is especially important if you’re one of the stations that can and does take commercial revenue because if you’ve got no listeners then a) you’re not going to attract revenue and b) you’re not actually serving a community. Just producing amateur sounding radio because the people involved in it enjoy it really isn’t a good enough reason for a station to exist, especially not if it wants public funds.

If you want to set up a station in an area where Heart has taken over then you’d better find a better reason to be on the air because the listeners, like it or not, are actually quite happy with Heart and they won’t switch to a community radio station because Joe Bloggs from down the road can play his favourite songs and talk at great length to the bloke who runs meals on wheels.

This is a generalisation I realise. I know of some very good community stations who have real goals and really do provide valuable output with any luck they’ll find ways to survive.

David – you have hit the nail on the head.

That is exactly what I mean when I say that there are too many stations that don’t pay enough attention to their audience. If no-one’s listening, you’re not succeeeding. That doesn’t mean that the goal is necessarily to have lots and lots of listeners – but if you define a target community, who by definition have to be living within your MCA, then the goal must surely to be to have the maximum number of those people listening to and engaging with your station.

I agree with Dave Hedley that the output of a community station should be distinctive – but I’d say that about ANY radio station that wants to be successful. Whether you’re Heart or Tinytown FM, you need to give your audience a reason to tune in. That doesn’t change just because you’re a community radio station, and the audience’s expectations don’t change just because you’re a community radio station. The average punter who turns on the radio doesn’t care who owns the station, whether the presenters are being paid or how much. They just want quality, relevant content, and if you can do that (and get your message out – and get your audience to trust you!) then you will succeed – whatever type of station you are.

XS (NPT Broadcasting C.I.C.)

A financial penalty of £500 has been imposed on NPT Broadcasting C.I.C. in respect of its community radio station, Afan FM (now broadcasting as XS), which serves young people in Neath and Port Talbot.

The radio service had failed to comply with its license conditions by failing to broadcast live programming with speech content for a number of days in December 2010. Ofcom found the Licensee to be in breach of conditions 2(1) and 2(4) in Part 2 of the Schedule to the community radio licence held by NPT Broadcasting.

· Condition 2(1) requires that: “The Licensee shall provide the Licensed Service specified in the Annex for the licence period.”

· Condition 2(4) requires that: “The Licensee shall ensure that the Licensed Service accords with the proposals set out in the Annex so as to maintain the character of the Licensed Service throughout the Licence Period.”

Ofcom considered the breach sufficiently serious as to warrant a financial penalty, which is payable to HM Paymaster General.

Ofcom notes that NPT Broadcasting has recently ceased providing its service. Ofcom is in separate discussions with the station about this. The decision to impose a financial penalty on NPT Broadcasting was taken on 5 December and relates to a licence breach which was published by Ofcom earlier in the year.

I agree with David, just because its community radio doesnt mean it should sound amateur or not professional.. As a community station we strive to produce high quality broadcasting with our volunteers, and we also make sure our scheduling is as assessable as possible to our listeners and we train and support the volunteers to help them be the best they can be.

It has to be good quality radio, as most listeners dont realise what community radio is, chat to a few people in our area and they assume we are just a small commercial station (just with better shows and shows that actually cater for the community) where everyone gets paid!.. and we are covered by a heart station, and a lot of the people around here feel abandoned by them and that the station no longer reflects them or their community.

Listeners have been used to slick sounding professional radio for years, and thats what their ears have been trained to accept, and thats what community radio has to strive for..