Why Ofcom's on the right wavelength
 

In a "Guardian" piece today, Maggie Brown supports Ofcom's efforts to
increase the amount of local news on our radio stations. She points out that
: "Eighty seven per cent of 272 local licensees broadcast adult mainstream,
easy listening and gold services. Only 1% are speech and news - another way
of putting it is that 80% of the population have no commercial local news
and speech service."

http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/com...x.php?id=P1161

Maggie Brown
Monday January 3, 2005
The Guardian

Imagine being stuck on a motorway when a blizzard strikes, bringing cars to
a frozen standstill for hours. Stranded in the dark and cold for up to 12
hours, where would you turn for news? The local radio station?

Overnight on January 30, 2003, just such a misfortune befell thousands of
motorists on the M11 in Cambridgeshire. The event became a cause célèbre in
regulatory circles, because it exposed a serious gap in commercial radio's
service to the public, just as the Communications Act was being finalised.

Several local commercial radio stations, one owned by GWR, were unable to
report and react to the news, or offer any live traffic updates. None of
them had a single journalist on duty. The honourable exception was one small
station, Star, in Cambridge.

The fallout from that night is strewn across Ofcom's proposed policy for
radio, Preparing for the Future, its first major document on regulating the
sector, which is published just before Christmas. Ofcom has applied the same
standard of rigorous research it earlier brought to bear on public-service
television, causing the BBC to squirm.

Despite lobbying from commercial radio, the Communications Act contains a
clause requiring a test of "localness" to be devised and applied by Ofcom
across the sector. The test is also seen as part of a defence against
foreign (that is to say American) takeovers.

The failure to deliver local news and traffic information, when sorely
needed, has also spilled over into two other cost-related battlegrounds,
which had seen the former Radio Authority and commercial camps at daggers
drawn.

These are, firstly, the move towards computerised broadcasting - known as
automation - where pre-recorded links and news are fed into music; and,
second, news hubs - the pressure to service small, often loss-making local
stations from a regional newsroom, outside the station's area.

So, while 2005 is shaping up as the year of commercial radio merg ers - with
GWR and Capital probably only a start - it is also the point where Ofcom is
trying to strike a new deal. Namely, what public good is supplied by
commercial radio, in return for consolidation?

Preparing for the Future is partly a consultation on ways to define and
enforce localness, underpinned by a "yellow card" system, triggered when
programme formats that include a duty of localness are breached. Ofcom is
buttressing its statutory role with research, finding 91% of listeners want
local news, 78% traffic, 68% weather.

But since it wants to judge on the output - what is delivered to listeners
rather than how companies organise that - it is pretty positive about
allowing news hubs to go ahead. However, it is prepared to break its own
light-touch regulatory policy by saying that as a minimum there should be a
professionally trained journalist in every area, able to report and react to
events.

For that, it is prepared to drop the restrictions on automation - and leave
it to the good sense of the operators. For example, a news bulletin could be
pre-recorded for the morning, or read from a news hub, to allow the
journalist to go out and report.

This is a somewhat questionable notion: listeners have the right expect a
local radio station to be sited in their area. Indeed, it is odd that some
operators seem prepared to run the risk of losing their great strength, a
genuine local presence, for a short-term gain, and this at a time when local
advertising is growing twice as fast as the national rate.

The other big issue is choice and diversity, which is where Ofcom as a
licensing body has great power. Not much is free in media land these days,
but local commercial radio licences remain so, which is why, whenever an
old-fashioned analogue radio licence is advertised, queues form round the
block at Ofcom towers.
There is a telling statistic in Ofcom's review, illustrating commercial
radio's drab tendency to become little more than pop music broadcasters,
converging towards the easy middle-of-the-road option. Eighty seven per cent
of 272 local licensees broadcast adult mainstream, easy listening and gold
services. Only 1% are speech and news - another way of putting it is that
80% of the population have no commercial local news and speech service.

This is the context in which to judge the first two licence decisions from
Ofcom last month, which awarded an Edinburgh licence to the Wireless Group
for a local news-led station out of a field of 12, and a smaller Blackburn
licence to a group promising "high-profile local news" from four applicants.

It is a clear signal and a good start. But it will take more than a
determined regulator to counter so many years characterised by a paucity of
ambition.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/radio/co...382532,00.html