Until 2010 I was a radio presenter – mostly on local commercial stations. I still take an interest in developments in the world of radio.
When I was still in commercial radio there was a trend underway towards increased networking with local stations providing less and less local programming with shows increasingly coming from regional hubs. After I left radio the trend continued to the point now where most of what were individual radio stations in the past are now mostly locations for transmitters for networks like Heart and Greatest Hits Radio.
I started to write this after reading a newspaper article in the “I” by my former boss David Lloyd. Years ago he was part of the trend to networking in the commercial sector. His recent blog however was about BBC local radio now – which is, in the name of economic efficiency, moving to a similar networking model and in the process losing the local presenters and programming.
I tried to find the same article on-line but was unable to. However in the course of searching I came across a blog post by David again about changes at the BBC. This was also a lament for the days when people working for the national broadcaster were always highly trained even when working at a local station.
He mentions turning up for a freelance presenting shift to discover three programme producers in a panic because they needed to playout a pre-recoded show to hit a travel news window up to a timed news junction. It seems they were not familiar with the notions of back-timing, talking to time and pre-fading to time.
This article was similar to the newspaper one in that it bemoaned the loss of expertise caused by the networking changes imposed by BBC management. It’s a topic David has written about before where he points out that making compelling and engaging radio – or audio on a podcast – is harder than many people seem to think. He blames managers for the loss of people who know what they are doing to be replaced by people who don’t and who apparently won’t get the appropriate training they need to make listenable, interesting radio – or even to be able to edit effectively.
As David says
“UK radio generally is the poorer for the current ill-advised and poorly executed BBC local radio strategy. Its smug architects are not just ruining a network of stations – they are building a broadcasting legacy and it’s not a good one.“
While agreeing with David that the loss of local BBC stations is probably a bad thing at the least leaving sectors of the population without a radio service to which they want to listen. I find it slightly ironic that the arguments he puts forward in the newspaper against BBC networking – about the loss of a local broadcasting service to listeners that they view as “their” radio station, which reflects their area and the things going on there – are the same arguments put forward by those who opposed the networking of commercial stations in previous times. This time it seems David is on the other side.
You can read the whole David Lloyd article here: https://www.davidlloydradio.com/post/the-silent-killer
EDIT – Since I posted this the original article Iwas responding to has appeared online here: https://inews.co.uk/news/media/commercial-radio-is-booming-so-why-is-the-bbc-closing-its-ears-and-running-from-local-communities-2673692