Tag: radio regulation

New upstarts clobber complacent commercial radio industry two-decade market monopoly : 1973-2005 : Independent Local Radio, UK

 The UK commercial radio industry has grown dramatically since the first station launched in 1973. The history of the industry can usefully be divided into two chapters:

1.  1973 to 1990

At the beginning of this period, local commercial radio stations were opened only in the UK’s biggest cities and then, in the 1980’s, new stations were launched in smaller cities and in largely rural counties. The regime was characterised by the word ‘monopoly’, as only one commercial station was licensed in each location (London was the only exception, with two stations licensed with very different formats). Each station broadcast its programmes simultaneously on the AM and FM wavebands, enabling it to reach the maximum possible audience in its coverage area. Each station’s success depended upon its ability to attract listeners away from national and local BBC stations, and its ability to attract advertising to the new radio medium and away from competitors such as the local press and regional television.

Listening figures to local commercial stations were generally very high. They were new, exciting and offered something more local and less stuffy than BBC stations. Because each local station was a separate local company, run by a local Board and financed by local shareholders, each station cultivated its ‘localness’ to the maximum in order to attract listeners. London’s ‘Capital Radio’ was a prime example of the success such a strategy could have. Using the slogan ‘In Tune With London’, every day the station used its converted red double-decker bus to visit a different London location, handing out stickers and leaflets, as well as offering listeners the opportunity to meet presenters and request songs. These ‘personal contact’ strategies paid enormous dividends and generated substantial loyalty between listeners and their local station. By the 1980’s, they were supplemented by community outreach projects and charity fundraising marathons. ‘Capital Radio’ had a JobCentre branch and a flat share information service in its foyer [see blog], which became young Londoners’ first means of finding accommodation in the city.

By the end of the 1980’s, local commercial radio was a big success with listeners and had developed a loyal following across two generations of listeners, giving it substantial audience figures across a wide variety of ages. Up and down the country was a range of fiercely individualistic, quirky stations, each with their own name, each with their own ‘star’ presenters, and each adopting their own idiosyncratic music format. By now, each had woven itself into the fabric of its community and was as much a part of local life as the town’s football team or the local bakery chain.

The one aspect of local commercial radio that proved problematic was stations’ inability to surpass their 2% share of total UK advertising expenditure. This percentage stubbornly refused to grow, even during times of an advertising boom and radio became known within the advertising industry as the ‘2% medium’. It was viewed as an ‘extra’ to be added to media campaign plans in times of boom, but quickly struck off when the economy was not so good. As a result, advertising revenues fluctuated enormously during downturns in the economic cycle and one local station was even forced into liquidation.

Radio’s main problems in attracting national advertising were:

• Even all the stations added together did not cover the whole UK

• Because each station was independently owned, buying a campaign on all existing stations was a labour-intensive task

• Station advertising rates and packages varied hugely, more dependent upon stations’ ability to extract such prices from local advertisers than any standard cost per thousand

• Station formats varied as much as their names, so that some stations delivered considerably older or more female-orientated audiences than others.

Because national advertising was so problematic, the majority of advertising sold on local commercial stations was derived from local businesses. By the late 1980’s, local radio had proved its effectiveness at marketing local products to local listeners, and a bond had been forged between local business owners and the local sales teams of stations that was the economic lifeline of these broadcasters.

At the same time, by the late 1980’s, complacency started to infiltrate local radio that resulted directly from stations’ lack of competition for listeners and lack of competition for local advertisers. Stations started to work less hard than they used to in order to please both their audience and their local business community. The government’s regulator released stations from having to fulfil many of their community obligations. Instead of seeing that work as an intrinsic part of their loyalty-building strategy, stations such as ‘Capital Radio’ closed their Community Department overnight [see blog]. At the same time, stations had their eye on merging with nearby stations to increase profitability, or arranging stock market flotations to generate capital for acquisitions. Several stations diversified into all sorts of businesses from theatres to restaurants, seeing themselves as ‘entertainment’ rather than purely ‘radio’ companies. In the 1980’s, anything that involved making money seemed a good idea.

For the first time in its history, the late 1980’s saw ‘Capital Radio’ suffering declining audiences and, like other local commercial stations, it had no idea what to do about the problem. It had only ever competed against the BBC for audiences and, only then, back in its very early days. Since then, it had always taken its audience for granted and simply presumed that listeners would never turn to any other station. All the local stations still enjoyed a monopoly over commercial radio advertising in their patch. It was something they felt they had a right to. The 1980’s economy was booming. Everyone was getting rich quick.

2.  1990 to now

The existing radio stations received their first major shock when the regulator suddenly licensed a range of ‘incremental’ stations in areas that already had existing local stations. This was the first time that the so-called ‘heritage’ stations had ever faced competition from newcomers. For example, in London, ‘Capital Radio’ lost audience straight away to ‘Melody Radio’ (targeting older people), ‘KISS FM’ (young people), ‘Jazz FM’ (wealthy middle-aged people) and ‘Choice FM’ (the Afro-Caribbean community). Suddenly, the audience that ‘Capital’ had taken for granted for so long was deserting it in droves for stations that sounded new, fresh, innovative and in touch with London, something that ‘Capital’ had done less and less of in recent years.

The second shock came when the regulator licensed three national commercial radio stations, a full thirty years after local commercial stations had been introduced. The industry had been arguing for years that it could never break through the 2% barrier (of all advertising spend) unless businesses and agencies were able to offer clients a proper ‘national’ opportunity to book a single campaign across the whole UK. New national commercial stations could offer such a deal and give the existing local radio stations a chance to share in radio’s enhanced visibility. As a compromise, the new stations were deliberately introduced in such a way so as not to impact local commercial radio audiences too greatly. The national ‘popular music’ station was to be confined to the poor-quality AM waveband, while only a minority-interest music station would be allowed the coveted national FM slot.

The third shock came when, having seen the success achieved by some of the specialist music stations that were part of the ‘incremental’ experiment, the regulator decided to roll out a programme of many more new local stations in more areas with existing ‘heritage’ stations. Thus, the 1990’s heralded the biggest and fastest expansion of radio stations the UK had ever seen, immediately after a period of relatively slow industry growth in the 1980’s. The shock of moving from a stagnant period of complacency to suddenly being immersed in a highly competitive situation where they had to fight for both listeners and advertisers proved a wake-up call for many local stations. What followed still has a considerable impact on the radio landscape of today. The radio industry underwent a fundamental re-structuring that included:

a.   The emergence of radio groups

A limited amount of consolidation had occurred during the 1980’s, largely based on regional geography, whereby groups were formed from the combination of several local stations in a region (i.e. Midlands Radio Group Ltd, Suffolk Group Radio Ltd). As early as 1985, GWR Radio Ltd started a series of acquisitions based on the simple motivation that ‘big is better’ and the trend continued throughout the 1990’s with stations bought and sold for greater and greater sums of money.

b.   The entry of media groups

Starting in 1990, large cross-media groups such as EMAP plc, Virgin Group Ltd and Chrysalis plc bought their way into the radio industry, acquiring a mix of heritage stations and newly launched stations. This substantially increased the sale prices of local stations.

c.   National advertising

The launch of the three national radio stations had the desired effect of attracting national advertisers and agency media buyers to radio for the first time. With local stations now consolidated into fewer groups, it became easier to buy campaigns through a single selling point to run on stations across a region or regions. Both the national and local stations benefited from the influx of national revenues.

d.   Cost cutting

In an industry where costs are mostly ‘fixed costs’ and revenues are almost infinitely ‘variable’, GWR Group pioneered the strategy of cutting costs to the bone at the many stations it acquired. According to GWR CEO Ralph Bernard: “It became very evident that if you don’t have size, you don’t have the ability to do things and you are forever trying to find the money to fix leaks, literally.” GWR’s policy of implementing economies of scale across its stations led to the centralisation of many tasks.

e.   Local advertising

As stations became incorporated within larger and groups, national advertising became of more and more importance to their owners. The bedrock of local radio, local advertisers, soon became serviced by regional rather than local sales teams, until eventually they were serviced hardly at all from a national sales office. As a result, local advertising revenues became less and less important to groups that were growing bigger and bigger.

f.   London agencies

With the rise of youth brands in the marketplace, and the evident success of London youth station ‘KISS FM’ [see blog] in creating a commercial focus for a demographic that had never before been served by commercial radio, London advertising agencies suddenly wanted to buy campaigns on stations that delivered 15- to 34-year-olds. Faced with both local and national competition for audiences and revenues for the first time, local heritage stations suddenly started chasing a younger audience. As a result, the middle-aged audience that had been loyal to their local commercial stations for many years started to drift away (mainly to ‘BBC Radio Two’), alienated by stations playing too much dance and rap music.

g.   ‘BBC Radio One’

Although the turn of the 1990’s had been a scary time for local heritage stations as they suddenly faced competition in their own areas from competing commercial stations for the first time, they were all helped immeasurably by the BBC’s decision to change drastically the programming of its most popular station, ‘Radio One’. Until then, this station had a remarkably large audience of diverse ages that overshadowed local commercial stations in most regions of the country. As a direct result of the BBC’s bizarre volte-face, between 1992 and 1994 five million listeners left ‘Radio One’ and most sought refuge in local commercial radio. These latter stations’ audiences suddenly boomed and they became the most listened to in their markets, without having to change or do anything different. The BBC had unintentionally saved their backsides.

h.   Lack of investment

With audiences growing hugely because of the demise of ‘BBC Radio One’; with revenues booming because of the ability to sell national advertising on larger and larger groups of stations; and with stock market values of radio groups buoyed by the industry’s breakout from its former position as the ‘2% medium’, group owners were quick to redistribute their substantial profits to shareholders. After a relatively lean period in the 1980’s, ‘radio’ was suddenly riding on a ‘high’ in the financial community. Ignoring the fact that their product had only become popular as a haven of last resort for listeners fleeing ‘Radio One’, group owners invested almost none of their lucky profits back into the development, improvement or update of their product.

i.   Networked programmes

Instead, station owners sought ways to cut even further the fixed costs of their station operations. Led by GWR Group plc, groups persuaded the regulator to let them network some programmes from a central production studio, instead of each of their stations producing all of its own content. In a lengthy process of attrition, by bullying a regulatory agency that lacked any long-term strategic plan for the industry, group owners were allowed piece by piece to extract the ‘localness’ from their local stations. Local voices, local station names, local celebrities, local music, local content and local news all became sidetracked or dispensed with by many group-owned stations.

j.   The rise of brands

Led by EMAP plc, which championed the notion that nationally recognisable brands were preferable to local identities, many local radio stations were stripped of the very characteristics that had made them ‘local’ in the first place. In an attempt to make their product controlled, homogenous and universal, the largest radio groups invested considerable sums in state-of-the-art technology that enabled stations up and down the country to be playing exactly the same record at exactly the same time, appended at the end of the song by a jingle that said ‘Coventry’ or ‘Newcastle’ as appropriate, depending upon the station’s location.

k.   Format convergence

Although the listener is now offered a considerably wider choice of commercial radio stations in most local markets than was the case in the 1980’s, the industry is plagued with competitors who are all trying to move towards the same middle ground [see blog]. In yet another war of attrition that the regulator has lost again and again, many stations have stretched the definition of their prescribed programme formats to (and often beyond) their limits. This has created a situation where stations that are (by the regulator’s definition) meant to be complementary are in fact found to be competing for the same audience demographic and for the same advertisers in the very same market, by playing exactly the same music. This leads to substantial market ‘cannibalisation’ whereby competitors merely steal audience from each other, rather than attract listeners from the biggest competitor, the BBC.

l.   The decline of the music industry

Commercial radio in the UK, modelled on ‘BBC Radio One’, has always relied upon the universal popularity of ‘popular music’ to be the cornerstone of its programmes’ appeal. Until around 1990, almost everyone in the UK had a common notion of what a ‘pop hit’ was. But from the time that ‘Radio One’ refused to play the first ‘house music’ record that reached Number One in the singles chart, it was obvious that such communal experiences were on their way out. The subsequent rise of ‘dance’ music amongst young people polarised popular music and led to a substantially fractured music market. Now, the market for singles is all but dead, CD sales are at an all-time low, and the cult of ‘celebrity’ has replaced the cult of ‘pop stars’. Frankly, commercial radio stations have almost no idea any more what music they should play to attract listeners.

[Excerpt from ‘A Brief History Of United Kingdom Commercial Radio & A Strategy To Create Genuinely Local Radio‘, Grant Goddard, 2005, 33 pages]

[First blog published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/10/new-upstarts-clobber-complacent.html ]

The birth and near death of licensed black music radio in London : 2010 : Choice FM, London

 31 March 1990 was the memorable day when London‘s first licensed [South London community of interest] black music station, ‘Choice 96.9 FM’, arrived on-air. Until then, the availability of black music on legal radio had been limited to a handful of specialist music shows, even though about half of the singles sales chart was filled with black music. The decision by then regulator the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA] to license a London black music station was part of a huge government ‘carrot and stick’ campaign to rid the country of pirate radio. On the one hand, new draconian laws had been introduced that made it a criminal offence even to wear a pirate radio tee-shirt or display a pirate radio car sticker. On the other hand, the establishment knew that some kind of olive branch had to be offered to the pirate stations and their large, loyal listenership.

Many pirate stations, having voluntarily closed down in the hope of becoming legitimate, were incensed when the IBA instead selected Choice FM for the new South London FM license. Its backers had no previous experience in the London pirate radio business, but had previously published ‘Root’ magazine for the black community in the 1970’s. Although it was impossible for one station to fill the gap left by the many pirates, Choice FM tried very hard to create a format that combined soul and reggae music with news for South London’s black community, which was precisely what its licence required. The station attracted a growing listenership and it brought a significant new audience to commercial radio that had hitherto been ignored by established stations. With Choice FM, the regulator succeeded in fulfilling two aspects of public broadcasting policy: widening the choice of stations available to the public; and filling gaps in the market for content that only pirate radio had supplied until then.

In 2000, Choice FM won a further licence to cover North London with an additional transmitter. For the first time, the station was now properly audible across the whole capital and had access to more listeners and more potential advertising revenues. Its listening doubled and, at its peak in 2006, Choice FM achieved a 2.8% share, placing it ahead of ‘TalkSport’ and ‘BBC London’ in the capital. Choice FM had no direct competitor in London, although indirectly some of its music had always overlapped ‘KISS FM’. The station’s future looked rosy.

However, the Choice FM shareholders must have realised just how much their little South London station was worth, at a time when commercial radio licences were being acquired at inflated prices. Already, in 1995, Choice FM shareholders had won a second licence in Birmingham, but had then sold the station in 1998 for £6m to the Chrysalis plc group, who turned it into another local outlet for its network dance music station ‘Galaxy FM’. At a stroke, the black community in Birmingham had lost a station that the regulator had awarded to serve them. Black radio in Birmingham was dead. The die was cast.

The then regulator, the Radio Authority, had rubber-stamped this acquisition, stating that it would not operate against the public interest. The Authority requested some token assurances: at least one Afro-Caribbean member on the station’s board; an academy for training young people, especially from the black community, in radio skills; and market research about the impact of the format change on the black community. None of these made any difference to what came out the loudspeaker. Birmingham’s black community was sold down the river.

Changes in UK media ownership rules were on the horizon that would soon allow commercial radio groups to own many more stations within a local market. As a result, in 2001, the UK’s then largest radio group, Capital Radio plc, acquired 19% of Choice FM’s London station for £3.3m with an option to acquire the rest. In 2003, it bought the remaining 81% for £11.7m in shares, valuing the London station at £14.4m. The Choice FM shareholders had cashed in their chips over a five-year period and had generated £21m from three radio licences. What would happen to Choice FM London now?

Graham Bryce, managing director of Capital Radio’s London rock station ‘Xfm’ (which Capital had acquired in 1998 for £12.6m), said then:

“Our vision is to build Choice into London’s leading urban music station, becoming the number one choice for young urban Londoners. Longer term, we intend to fully exploit the use of digital technology to build Choice nationally into the UK’s leading urban music station and the number one urban music brand.”

Capital Radio and subsequent owners seemed to want to turn Choice FM into a station that competed directly with KISS FM (owned by rival EMAP plc). But they never seemed to understand that KISS FM was now a ‘dance/pop’ station, whereas Choice FM had always been firmly rooted in the black music tradition of soul, reggae and R&B. Such semantics seemed to be lost on Choice FM’s new owners and on the regulator, but certainly not on Choice FM’s listeners, who had no interest in Kylie Minogue songs.

In 2004, Capital Radio moved Choice FM out of its South London base and into its London headquarters in Leicester Square. The station’s final link with the black community of South London it had been licensed to serve was discarded. In 2005, Capital Radio merged with another radio group, GWR plc, to form GCap Media plc. In March 2008, [offshore] Global Radio Ltd bought GCap Media for £375m. In July 2008, Choice FM managing director Ivor Etienne was suddenly made redundant. One of the station’s former founder shareholders commented:

“I’m disappointed that the new management decided to relieve Ivor Etienne so quickly. My concern is that I hope they will be able to keep the station to serve the community that it was originally licensed for.”

However, from this point forwards, it was obvious that new owner Global Radio had no interest in developing Choice FM as one of its key radio brands. In the most recent quarter, the station’s share of listening fell to an all-time low of 1.1% (since its audience has been measured Londonwide). Sadly, the station is now a shadow of its former self, even though it holds the only black music commercial radio licence in London (BBC digital black music station ‘1Xtra’ has failed to dent the London market, with only a 0.3% share).

This week, news emerged from Choice FM that its reggae programmes, which have been broadcast during weekday evenings since the station opened, will be rescheduled to the middle of the night (literally). One of the UK’s foremost reggae DJ‘s, Daddy Ernie, who has presented on Choice FM since its first day, will be relegated to the graveyard hours when nobody is listening. From 2003, after the Capital Radio takeover, reggae songs have been banished from the 0700 to 1900 daytime shows on Choice FM. Now the specialist shows will be removed from evenings, despite London being a world centre for reggae and having more reggae music shops than Jamaica.

Station owner Global Radio responded to criticism of these changes in ‘The Voice’ newspaper: “Choice [FM] has introduced a summer schedule which sees various changes to the station including the movement of some of our specialist shows.”

Once again, the regulator will roll over obligingly and rubber-stamp these changes. For Global Radio, the endgame must be to transform the standalone Choice FM station into a London outlet for its Galaxy FM network. At present, London-based advertisers and agencies can only listen to Galaxy on DAB or via the internet. A London Galaxy station on FM would bring in more revenue for the brand as a result of more listening hours and its higher profile in the advertising community. It would also provide a direct competitor to KISS FM London (ironic, because Galaxy FM had been launched in 1990 by an established commercial radio group as an out-of-London imitation of successful, London-only KISS FM). Global Radio’s argument to persuade the regulator will probably be that Choice FM’s audience has fallen to uneconomic levels. And whose fault was that?

Already, Global Radio’s website tells us that “Choice FM is also included as part of the Galaxy network” which “consists of evolving mainstream music supported by entertaining and relatable presenters.” And yet, according to Ofcom, Choice FM’s licence is still for “a targeted music, news and information service primarily for listeners of African and Afro-Caribbean origin in the Brixton area but with cross-over appeal to other listeners who appreciate urban contemporary black music.” How can both these assertions be true of a single station?

For the black community in London, and for fans of black music, this will be the final straw. Just as happened in Birmingham, the new owner and the regulator will have collectively sold Choice FM’s listeners down the river. Another station that used to broadcast unique content for a unique audience will have been wilfully destroyed in order to make it almost the same as an existing station, playing almost the same content. We have many commercial radio stations, but less and less diversity in the music they play. Radio regulation has failed us.

For Choice FM, the writing was on the wall in 2003 when Capital Radio bought the station and one (unidentified) former DJ commented:

“Choice [FM] was there for a reason [to be a black music station for black people], but that reason changed [since] 13 years ago. That’s why you’ve got over 30 pirate stations in London. If Choice FM kept to the reason why they started, you wouldn’t need all them stations. But Choice has become a commercial marketplace. They’ve sold the station out and they should just say they’ve sold the station out. What’s wrong with that? They have sold the station that was set up for the black community and they know they’ve done the black community wrong. But they’ve made some money and they’ve sold it. Why not let your listeners know?”

For me personally, as a black music fan and having listened to Daddy Ernie for twenty years, I am much saddened. In the 1970’s and 80’s, I had found little on the radio that interested me musically, so I listened to pirate stations and my own records. During those two decades, I actively campaigned for a wider range of radio stations to be licensed in the UK and, by the 1990’s, I had played a direct role in making that expansion of new radio services happen successfully. Where did it get us? Now, years later, I have gone back to listening mostly to pirate radio and my own records (and internet radio). I am sure I am not the only one.

The radio industry and the regulator seem not to understand one important reason why radio listening and revenues have been declining for most of the last decade. They need to examine how, through their decisions, they have consistently sold down the river their station audiences and the very citizens whom their radio licenses were specifically meant to serve. Listeners vote with their ‘off’ buttons when station owners renege on their licence promises and the regulator lets them. Choice FM is sadly just one example.

In 2006, a lone enlightened Ofcom officer, Robert Thelen-Bartholomew, had asked at a radio conference:

“Is there room to bring the content of illegal stations into the fold? One way or another, whether we like it or not, we have a large population out there listening to illegal radio. Why do they listen? We are trying to find out. But, if you listen to the stations, they are producing slightly different content and output [from licensed stations]. Some of it is very high quality. Some of it is very interesting. So, what options are there for bringing some of that content into mainstream radio?”

Seemingly, none. The last FM commercial radio licence the regulator offered in London was more than a decade ago. Last year, when two small South London FM stations (one licensed for a black music format) were closed by their owner, the regulator unilaterally decided not to re-advertise their commercial radio licences (see my story here). A pirate radio station has not been awarded a commercial radio licence by the regulator for two decades.

Why do pirate radio stations still exist? Because, just as in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there are huge gaps in the market for radio content that – in spite of BBC radio, commercial radio and their regulators – remain unfilled. It is no coincidence that the share of listening to ‘other’ radio stations (i.e. not BBC radio and not commercial radio) in London is near its all-time high at 3.1%.

Farewell, Choice FM. I knew you well for twenty years.

And, irony of ironies, we are in Black Music Month.

[thanks to Sharleen Anderson]

[Originally published in 2010 at https://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/choice-fm-rip-birth-and-near-death-of.html . Three years subsequently, ‘The Guardian’ published a remarkably similar, shorter article ‘RIP Choice FM‘ authored by Boya Dee.]

[Re-blogged now at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-birth-and-near-death-of-licensed.html ]

Diversity within UK radio workforce largely confined to stations targeting minorities : 2010 : BBC Trust

 “Leadership of the [UK broadcast] industry appears to remain in the hands of predominantly white, able-bodied men”. Broadcast Training & Skills Regulator, Equal Opportunities Report 2008

In the United States, ‘diversity’ has been described as:

  • One of the “paramount goals of broadcast regulation in America”; 
  • “One of the foundation principles in communications policy”; 
  • “A broad principle to which appeal can be made on behalf of both neglected minorities and of consumer choice, or against monopoly and other restrictions”. 

American Professor Philip Napoli portrayed the objective of ‘diversity’ in US broadcasting policy as a derivative of First Amendment goals to promote informed decision-making, cultural pluralism, citizen welfare and a well-functioning democracy. Napoli described the ‘diversity’ objective in terms of a ‘marketplace of ideas’:

“Thus, the marketplace of ideas has been conceived by the courts, legal scholars, and policymakers as a key dimension of First Amendment freedoms, in which citizens are free to choose from a wide range of ideas (content diversity), delivered from a wide range of sources (source diversity). The citizens then partake of this diversity (exposure diversity) to increase their knowledge, encounter opposing viewpoints, and become well-informed decision-makers who are better capable of fulfilling their democratic responsibilities in a self-governing society”. 

Napoli created a flowchart that outlined the primary dimensions of diversity, their component parts and their presumed relationships:

Source Diversity → Content Diversity →        Exposure Diversity

1. Ownership 1. Program-Type Format 1. Horizontal

a. Programming      2. Demographic          2. Vertical

b. Outlet          3. Idea/Viewpoint

2. Workforce

In the United States, it was thought that the ultimate public policy goal of ‘exposure diversity’ could be achieved through significant regulatory intervention in the broadcast industry to forcibly create the antecedents ‘source diversity’ and ‘content diversity’. However, the latter interventions have remained mere proxies for the policy goal and, from empirical evidence over several decades of intervention, Napoli concluded that:

  • “The expectation that increased diversity of sources leads to increased diversity of content is far from a certainty
  • It may be that increases in content diversity should be considered essentially meaningless from a policy perspective if the additional content is ignored by the audience”. 

By contrast, in the United Kingdom, ‘diversity’ has not been a prime policy objective of broadcast regulation. In part, this derives from the historical difference in the development of broadcasting between the two countries. In the United States, broadcasting evolved as a wholly commercial industry, propelled by competing stations serving local markets. In Europe, the model was state-controlled broadcast monopolies serving national audiences, supplemented only relatively recently by commercial competitors. In the US, broadcast evolution has been bottom-up, whilst the European model was entirely top-down.

More recently in Europe, ‘diversity’ has come to be recognised as an important policy issue in media regulation. In 2003, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers described ‘cultural diversity’ as an “essential public interest objective” in its member states’ measures to promote the democratic and social contribution of digital broadcasting. 

In the UK, a report commissioned by government agency NESTA in 2001 concluded that:

  • “Cultural diversity amongst viewers, broadcast employees, producers and broadcast suppliers has noticeably worsened during the last ten years
  • Over the last decade, there have been a decline in the numbers of black people employed in influential positions in broadcasting; a decline in the numbers of programmes targeting black viewers and a decline in the numbers of black-owned production companies being commissioned by broadcasters
  • Diversity tools such as ethnic minority supplier targets; contract compliance; ring fenced resources; and publicly available monitoring data, have been recommended by a variety of industry organisations but have not been adopted by many broadcasters”. 

The ‘diversity’ issue in broadcasting was placed centre stage when (as explained in a BBC presentation):

“In April 2000, a man stood up at the Race In The Media Awards in London and said … ‘The BBC needs to change dramatically if it is to be a serious player in 21st Century Britain.’ His name was Greg Dyke, Director General of the BBC”. 

As a result, then BBC director of sport, Peter Salmon, was appointed to champion cultural diversity within the BBC, and he pledged:

“Changing the culture of the BBC has been crucial to ensuring an atmosphere in which diversity can flourish. The ‘One BBC’ initiative, which encourages risk-taking, honest discussions, creativity and dynamism across the whole of the BBC, has been an integral part of supporting our wider aims around diversity – a BBC fit for the 21st Century Britain”. 

A decade after Dyke’s statement, it is instructive to document the levels of ‘diversity’ achieved in the UK radio industry as a whole, as well as in BBC radio. This is intended to help benchmark the extent to which independently commissioned radio content satisfies the ‘diversity’ requirement stipulated in the BBC Agreement. Borrowing the framework of Napoli’s flowchart, the issues of ‘source diversity’, ‘content diversity’ and ‘exposure diversity’ are examined in turn.

SOURCE DIVERSITY

1.  Ownership

As a consequence of the Licence Fee system by which public broadcasting is funded, it could be argued that the BBC belongs to all paying households in the United Kingdom. The headline data on the composition of the population demonstrate that:

  • 50.9% of the total UK population are female (31.0 million); 
  • 7.9% of the total UK population belong to ethnic minorities (4.6 million); 
  • 17.2% of the total UK population are disabled (10.6 million); 
  • 16.2% of the total UK population live in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland (6.9 million); 
  • 5.4% of the total population of Great Britain believe in non-Christian religions (3.1 million). 

The increasing ‘diversity’ of the UK population in the 21st Century theoretically translates into a more diverse collective ownership of the BBC. Each of us expects something back from BBC radio in the form of content that reflects our particular citizenship, be that our gender, our geographical location, our ethnicity or simply our love of jazz music. This multiplicity of competing demands obviously presents a major challenge for the BBC, much of whose content is broadcast to mass audiences on national Networks.

CHART: Market shares of the commercial radio sector by owner (% share of listening to commercial radio in Q4 2009)

In the commercial radio broadcast sector, consolidation permitted by the Communications Act 2003 has resulted in more concentrated ownership of the UK’s more than 300 commercial stations. Whereas, eight years ago, the three largest station owners accounted for 54% of commercial radio listening, they accounted for 75% in Q4 2009. The largest commercial radio group, Global Radio, was responsible for 39% of commercial radio listening in Q4 2009. 

At the same time, the number of commercial radio analogue stations has increased substantially from 106 in 1990 to more than 300 presently and, as a result, a more diverse range of content is now offered to listeners.  For example, the first commercial radio station to target an ethnic audience was licensed in 1990, and the first religious station in 1995. The DAB digital radio platform has also carried an increasing number of stations, although the reach of these services has been limited by the slow public take-up of DAB receiver hardware.

Ofcom does not publish data on the diversity of ownership of commercial radio licensees. However, the ownership of commercial radio would appear to have narrowed substantially as a result of consolidation. Although it is clearly not the BBC’s responsibility to balance the impact of less diverse ownership within the commercial radio sector, it nevertheless highlights the imperative for BBC radio to reflect the increasing diversity of the population it serves.

Napoli’s second issue of programming ownership has little relevance for the UK radio market because the overwhelming majority of content broadcast by both BBC and commercial radio is originated by the broadcaster itself, rather than sourced externally. Hence, the diversity of programme ownership is largely a product of the diversity in ownership of the broadcast outlets.

2.  Workforce

Empirical data outlining the diversity of the radio broadcasting workforce derive from three sources: Skillset, the Broadcast Training & Skills Regulator and the BBC.

Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the creative media industries, conducted an Employment Census in 2009 which estimated that 19,900 persons were employed in the radio broadcasting industry (BBC and commercial). Of the total:

  • 16% were freelance
  • 47% were female
  • 7.9% were from ethnic minorities
  • 2.6% were disabled. 

These results were extrapolated from only 77 completed questionnaires returned from employers in the broadcast radio sector and from 9 in the community radio sector.  This response rate may also explain Skillset’s estimate that, of 400 chief executives employed in radio broadcasting, 100 are freelance, 100 are female, 50 are from ethnic minorities and 50 are disabled. 

Within its analysis of employment in the radio sector, Skillset noted that:

  • Women make up almost half the workforce, a greater proportion than that of the audiovisual industry as a whole
  • The radio industry employs a low proportion of ethnic minority staff relative to its locations in London, Northwest and Southeast England, where 60% of the radio workforce is located
  • In London, 11% of the radio workforce is from ethnic minorities, whereas 25% of the capital’s population of working age is from ethnic minorities
  • Disabled people comprise a higher proportion of the radio workforce than in the audiovisual industry as a whole
  • The age profile of the radio workforce is slightly older than that of the creative media workforce as a whole. 

Skillset’s ‘Diversity Strategy’ for the media sector stated:

“Diversity, the drive to create a genuinely inclusive culture, is increasingly recognised as a business critical issue. Managing diversity successfully helps business to respond effectively to ever more diverse markets and to achieve new levels of creativity and innovation. … However, one look at the overall demographic profile of the sector’s workforce and it becomes apparent that there is still a long way to go to make it truly inclusive of our society as a whole”. 

Skillset estimated that 48% of the total radio industry workforce is employed by the BBC, 43% by commercial radio, and 9% by community radio.  Skillset found that the proportion of freelancers in the commercial radio sector was twice the proportion working in BBC radio. 

The Broadcast Training & Skills Regulator [BTSR] collects data from broadcasters regarding the promotion of equal opportunities and training, as required by Section 337 of the Communications Act 2003. Broadcasters employing fewer than 21 staff (the majority of local commercial radio stations) are exempt from this requirement to supply data. The latest BTSR report, based on 2008 data, collated returns from 29 companies in radio, and nine companies working in both radio and television.  Unfortunately, data from the latter nine bi-media companies (which probably include the BBC, Bauer and UTV) are not separated into ‘radio’ and ‘television’, making it impossible to build up a complete picture of the radio sector.

BTSR data from the returns of 29 radio-only companies found that 7,021 people were employed in radio broadcasting in 2008, of which:

  • 46.1% were female, of which:
    • 12.7% at board level were female
    • 31.8% in senior management were female
    • 64.2% in administrative & support functions were female
    • 38.4% on freelance or contract basis were female
  • 3.2% were from ethnic minorities, of which:
    • 11.4% at board level (9 persons) were from ethnic minorities
    • 3.6% in senior management (7 persons) were from ethnic minorities
    • 2.5% in administrative & support functions were from ethnic minorities
    • 1.4% on freelance or contract basis were from ethnic minorities
  • 0.4% were disabled (30 persons)
    • 1.3% at board level (1 person) were disabled
    • 0% in senior management were disabled
    • 0.1% on freelance or contract basis were disabled. 

Because this data must be assumed to exclude BBC radio personnel, it would seem to indicate relatively low levels of diversity achieved by respondents from the commercial radio sector within the BTSR sample.

BTSR noted that, for the broadcast industry as a whole, reports published by Ofcom “indicated that little progress was being made by the industry overall in promoting equality of opportunity”. It concluded:

“Despite several broadcasters taking some action to promote Equal Opportunities, the employment data collected for this report indicates that barriers persist to recruiting people with a disability, in particular, as well as people from minority ethnic groups, to the industry. It has been commented on elsewhere that the broadcast industry lacks a strategic approach to managing equality and diversity. Indeed, the results of this analysis indicate that very few individual broadcasters have a strategic approach to managing Equal Opportunities or diversity”. 

Across its total workforce, the BBC has adopted numerical goals for achieving diversity. The current targets for delivery by December 2012 are:

  • 12.5% from ethnic minorities (actual 12.2% at 31 December 2009)
  • 7% from ethnic minorities in senior management (actual 5.6% at 31 December 2009)
  • 5.5% disabled (actual 4.3% at 31 December 2009)
  • 4.5% disabled in senior management (actual 3.4% at 31 December 2009). 

Skillset’s 2006 Employment Census found that, in BBC radio, 11% of the workforce was from ethnic minorities and noted that “the majority of the BBC workforce (some 60%) is based in London, where 24% of the working population is from an ethnic minority”.  In contrast, it found that only 3% of the commercial radio workforce was from ethnic minorities, a proportion close to the BTSR data.  From this evidence, BBC radio appears to be achieving considerably greater ethnic diversity amongst its workforce than the commercial radio sector.

CHART: BBC Audio & Music division workforce diversity

Analysis of the workforce diversity data for the BBC’s Audio & Music division (also referred to in this report as ‘BBC Network Radio’) at year-end 2009 showed that it achieved above average diversity for gender, but below average for ethnic minorities and the disabled, compared to the BBC as a whole. Much of Audio & Music’s complement of ethnic minority staff was accounted for by two digital radio Networks, 1Xtra and the Asian Network, both of which target ethnic minority audiences. These results highlight the relatively low ethnic diversity in the workforces of the BBC’s longer established radio Networks such as Radio 2, 3 and 4, particularly as all are London-based.

In January 2009, the trade union BECTU and the Radio Independents Group had organised an event in London specifically aimed at encouraging ethnic minority professionals to work in independent radio production. The publicity for the ‘Move On Up’ open day emphasised the significance of the independent radio production sector as a means to secure employment in the radio broadcast industry:

“Working with radio indies is a key route into the industry, and engaging with these executives provides a whole new set of opportunities”.

[Excerpt from my ‘independent’ 245-page report ‘Independent Radio Productions Commissioned By The BBC‘ for the BBC Trust in 2010]

[Commissioned by the BBC Trust to research, author and present a report on its independent productions to a meeting of its main board, I pursued interviews with BBC Radio managers. Some refused to meet, some never supplied requested data and some merely patronised me, seemingly oblivious that they were public servants whose salaries and generous pensions were funded by the British population. My supposedly ‘independent’ report was edited line-by-line by the BBC’s Gareth Barr who insisted several chapters be expunged into appendices. I was not invited to the board meeting that belatedly considered the edited version of my report which now omitted all appendices (including this and my previous blog post). During my research, the BBC’s then Senior Diversity Manager had generously offered me relevant data to create the above chart of BBC Radio workforce diversity. Within months, her ten-year tenure at the BBC ended.]

[Originally blog published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/06/diversity-within-uk-radio-workforce.html ]

KISS FM rejected, government awards first London-wide radio station in 16 years to its jazz codger chums : 1989 : Jazz FM, London

 Alongside the revolution in television broadcasting, a similar battle of the airwaves is being waged on the radio. Will this forever wipe away the narrow choices offered by existing stations? Or is it possible to have faith in a revolution being waged from Downing Street? Grant Goddard examines the background to the first franchise application in London and looks at the way ahead for both winners and losers.

It was a little after 6am when Gordon Mac made his first phone call to the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA]. This was the long-awaited day when it would be announced whether his station ‘KISS FM’ had won the new London radio licence. But, despite an assurance that someone would be at work in the IBA’s Radio Division at this time, a recorded message merely told him to call again during normal office hours.

Mac was bursting to know whether the last seven month’s work making a huge written application to the IBA had been a success. KISS FM had earned an enviable reputation as London’s best dance music station during four years of pirate broadcasting.

But transmissions had been stopped from December ’88, in line with the government’s demands, to try and win the single London FM licence advertised by the IBA.

Mac left home in a hurry and drove across town to the KISS FM office in Finsbury Park. The rail strike had already clogged the streets with traffic, leaving him too much time to ponder the outcome of this crazy licence lottery.

By the time he reached the office just after 8am, the day’s post had already been delivered. The embossed IBA envelope enclosed a two-page letter, but the second sentence said it all: “I am afraid the decision is, for you and your colleagues, a disappointing one.”

Thirty other applicants were opening similarly apologetic letters across the city, but there was one group who could now celebrate in style – ‘London Jazz Radio’ [LJR] had just won the first new city-wide music radio licence since ‘Capital Radio’ in 1973.

The IBA’s press conference that afternoon was a strangely defensive affair. There were not many questions about LJR, but plenty of time was spent discussing why KISS FM had failed to win. Though the IBA refused to elaborate on the relative placings of the 31 losers, KISS FM was definitely in the short-list of five or six, and most probably the runner-up.

The awkward sensitivity shown towards KISS FM’s rejection reflects an awareness that they were certainly the public’s choice for a new London station. KISS FM was the only applicant to have already established a strong awareness among Londoners of its name, its music and its presenters.

The recent success of KISS FM team members Coldcut, Jazzie B, Richie Rich and Derek B in the pop charts has confirmed the station’s role as an important catalyst in the growth of home-produced dance music.

A further embarrassment was caused as this affair was the second occasion in recent years when a carrot has been dangled in front of pirate broadcasters to induce them to quit the airwaves. And the second time the carrot has been unexpectedly pulled away at the last minute.

The first voluntary pirate shutdown happened in 1985 when the Home Office encouraged them to apply for experimental community radio licences. Then, after lengthy prevarication and the receipt of 286 applications, the plan was abandoned.

The second carrot was offered last year with the unveiling of the IBA’s ‘incremental contract’ scheme for 21 new stations. Only those pirates who quit the airwaves before 1 January 1989 would be allowed to apply, so several stations (including KISS FM) duly complied and shut down. So now that the London licence has been awarded to a wholly non-pirate group, it was hardly surprising to see yet another carrot pulled out of the bag and shoved in KISS FM’s face.

“KISS FM put in a very strong application,” admits Peter Baldwin, the IBA’s director of radio. “IBA members felt very strongly that there were a number of applicant groups who could have been offered a contract, and we are seeking the government’s agreement to release additional frequencies so we can broaden the offers to these applicant groups.”

So KISS FM could be given a licence soon as a sort of prize for runners up?

“One has no idea where KISS FM will come in that,” says Baldwin, “but I’m bound to say that, given the government’s attitude towards pirate broadcasting, I think it would be imprudent for anyone to go back on the air if they have an aspiration towards broadcasting [legally].”

But this third carrot sounds equally precarious if it depends on the IBA’s success in evincing government agreement to more stations.

“Two more FM frequencies could be available in a short space of time – six to nine months,” explains Baldwin. “It would be for the government to decide. The IBA’s view is ‘should the listeners of London who haven’t got certain genres of broadcasting have to wait 18 months for that moment to arrive?’”

So the message to KISS FM is: sit tight, don’t do anything stupid (like return to piracy) and, some day soon, you may yet win a licence if we can persuade the Home Secretary of its political expediency.

Back in the KISS FM office, the disappointment of not winning is evident in the grim faces of a small group of station staff and presenters who are answering a stream of phone calls from well-wishers and listeners wanting to know the outcome. Three bottles of champagne sit unopened on the corner of Gordon Mac’s desk, where they remain unnoticed for the next week.

Mac himself is busy supplying quotes to enquiring journalists and does a live phone interview on the BBC London station ‘GLR’ with sympathetic soul DJ Dave Pearce. Some members of the KISS FM team who are not so close to the sharp end of the operation are unenthused by the carrot consolation prize, but Mac understands the need for cautious diplomacy now more than ever.

Seven months have already been spent raising more than £1million in capital, and a five-figure sum has been sunk into the application procedure to date.

A carefully worded press release is prepared, expressing “extreme disappointment” that KISS FM did not win the licence, but backing the IBA’s demand for more frequencies to be allocated to further London stations. KISS FM’s campaign focuses on 104.8 FM which becomes free in November when ‘Radio 1’ vacate their temporary London channel.

KISS FM presenter Heddi still feels the need for more direct action to satisfy the dozens of listeners who have phoned up asking what they can do to help. Over the next weekend, she visits several London clubs and solicits more than 3,000 letters of support addressed to the Home Office demanding the release of further frequencies for stations such as KISS FM. Gordon Mac delivers them personally to Douglas Hurd’s office exactly a week after the IBA’s fatal announcement. No acknowledgement or response is returned.

Mac seems to be treading a fine emotional line between huge personal disappointment at the outcome of several years’ hard work and cautious optimism that a licence still remains within the realms of possibility.

“Whether it takes three months or three years,” he says to GLR, “we will carry on campaigning until we are given the chance to be a legal radio station in London.”

In a more salubrious part of town, champagne bottles are being put to good use. London Jazz Radio’s nine-year campaign for a licence has paid off handsomely, particularly with its development of an all-party parliamentary lobby to argue the merits of its case.

The station’s founder, David Lee, is a 59-year-old jazz musician whose distinguished career has included TV themes, jingles and the writing of Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren’s 1960 hit ‘Goodness Gracious Me’. He wrote to the IBA suggesting the idea but received a faintly dismissive reply explaining (wrongly, in retrospect) that new legislation would be necessary before such a station could be introduced.

So Lee started on the road for the necessary legislation to be enacted. “I happened to bump into a guy I’d known but hadn’t seen for over 20 years, who was an amateur drummer but also a member of the Gilbey’s Gin family and working as a board member of Grand Metropolitan Hotels.” This was Jasper Grinling, ex-managing director of International Distillers, ex-director of corporate affairs with Grand Met, and now chairman of LJR.

“He happened to know an MP by virtue of his high rank,” continues Lee, “so we asked him and, in a very short time, we had a 14-strong all-party group. I call it my ‘Parliamentary Jazz Band’. Based upon that parliamentary support, we felt we could start to move. We would literally have got nothing without it. It allowed us to get the ear of people of reason.”

The MP Bowen Wells is now a director of LJR, as is Lord Rayne, ex-chairman of London Merchant Securities plc. Fellow shareholders include Lord Colwyn, Lord Dormand, Earl Alexander of Tunis, Viscount Portman and four other MPs – Jim Lester, Tom Pendry, John Prescott and Nicholas Scott.

The “people of reason” Lee reached included the Home Secretary himself. Before the award of the licence, Lee admitted: “I have great admiration for Douglas Hurd and, if it hadn’t been for his understanding, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today.”

“He was one of the first people to realise that it is quite wrong for a place the size of London not to have a station to represent so large a minority. He realised it and made sure those ‘people who know’ realised it.”

Indeed, Hurd on several occasions cited a London jazz station as an example of the new type of radio service he was intending to introduce. In retrospect, this should have been observed as an omen that parliamentary lobbying had already proven effective, long before the contract for the new London service was advertised.

The IBA are understandably keen to stress it was their decision to award the licence to LJR, based upon their assertion that the station will cater for a wide variety of musical tastes. Paul Brown, the IBA’s head of programming, explains: “LJR is a jazz radio station but, in assembling their application, they did a lot of research which told them that an audience would prefer to have a jazz radio station that provided a wide spectrum of jazz including, for example, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, salsa and also some of the big band performances.”

The station’s research showed that 41 per cent of those adults sampled liked to hear jazz on its own, while 63 per cent preferred to hear it mixed in with other styles of black music. But LJR’s own programme plans actually reject these findings and propose a fairly narrow jazz-dominated music policy.

A computerised playlist system is planned which will schedule one Afro-Caribbean record every two hours, one “boogaloo/soul” record every two hours, and one R&B record every 12 hours. Hardly a great concession to broader tastes.

Yet the IBA insist that LJR’s intended schedule also include “a good range of music styles derived from and related to jazz, including big band music, vocal standards, R&B and forms of Latin American jazz.” This statement is inconsistent with LJR’s own description of their output as “20th century jazz and jazz influenced music” in their ‘Promise of Performance’ – the legally binding statement of their programme plans.

Selecting such a specialised music station would have proven a hard decision for the IBA to defend, particularly when other applicants such as KISS FM were proposing to integrate jazz alongside many other styles of music. So have the IBA now insisted that LJR adopt a more catholic music policy in order to make their choice more politically acceptable?

“We are specifying that there must be a broad spectrum of output,” says the IBA’s Peter Baldwin, “and therefore what LJR accept will be a Promise of Performance that the IBA will write for them and not necessarily reflecting exactly what they applied for.”

Confidence in LJR’s ability to incorporate diverse and newer styles of ‘jazz-influenced music’ is not instilled by the station’s choice of senior staff. Apart from the presence of DJ Gilles Peterson on the board, the average age of the other nine directors is 56.

All this political manoeuvring is pretty galling for the unsuccessful bidders for the licence, who see accommodations being made for LJR’s shortcomings and the IBA adopting a defensive attitude towards their choice of winner. Several applicants made a positive commitment to jazz programmes alongside other neglected forms of music. KISS FM had already enrolled Gilles Peterson as a member of their own jazz presentation team.

When LJR comes on-air in February [1990], the proof of their commitment to these diverse music styles will be evident from their first day’s programmes. In the meantime, KISS FM can only wait for a Home Office decision as to whether additional frequencies will be allocated to further London stations. The KISS FM team will not return to pirate broadcasting, but will continue to campaign for the right to have a legal dance music station in London.

A week after the IBA’s announcement, Gordon Mac called a meeting of KISS FM’s staff and presenters to explain the whole situation. There was righteous indignation among many of those present that, once again, the government had pulled a fast one and made empty promises to the pirate community, while at the same time rewarding their own friends.

There were predictions that pirate activity in London would increase as a consequence of general ill-feeling towards the authorities. There was even an undercurrent that KISS FM had been duped by the second carrot-on-a-stick and would be foolish to wait for the outcome of a further open ended half-promise. Several members of the KISS FM team were absent from the meeting. Jonathan More and Matt Black (alias Coldcut), Hardrock Soul Movement, Jazzie B and Norman Jay were all in New York attending the ‘New Music Seminar’. It’s a dreadful irony that, while many of the individuals involved in KISS FM’s championing of British dance music have recently reaped huge popular success, the station itself is now off-air and still waiting for its day to come.

Last Monday, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd finally agreed to licence two more London-wide FM radio stations. After taking legal advice, the IBA has determined that it must publicly advertise these two new contracts, inviting bids from previous applicants and new groups by a November deadline. KISS FM will be one of more than 50 likely applicants, and the outcome will be announced by the end of the year.

The writer is a supporter of KISS FM’s campaign to secure the new London waveband.

[First published as ‘Kissed Off’, New Musical Express, 26 August 1989, p.31]

[This was a small part of the bigger story recounted in my book ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio to Big Business’ about pirate radio, the station’s subsequent licence win and successful relaunch]

[First blog published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/05/kiss-fm-rejected-government-awards.html ]

My application wins our tiny black music pirate station a valuable London-wide radio licence : 1989 : KISS 100 FM

 It was only just daylight when I suddenly realised that the phone was ringing. It seemed to take me ages to drag my weary body out of bed, as the phone continued to ring long and hard. Who on earth would want to phone me at this early hour on a Saturday morning? I toyed with the notion that it might be my former girlfriend, who seemed determined to inflict as much hurt on me as possible, despite our relationship having ended abruptly through her own infidelity and lies.

But it was not her. It was [‘KISS FM’ managing director] Gordon McNamee, calling me from his mobile phone. He said he was standing in the middle of his local park, walking his dog, accompanied by his mother. I could hear in the background that it was pouring with rain. McNamee asked if I had the home phone number of any of the Independent Broadcasting Authority [media regulator IBA] staff so that he could find out whether KISS FM had won the licence. I asked him why he was so anxious to find out at such an early hour in the morning. McNamee told me that ‘Music Week’ magazine’s radio correspondent, Bob Tyler, had rung him at home at around eight o’clock that morning to find out if he knew who had won the licences. McNamee admitted that he had heard nothing, despite knowing that the decisions had been made by the IBA at its Thursday meeting and should be announced imminently. McNamee told me that he had stayed at the KISS FM office [in Finsbury Park] all day Friday, but there had still been no phone call from the IBA, so he assumed that KISS FM had lost the licence for the second time, and had returned home.

Bob Tyler had phoned McNamee a second time at around nine o’clock that morning to say that he had just heard a rumour that KISS FM had won a licence, though there was still no means of official confirmation. McNamee, feeling agitated and frustrated, had decided to get out of bed and take his dog for a walk in the local park. Halfway across the park, it had started to pour with rain. Then, just as he, his mother and his dog had run for shelter, McNamee’s mobile phone had rung again. This time it was Richard Brooks, media editor of ‘The Observer’ newspaper, offering his congratulations to McNamee on KISS FM’s win of one of the two licences, and asking for a comment to include in the next day’s issue. McNamee thanked Brooks for his call, but emphasised that he himself had not been told the news and so would have to obtain official confirmation from the IBA before he could say anything publicly. Brooks assured him that he had seen a letter sent to one of the losing applicants which definitely stated that KISS FM and easy listening applicant ‘Melody Radio’ were the two winners. McNamee promised to ring him back as soon as possible.

There was jubilation in the park, despite the torrential rain. McNamee and his mother leapt up and down with excitement, watched by an astonished old man who was also sheltering from the storm. The old man asked them what all the fuss was about and, when McNamee told him he had just won a hotly contested radio licence, the old man offered him a celebration roll-your-own cigarette and apologised for not having a cigar. Now, McNamee needed to find out from the IBA if the news was true, and why it had been broken to him by a journalist, rather than in an official IBA communication. That was when he had rung me. I told McNamee that I probably had the home phone number of one of the IBA officers, if the paperwork had not disappeared from my flat, so I would find it and try to obtain official confirmation. I quickly found the home phone number of the IBA press officer, Stuart Patterson, on the top of an old press release he had sent me. I called him and, although he himself refused to confirm or deny whether KISS FM had won, he promised to arrange for someone from the IBA radio division to call me as soon as possible.

It was only a few minutes later that David Vick, the IBA’s principal radio development officer, called me. At first, he was pre-occupied with explaining to me the protocol of the IBA announcement, and did not tell me outright that KISS FM had won:

“Hi, it’s David Vick from the IBA. I gather you’re the only people who haven’t got the news officially yet … I’ve just had a quick word with Stuart, obviously … We’ve told the winners that they might expect calls from journalists. What we’re anxious not to happen, and maybe it’s a false hope now, is for journalists to ring losers before they’ve got their letters. But clearly, the Christmas post is so unpredictable that our best laid plans have fallen apart this morning.”

“I didn’t ring Stuart as a journalist,” I interrupted. “It was the KISS FM side … Did we get it or didn’t we?”

“Yes, of course you did,” answered Vick.

“Oh, brilliant,” I screamed. I was elated. Until now, I and the rest of the KISS FM team could only have dreamed of this moment when the IBA would ring us to say that we had won a radio licence. Now, it had really happened. I was very tired. I was still shattered from the long journey home [from a holiday in The Gambia the previous evening]. I had only just woken up, but I was also incredibly happy that my hard work on the licence application had won out in the end.

“Congratulations,” said Vick, while I gasped with joy at the other end of the call. He remained far more composed than I was right now, and he continued to explain the detail of the announcement: “I don’t know how The Observer got hold of it. Clearly, one of the losers has talked to The Observer fairly early on this morning, because they’ve been hot on the trail from quite early on. So congratulations on that.”

I was still laughing and whooping at my end of the conversation, as Vick continued: “We normally do ring winners on Saturday morning but, this time, we’ve been playing it so laid back and ultra cool that I hadn’t actually planned to do that. All the letters seem to have got through, but clearly some of the most serious applicants have given business addresses, and they’re the ones who haven’t actually got the letters. You’re not unique. We’ve had a vexed Lord Hanson [of Melody Radio, the other licence winner] ring us this morning, asking what’s going on and why is he being rung by journalists.”

Vick continued: “You and Lord Hanson have been in the identical situation this morning of being rung by The Observer and others at the crack of dawn, and not known what was going on … What we didn’t want was for losers who haven’t got their letters this morning to find out from the newspapers either on Sunday or ideally on Monday … We had a terrible botch-up with the Post Office on one of the previous months. And, this time, I rang the district postmaster yesterday afternoon and said ‘look, we’ve got another run of letters going through.’ And he said he’d do his best to catch them the moment they arrived at the sorting office and hustle them straight through for us. And he’s clearly done the job with unfailing skill and everything’s arrived this morning. But the ones going to business addresses, yours and Hanson’s and some of the other quite serious applicants, have ended up hearing about it through the grapevine as a result.”

“Oh, this is brilliant,” I gasped. I was still far from composed and I was barely taking in Vick’s pre-occupation with the minor points of the procedure. We had won! That was all that was important to me right there and then. We had won! Vick continued regardless: “We told everybody our press release would be [published] Tuesday morning. But I’ve spoken to Peter Baldwin [IBA director of radio] and Stuart [Patterson], and that’s clearly crazy now, so we’re going to issue the press release early Monday morning. So, if you could bear to at least smile inwardly and say as little as you can to the press until then …”

I was muttering words of agreement without really taking in all the detail that Vick was relating. He could tell my excitement was getting the better of me, so he suddenly changed gear: “Well done. We’ll obviously have a lot to do with each other in the months ahead. One of the things we’ve said in the letter is that, if you could come in [to the IBA office] and meet us all in the next couple of weeks, that would be super.”

“We would love to,” I replied, still giggling uncontrollably. Once more, Vick was keen to discuss the nitty gritty, right here and now on a Saturday morning: “Very well done. It was an excellent application. The trouble is that you’re going to get a lot of griping comment now from people saying that they [the IBA] only did it to keep the pirate lobby happy. The fact was that it was a bloody good application that got it on merit, because we certainly wouldn’t have given it to you if the application hadn’t been deserving of it.”

It was incredibly pleasing to hear Vick credit the KISS FM application after all the hard work I had put into it. I felt that, finally, I had been vindicated for my insistence to McNamee that the whole licence application had to be as perfectly presented as possible on this occasion. I thanked Vick for his kind comments, and he continued: “I think, to be honest, that the extra six months actually did you a lot of good. Not that the first application was bad or anything but, in this one, you had clearly learnt so much over the last six months, and you had strengthened it in so many ways. And, fortunately, by majoring on the new release aspect of the daytime [music] playlist, you’ve given us a very solid peg to hang the ‘diversity’ point on. Because, when ‘Capital [Radio]’ and others predictably start complaining, we can actually point to the fact that you are going to be playing the music before it gets in the charts, and they will play it after it gets in the charts, which gives greater diversity.”

Since its launch in 1973, Capital Radio had been London’s one and only commercial pop music station, and it was still eager to defend what it considered to be its own rightful territory – a monopoly over playing pop music in the capital. The IBA was charged with widening the choice of radio stations available to listeners, whilst not duplicating the existing output of Capital Radio. The emphasis I had placed in the KISS FM application on the station’s championing of new music had proven to be precisely the argument the IBA could use to defend a decision to award KISS FM the licence. Admittedly, Capital Radio did play dance music within its programmes, but it only played songs that were already in the ‘Top Forty’ singles chart. KISS FM would be playing mostly new releases, before they gained widespread popularity. My strategy for the KISS FM application had worked exactly as I had intended, which Vick confirmed as he continued to relate the detail: “The press release actually says that KISS FM has been chosen as a station that will be in the forefront of music tastes and that’s your market position, as we define it.”

McNamee must have returned home by now, so I gave his home telephone number to Vick and thanked him for calling me so promptly. It was absolutely brilliant news and I was still utterly ecstatic. I tried to phone McNamee straight away, but Vick must have managed to get through to him first. I continued re-dialling for several minutes, until the phone eventually rang. McNamee was shouting down the phone to me over the top of a loud conversation I could hear in the background:

“Grant, you c*nt,” he greeted me, in his typically perverse way. “We’ve got it! I can’t believe it! David Vick just phoned me and we went through the whole lot. I can’t fucking believe it.”

There was loud laughter in the background and McNamee already sounded drunk on the news, in spirit, if not in reality: “You’ve got a job! Your gamble worked out. We’ve all got a job. Fucking wonderful! It’s wonderful! It’s just unbelievable. I’m going to be down at Dingwalls [nightclub in Camden] tonight and the whole world will be, I should think. I’m going to phone everyone today. I’ll talk to you later on. I’ve got to phone all the bosses, and I’ll talk to you later.”

McNamee was right. My gamble had paid off. I had believed that KISS FM could win the licence, if only someone was prepared to work hard on the application this time around. Then, when McNamee had failed to take up the challenge, I had decided to take on the task myself. While McNamee had been pre-occupied with his initial failure, I had been determined to turn KISS FM’s second application into a winner. Asked subsequently what had persuaded the IBA to award KISS FM a radio licence, David Vick answered: “A well-researched application and musical knowledge.”

It was pleasing to know that my strategies had been proven correct. It was my detailed research and my belief in KISS FM’s musical expertise that had swung the licence bid. Now, here I was, having learnt the good news only hours after arriving back in the country. If KISS FM had lost its licence bid this second time around, I would have had no job to return to. Plus, my flat had been deliberately and spitefully emptied [by my former girlfriend whilst I had been away]. But these things did not matter to me anymore. The dream I had cherished for so many years of a legal black music radio station in London was about to become a reality at last. I had played my part in turning that dream into reality. I was absolutely thrilled. For me, it was literally a dream come true.

[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

[Originally blog published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-day-my-application-won-our-tiny.html ]

The genesis of black music radio in London … still unfulfilled : 1970-1984 : Radio Invicta 92.4

 I only knew ‘Roger Tate’ (real name Bob Tomalski) through listening to his programmes on the radio. He was a DJ on ‘Radio Invicta‘, London’s first soul music radio station, launched in 1970. Invicta was a pirate radio station. Back then, there were no legal radio stations in the UK other than the BBC.

The notion of a campaign for a soul music radio station for London had been a little premature, given that no kind of commercial radio had yet existed in Britain. But that is exactly what Radio Invicta did. As Roger Tate explained on-air in 1974:

“Who are Radio Invicta? You may well be asking. Well, we’re an all-soul music radio station. We’re more of a campaign than a radio station, I suppose. We believe in featuring more good soul music on the radio.”

By 1982, ‘Black Echoes‘ music paper reported that Radio Invicta was attracting 26,000 listeners each weekend for its broadcasts. By 1983, Radio Invicta had collected a petition of 20,000 signatures in support of its campaign for a legal radio licence. There was sufficient space on the FM band for London to have dozens more radio stations. By then, local commercial radio had existed in the UK for a decade. But nobody in power wanted to receive the station’s petition and Invicta’s Mike Strawson commented:

“I have tried to speak to the Home Office about it, but it shuts the door.”

Radio Invicta eventually closed for good on 15 July 1984, the date that the new ‘Telecommunications Act’ had dramatically increased the penalties for getting caught doing pirate radio to a £2,000 fine and/or three months in jail. By then, ‘Capital Radio’ had enjoyed its licence as London’s only commercial radio music station for eleven years. Its monopoly reign was still to run for a further six years.

It might have seemed in 1984 that Radio Invicta’s fourteen-year struggle to play soul music on the radio in London had come to absolutely nothing. The Invicta team went their separate ways after the pirate station’s closure. Roger Tate continued his career as a successful technology journalist. After his death in 2001, aged only forty-seven, one of his friends, Trevor Brook, spoke of Tate’s determination to play soul music on the radio in the face of opposition from the government and the radio ‘establishment.’ His eulogy at the funeral of his friend included these comments:

“The government told the story that there were no frequencies available. Now Bob was not stupid. He had enough technical knowledge to know that this was simply not true. So, either government officials were too dim to realise the truth of the situation … or they were just lying. Nowadays, we have 300 independent transmitters operating in those same wavebands, so you can probably work out which it was. Anyway, in Britain, the result was that any proper public debate about the possible merits of more radio listening choice was sabotaged by this perpetual claim that it was impossible anyway.

So, we had pirates. Other countries which had not liberalised the airwaves had pirates as well, but some of them took the refreshingly realistic approach that no harm was being caused, and they permitted unlicensed operations to continue until they got round to regularising the situation. Ambulances still reached their destinations and no aeroplanes fell out of the sky. Not so in this country though. The enforcement services here were too well funded and the established orthodoxy too well entrenched. That ‘frequency cupboard’ was going to be kept well and truly locked!

Bob had thrown himself into running a regular soul station, Radio Invicta. He built a studio, tore it apart and built a better one. He eventually sectioned off part of the flat as a separate soundproofed area. He built transmitters – and got them working. But Bob was nothing if not multi-skilled, and he excelled in producing the programmes themselves. Using nothing more impressive than an old four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, Bob would create highly polished jingles and station identifications. ‘Roger Tate, super soul DJ.’ Other stations, both official and unofficial, listened to what Bob and his colleagues did and their ideas were copied or imitated.

Faced with the authorities, Bob was remarkable, because he was absolutely fearless. He was certain they were in the wrong and, given enough time, were going to lose the battle. It was a war of attrition and only perpetual piracy was ever going to bring about change. And he was quite right about that. The government kept winning the battle in the courts but began to lose the moral one. Eventually the law was changed. 

Do we have free radio now? In the sense that anybody can decide to start up a new magazine, find the finance and get on with it, no, we don’t have that for radio. The process is bound up with a longwinded regulation and approval process involving a statutory body which has had its fingers burnt in the past by the odd bankruptcy and the odd scandal. So they play safe and issue more licences to those who already have stations. The consequence is that originality and creativity get crushed into blandness and mediocrity. My own teenagers constantly flip between stations in the car, but they don’t care enough about any of them to listen indoors. Fresh people don’t get to control stations. Behind boardroom doors, they might think it privately, but in what other industry would the chairman of the largest conglomerate in the market dare to say publicly that even the present regime was too open and, I quote, ‘was out of date and was letting inexperienced players into the market’? That is a disgraceful statement. Where would television, theatre, comedy, the arts, and so on be, if new and, by definition, inexperienced people didn’t get lots of exposure? The industry is stale, complacent and rotten. Bob, there are more battles out there and we needed you here.”

Ten years later, these words are just as pertinent. It is hard to believe that a bunch of enthusiastic soul music fans who wanted to play their favourite music to their mates could have posed such a threat to the established order. But the history of radio broadcasting in the UK has demonstrated repeatedly that ‘the great and the good’ consider the medium far too important to let control fall out of their hands. Their arguments, however ridiculous, were taken completely seriously because they were the establishment.

Peter Baldwin, deputy director of radio at the ‘Independent Broadcasting Authority’ [regulator], said in 1985:

“We wouldn’t want to be dealing with two current local stations [in one area]. If it’s Radio Yeovil [operating as the only commercial station in Yeovil], well, that’s okay … But we couldn’t subscribe to competition [for existing local commercial pop music station Swansea Sound] from Radio Swansea, unless it was in Welsh or concentrated on jazz – and there probably wouldn’t be sufficient demand for that kind of service.”

James Gordon (now Lord Gordon), then managing director of ‘Radio Clyde‘, wrote in ‘The Independent‘ newspaper in 1989:

“It has to be asked whether there is really evidence of pent-up demand from listeners for more localised neighbourhood stations … Eight to ten London-wide stations would be enough to cater for most tastes.”

David Mellor MP told the House of Commons in 1984:

“The government do not believe that it would be sensible or fair to issue pirate broadcasters with licences to broadcast. To do so, on the basis suggested by the pirate broadcasters, would be progressively to undermine the broadcasting structure that has evolved over the years.”

However, within five years, the government did indeed license a pirate radio station to broadcast in London. Once Invicta had disappeared in 1984, it was superseded by newer, more commercially minded, more entrepreneurial pirate radio stations – ‘JFM’, ‘LWR’, ‘Horizon’ – that played black music for Londoners. In 1985, a new pirate station called ‘KISS FM’ started, quite hesitantly at first. Its reign as a London pirate proved to be much shorter than Invicta’s but, by the time KISS closed in 1988, it was probably already better known than Invicta.

KISS FM went on to win a London radio licence in 1989 and re-launched legally in 1990. It carried with it the debt of a twenty-year history of black music pirate radio in London started by Radio Invicta and then pushed forward by hundreds of DJ’s who had worked on dozens of London black music stations. KISS FM would never have existed or won its licence without those pirate pioneers.

Sadly, the importance of KISS FM’s licence as the outcome of a twenty-year campaign seemed to be quickly forgotten by its owners and shareholders. The lure of big bucks quickly replaced pirate ideology during a period of history when ‘get rich quick’ was peddled by government as the legitimate prevailing economic philosophy. KISS FM lost the plot rapidly and soon became no more than a money-making machine for a faceless multimedia corporation.

Right now, there remains as big a gap between pirate radio and the licensed radio broadcasters as existed twenty years ago or even forty years ago. London’s supposedly ‘black music’ stations, KISS FM and ‘Choice FM‘, now sound too much of the time like parodies of what they could be. Whereas pirate radio in London still sounds remarkably alive, unconventional and creative. More importantly, only the pirates play the ‘tunes’ that many of us like to hear.

The issue of how black music was ignored by legal radio in London, and then betrayed by newly licensed black music radio stations, is on my mind because of my new book ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business.’ It documents a small part of the history of black music pirate radio in London, and it charts the transformation of KISS FM from a rag tag group of black music fanatics into a corporate horror story. I was on the inside of that metamorphosis and it was an experience that, even twenty years later, remains a sad and terrible time to recall.

In 1974, Roger Tate had wanted more black music to be heard on the radio in London. Ostensibly, that objective has been achieved. But the black music I hear played on white-owned stations in London (there is no black-owned station) is a kind of vanilla ‘K-Tel‘ ‘black music’ that is inoffensive and unchallenging.

If Croydon is the dubstep capital of the world, how come there is no FM radio station playing dubstep in Croydon, or even in London? How come I never hear reggae on the radio when London is one of the world cities for reggae? How come I had to turn to speech station ‘BBC Radio Four‘ to hear anything about the death of Gil Scott-Heron in May? Why is it that Jean Adebambo’s suicide went completely unremarked by radio two years ago?

Legitimate radio in London seems just as scared of contemporary cutting-edge black music as it was in the 1970’s when Roger Tate was trying to fill the gaping hole with Radio Invicta. Nothing has really changed. Except now there exists the internet to fill that gaping hole. And FM pirate radio in London continues to satisfy demands from an audience that legitimate radio has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t give a shit about. Is it any surprise that young people are deserting broadcast radio?

Forty years ago, I listened to Roger Tate and London pirates like Radio Invicta because they played the music I wanted to hear. Forty years later, I find it absolutely ridiculous that I am still listening to a new generation of London pirates because they still play the music I want to hear. As Trevor Brook suggested at Roger’s funeral, our radio system is so consumed by “blandness and mediocrity” that “the industry is stale, complacent and rotten.”

Roger Tate R.I.P. You may be gone, but you and your campaign at Radio Invicta are as necessary as ever today. Sad but true.

[First published by Grant Goddard: Radio Blog as ‘Radio Invicta: The Genesis Of Black Music Radio In London … Still Unfulfilled‘, 1 July 2011. Available as download.]

[Republished at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-genesis-of-black-music-radio-in.html ]

Mining for radio news in an editorial black hole : 2004-2007 : Paul Boon, The Radio Magazine

 Magazine editors. What do they do? “They create editorial calendars, develop story ideas, manage writers, edit content and manage the production process…” according to Google. Makes perfect sense. Except sometimes…

Journalism started for me in 1976 when I volunteered for student newspaper ‘Palatinate’ and attended regular meetings under editor George Alagiah who managed a team of section editors, discussed ideas for stories and sub-edited our writing efforts. Subsequently I contributed articles to many publications, including ‘rpm Weekly’, ‘City Limits’, ‘For The Record’, ‘Jazz Express’, ‘Broadcast’, ‘Music Week’, ‘Jocks’, ‘NME’, ‘Now Radio’, ‘Music & Media’ and ‘Radio World’, whose editorial systems worked in much the same way. There was dialogue, there were meetings, story ideas were passed upwards and downwards, teamwork and editorial direction were de rigueur.

In late 2004, lifelong radio industry buddy Bob Tyler called to say he was relinquishing his job as news editor of ‘The Radio Magazine’ and asked if I wanted to take over. I was desperate for paying work, having just returned from a poorly paid freelance contract in Cambodia and then been hung out to dry by ‘BBC World Service Trust’ whose promise of further, more lucrative work never materialised. I had been applying for radio-related job vacancies but none had resulted in an offer. This was the second occasion that Tyler had passed on his editorial jobs to me, for which I remain eternally grateful.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fDcJlHbzJhcOhJ-GAkFhU_xFcNXmLaqQ/preview

I knew ‘The Radio Magazine’ as the only weekly publication for the UK radio broadcast industry, published as a colour A5 booklet. In May 1986, it had been launched as a scrappy paid-for fanzine named ‘Now Radio’ by Howard Rose, former pirate radio presenter under the aliases Crispian St John and Jay Jackson, filled with gossip and opinion for wireless ‘anoraks’. In October 1992, I had begun to write and publish a weekly four-page ‘Radio News’ newsletter which I photocopied and distributed for free by mail to a small group of people I thought would be interested, not as a competitor to Rose but complementary since my focus was hard news, information and statistical analysis of ratings.

Unexpectedly, within weeks of my newsletter’s debut, Rose relaunched his fanzine as ‘The Radio Magazine’ with a new layout and new features that looked remarkably similar to mine, such as an events calendar and analysis of ratings. This seemed somewhat coincidental, given his fanzine’s prior six-year, 177-issue history. Any ambition to eventually transform my tiny newsletter into a paid-for magazine had been effectively scuttled, so I persevered for twenty issues before ceasing publication. Unfortunately, ‘good ideas’ prove impossible to copyright and I had already learnt to my cost that the radio industry included people not averse to taking credit for my innovations.

Nevertheless, twelve years later, I was so desperate for income that the opportunity to write for ‘The Radio Magazine’ had to be accepted. Rose had tragically died in 2002 during routine surgery, bizarrely one week after selling his magazine business to Sir Ray Tindle, a local newspaper and radio station owner. Paul Boon had taken over as managing editor and had employed acquaintance Bob Tyler as news editor until now. Boon was asking me what payment I would require to do the job. I quoted him the National Union of Journalists’ rate per word for contributions to the very smallest publication. He responded by saying he would only pay half that rate. I was disappointed but reluctantly accepted his measly offer, reasoning that some income would prove better than none at all. After all, this job might not last long.

At the outset, I decided upon a financial survival strategy for myself. I would need to spend zero to gather news stories because my expenses were not to be reimbursed. This meant no phone calls, no interviews, no travel to meetings. I would have to depend upon second-hand sources I could cull from the internet, newspapers and magazines. In order to maximise my payments, I would submit as many news stories as I could write, since I was to be paid per word written. Doubtless, the magazine must be receiving dozens of press releases from every organisation connected with the UK radio industry. Naturally, as with my previous magazine work, I anticipated these would be regularly forwarded to me by the editor for a quick rewrite…

Except that they were not. I quickly learnt that no press releases, no news tips, no rumours, no nothing was forwarded to me by the magazine. There were no editorial discussions, no phone calls, no meetings, no guidance, no delegation of work. In fact, nothing at all except the odd emailed complaint about things I had written. I started work in December 2004 but, by New Year, Boon wrote a complaint to my predecessor Bob Tyler:

“I’ve just had David Bain of CFM on the phone complaining about an out-of-context story with the “wrong perspective” which was printed this week.  It was a local press story and as we all know local reporters do not understand radio and in this case printed a story which was not factually correct.  We then reprinted, courtesy of Grant the same errors. While I know it has been difficult to contact people at stations over the Christmas period I really think these types of story need to be checked out.  We are not in the market of producing overtly partisan stories which demoralise staff at stations. I had a similar call from another station before Christmas.” [sic]

Already, I was baffled as to why ‘The Radio Magazine’ functioned unlike any other publication for which I had worked previously. The managing editor was printing my stories mostly verbatim (fine), sometimes chopping their ends to fit a page (okay), changing my headlines (no problem), but otherwise was only communicating with me by forwarding complaints. Another one arrived in April 2005:

“We have been fending off an irate Simon Horne of Virgin Radio who says the article you wrote (Issue 681) was based upon a mis-quote published in the Scottish Daily Record (or similar paper). Furthermore he is upset that he was not contacted over the story to either check the facts or to give them an opportunity to respond.” [sic]

Surely, this sort of beef should have been with the journalist who had originally quoted the complainant’s words, not with me who had merely extracted the quote from a respected newspaper. Normally, you might expect a managing editor to defend their staff when they had evidently done nothing wrong, but Boon’s reaction in a further email to me was:

“We just cannot let this continue.  The Scottish press are notorious for getting facts wrong, heaven knows they have some big axes to grind up there. Time would have allowed for a quick call to the appropriate press officer, Collette [Hillier] can give you a list if you don’t have one. Even an email would have given us some support.  Virgin are advertisers as well as news fodder, so treating them fairly seems only reasonable.” [sic]

Editorial ‘dialogue’ continued in a similar vein for my entire time as under-resourced news editor of the magazine. Every Monday morning, I emailed as many stories as I could muster, receiving no feedback other than occasional complaints from radio industry personnel who did not approve of what had been published. However, I was submitting so many news stories to maximise my earnings that the magazine regularly added additional pages to print them all, week in, week out…

Except for four issues per year when Boon required no news stories from me because, despite my training in statistics, he insisted upon covering the radio industry’s quarterly audience ratings results. Having collated and analysed radio station data since 1980, I regularly attended the RAJAR organisation’s press conferences announcing its latest numbers at a central London lecture theatre. Boon was present too but did not acknowledge me or seek to collaborate.

Apart from Boon (and Tyler), nobody was aware of my role providing the bulk of ‘The Radio Magazine’s editorial content, as a result of its news stories being published without author bylines. At the time, I was content with this arrangement because I was busy applying for full-time jobs in the radio industry and believed that I was unlikely to be offered employment if it were evident that I was reporting everything that was happening within the sector. 

My somewhat distant relationship with the magazine continued until March 2007 when I received an unanticipated email from Boon:

“I am sorry to say I have been forced to bring to a close the freelance arrangement we have with you for news stories. I am sorry. […] On a personal note, I’d like to thank you for the detailed and analytical dimension you have brought to your stories covering the radio industry in these stormy times. My thanks once again.” [sic]

It was the first (and last) occasion I received positive feedback from Boon. By then, I had thankfully found better paid work as a media analyst so the resultant loss of earnings was less consequential. However, this apparent ‘warm glow’ of gratitude vanished almost immediately. Prior to my abrupt dismissal, I had registered for a free press pass to attend a forthcoming radio conference whose organisers then contacted ‘The Radio Magazine’ to rightly confirm my credentials. Boon responded to them bluntly:

“Grant Goddard does not work for this publication.”

I wrote to Boon accusing him of “rudeness” because, instead of simply explaining to the organisers truthfully that, since registration, I was no longer news editor, his words connoted I was a liar. Was he already seeking to erase my substantial and transformational involvement in his magazine during the previous two years? My suspicions were far from allayed by Boon’s response to me:

“I think rudeness is rich coming from you, but that is a separate issue. […] Just chill my friend – life is too short!” [sic]

On that sour note, our email correspondence ended once and for all.

In November 2008, Boon started a job with government regulator Ofcom’s radio licensing division in the same role I had held five years previously. Perhaps he was sat at my former desk. Given that I (and predecessor Bob Tyler) had written 90% of his magazine’s editorial, I pondered whether any number of anonymous “detailed and analytical” news stories published in ‘The Radio Magazine’ might have accidentally fallen into Boon’s journalism portfolio. Any number between zero and the 848 I had written? Those words ‘detailed’ and ‘analytical’ might even have figured in Ofcom’s job description for the role.

During Boon’s subsequent “nine-year stint” at Ofcom, his CV states he was:

“Chapter Editor of the radio & audio chapter of Ofcom’s Communications Market Report an annually published in-depth insight into UK radio and audio developments.” [sic]

My work had once again passed through Boon’s hands! In 2003, having been The Radio Authority’s staff member with a maths/analysis background, I had been ordered to undertake a mammoth project to create for Ofcom the new regulator’s first historical database combining commercial radio licence, audience and financial information in a group of interlocking Excel spreadsheets. My complex formulae were required to summarise the state of the UK commercial radio industry, for publication in Ofcom’s initial annual ‘Communications Market Report’. Naturally, uncredited once again.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/HYdNRjEzCgpV8E?startSlide=1

[None of the hundreds of issues of ‘The Radio Magazine’ appear online. My news stories for the publication are available to read at https://www.scribd.com/lists/3527224/Radio-broadcasting-industry-news-stories-by-Grant-Goddard ]

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/02/mining-for-radio-news-in-editorial.html ]

Some men see things as they are and ask “Why … change?” : 2003 : Neil Stock, Ofcom

 A colleague would arrive at my workplace some Mondays with evident cuts and bruises. A tragic case of domestic violence? No. He was a loyal fan of Millwall Football Club, a team characterised by its “historic association with football hooliganism” (Wikipedia). Did I overhear anyone comment that it might be considered inappropriate to work in a government quango when resembling the runner-up from five rounds with Mick McManus? No. Colleagues alleged that this young buck was untouchable because he held finance qualifications that his boss lacked, despite their requirement to legally sign off public accounts. That same boss was then promoted to personnel director, despite having demonstrated to me a similar skills deficit, and then to deputy chief executive of our organisation. Ho hum.

Relevant qualifications and experience appeared to be non-essential for appointment to the management class at The Radio Authority. If you possessed ‘the right stuff’, prior employment in a Norfolk chicken processing factory could prove appropriate for a job regulating Britain’s commercial radio industry. One woman in my small crowded office talked incessantly, inserting expletives into every other sentence. Did any colleague suggest this to be inappropriate behaviour, particularly when some of us were interrogating radio station managers by phone and recording our conversations? No. Once, an interviewee enquired if I was calling from home, having overheard swearing in our office. Er, no, I just work in a madhouse.

Arriving daily to cross the threshold of our office, I felt like one of those unsuspecting visitors knocking on the front door of ‘The Munsters’ home, only to be invited into a scary otherworld that was bafflingly grotesque. Why did I choose to stay there? Because it was the only job I had been offered after countless rejected applications during months of unemployment. And I knew that my private hell would end soon. In several months’ time, the government would be merging several small regulators, including ours, into one new huge one to which staff would be transferred en masse. Well, with the exception of our only two visible minority colleagues, one of whom was dumped in the new regulator’s basement call centre, the other who was told she would have to apply for advertised vacancies despite her lengthy loyal service to our organisation. Which decisionmaker in our midst did we suspect of having never torn up their dogeared ‘NF’ membership card?

In order to prepare us for employment in a modern state-of-the-art regulator, The Radio Authority’s workforce was sent to a government conference centre to watch our new leader, Stephen Carter, talk us through PowerPoint presentations promising us a bright new future. I left these events finally feeling ‘hope’, though some colleagues seemed to sense ‘tyranny’, preferring the security blanket of a dysfunctional abusive ‘family’ already tainted by a corruption scandal exposed on national television. Preferring paperwork to floppy discs, I suspect nobody in The Radio Authority had even needed to press the ‘PowerPoint’ function on their archaic desktop computers. Why should they bother?

Though I had never witnessed our department required to function as any kind of team, we were all sent on a ‘teambuilding’ awayday organised by one of those faceless global management consultancies. We were told to pull together to solve theoretical problems, to play childish games and express our feelings in ‘breakout’ groups. I was paired with a colleague from my office who admitted her early career objective was to work on ‘BBC Radio Four’s ‘Women’s Hour’ programme, though she had never sought training in radio production. My own ‘learning experience’ from that session was something I had observed before – our privately educated elite expect to succeed in their chosen shiny career without needing to put in any graft as practitioners.

I lacked acting abilities, having always volunteered to organise the sound for school plays, but at our awayday I was picked to roleplay a radio licence hopeful whose latest application had been refused, in dialogue with the officer who had turned me down. Having endured enough of that day’s preposterous exercises, I threw myself into this role, choosing to feign a nasal Northern accent and imitate a persistent applicant from Stoke who felt the Radio Authority was discriminating against him. My colleagues laughed loudly at my desperate attempts to win the argument against my posh counterpart. In fact, my performance was art imitating life. I had heard work colleagues often lampoon the speech of a licence applicant from Stoke, despite his experience in radio broadcasting. Naturally, my play-acting did not dent their snobbishness one iota.

I had not understood how convincing my role had been that day until, during The Radio Authority chairman’s monthly walkabouts round our office, he would greet me using the ‘Wayne’ name of the Stoke persona I had adopted … and neither was he being ironic or witty. I had been renamed. I corrected him each month, but he insisted on addressing me on the next occasion as ‘Wayne’. Though he transferred to the new regulator, the majority of our senior management either were not offered jobs there or decided to accept redundancy, I know not which. Given that some had never used a work computer, preferring to order underlings do the grunt work for them, it was difficult to imagine them integrating within a modern office environment.

Everyone in our department received an email requesting our thoughts on how the radio licence application process could be improved. It had been sent by our team deputy Neil Stock, who had surprisingly been promoted by somebody somewhere to lead the radio division within the new regulator a few months hence. I had lots of ‘thoughts’ on the subject so started banging them out on my desktop computer. I was 875 words into my spiel before suddenly halting, asking myself what the hell I was doing providing free insights from hard-bitten experience. Earlier in my working life, I had spent months writing a radio licence application. Stock had never. That application had won up against 39 competitors. I had started working in commercial radio two decades ago. Stock had never. I had launched a London commercial radio station that had attracted a million listeners per week within its first six months. Stock had never. Might he not be harvesting ideas from his ‘team’ to convince his new paymasters that he possessed some kind of grand plan?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RqssQZHe6_lm-Y_d9G1fF55dKhLEKjhG/preview

This suspicion was confirmed when, not having initially responded to his request, Stock reminded me repeatedly that he still required my contribution. He knew I considered the present application system deficient in almost every aspect because I had told him as much in previous conversations. However, I had nothing to gain from assisting his meteoric rise through the regulatory ranks without commercial radio experience. As is evident from the raw stream of consciousness I wrote then and reproduce (uncorrected) here, my verdict on my employer’s licensing system was damning as a result of having watched it contribute to an increasingly disastrous commercial radio sector in Britain. But criticising The Radio Authority meant criticising my new boss, so I never replied.

Months later, we had moved to the modern office environment of Ofcom. At last, it felt as if I was living in the present century. However, I sat at my desk day after day doing nothing, sidelined by Stock. Eventually he invited me to join his sub-committee tasked with updating the paper licence application form, which seemed like continued attrition to divine my insights. We met a couple of times, during which I retained my counsel about the disastrous system, since it was evident that Stock contemplated only minor amendments rather than a full-blown overhaul. At the end of our final meeting, Stock concluded our discussions by announcing that the application form would remain exactly as it already was, with only the old logo on the front page to be replaced by ‘Ofcom’. I was still working in a madhouse!

One day, everyone in the radio section received an email from Stock requiring their presence at a team meeting, a novelty as no such meetings had occurred at The Radio Authority. We all filed into the glass-walled room in the middle of our floor, waiting to be addressed. I wrote a header in my notebook and expected to jot some bullet points, but what followed left me open-mouthed and unable to note a single word. The sole topic of discussion was these former Radio Authority employees’ refusal to update their working methods to support Ofcom’s modernisation plan. Everyone in the room who spoke supported this strategy. I said nothing as my jaw had already hit the ground. My colleagues were a rabble of anti-revolutionaries. They wanted nothing to change. They were working in Ofcom’s office, drawing salaries from Ofcom, using Ofcom’s resources to hold this meeting … but they wanted to pretend they were still working at The Radio Authority. It was bizarre!

I was reminded of the ‘Luddites’ I had studied for economic history: textile workers in Nottingham who, between 1811 and 1817, had opposed factory owners replacing their labour with machinery. The government had sent 12,000 troops to quell their destruction of new equipment and violence against mill owners, after passing ‘The Frame Breaking Act’ that had made “machine breaking” a capital crime. Two centuries later, I was in the midst of a middle-class penpusher uprising where their disobedience was probably limited to not clearing their desks of papers before sneaking out to catch an early train home. Instead of armed troops, the most violent official response might be a polite e-mail etiquette reminder.

I returned to my desk in a state of disbelief. I must have attended hundreds of meetings during my working life, but that was the first where the consensus was to refuse to adapt to twenty-first century working methods. It felt like ‘Back to The Flintstones’. They would have been happier NOT to have computer terminals on their desks and a fast internet connection. I seemed to be in a minority of one, surrounded in our open-plan office by a couple of dozen paid-up members of the ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Radio Regulation Reactionaries’. I was half-expecting a singsong of ‘Power to The People’ during our afternoon tea break.

I was SO disappointed. I had endured a miserable eighteen months’ employment at The Radio Authority, during which I had been shouted at repeatedly, told not to talk about ‘radio’, denied my yearend bonus and had failed my annual review on every criterion. Despite my successful track record in radio, I had been treated like a troublesome child. The only thing that had kept me arriving daily for work in Holborn was the hope that the situation at the merged regulator would prove different. Yet, within weeks of Ofcom’s launch, I was witnessing the same crazy behaviours that my colleagues had carried across the Thames with them to recreate their own private Transylvania. Like Harker, I needed to escape the clutches of these vampires if I were to retain my sanity. Could I tie together enough bedsheets?

[First published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/02/some-men-see-things-as-they-are-and-ask.html ]

The media analyst in the cupboard : 2006-2009 : Claire Enders, Enders Analysis

 “CRUELLA DE VIL”, our teacher had chalked onto the blackboard at the front of our classroom hut. We had been reading aloud excerpts from the 1956 children’s novel ‘The Hundred and One Dalmatians’ and were completing our lesson with content analysis for ten-year olds.

“What does her name sound like if you say it quickly?”, asked our teacher. I stuck my hand in the air.

“Cruel devil,” I blurted.

“Correct, Grant,” she replied, “and we have seen how that could be a description of the way she behaved in the story.”

Our teacher’s message for the adult lives ahead of us might have been: beware of wealthy women bearing gifts! They might end up bearing down on YOU before you know it … and skin you for their own ends. I vowed to file away that advice for the future. The year was 1968.

Four decades later, a work colleague returned to the office to recount what he considered an entertaining encounter earlier that day with a client:

“When I met her, she said ‘YOU must be Grant Goddard. I am so pleased to meet you at last’ and then she seemed disappointed when I told her that I wasn’t him.”

My young colleagues laughed aloud at this case of mistaken identity. I did not. This was not the first occasion that one of them had been dispatched to meet Carolyn McCall, the 45-year-old chief executive of ‘Guardian Media Group’ [GMG] that employed 7,200 staff with £700m turnover … and where a similar conversation had ensued. For me, it was another humiliation, not some kind of ‘Famous Five’ jape.

I had previously spent several weeks researching and designing a 48-page PowerPoint that analysed the state of the UK commercial radio industry for presentation to a conference hall of GMG’s radio staff organised by McCall in Manchester. My boss, Claire Enders, had asked me to accompany her by train there where she would present my work. Although I would not be on stage, nonetheless I was looking forward to meeting McCall and some of her radio team. One dark, cold November morning, wearing my best suit and tie, I caught the train to our central London office, sufficiently early for me and my boss to travel north together.

“I have decided to take the intern with me to Manchester instead of you,” Enders announced to me in front of my colleagues, before the two of them rushed out the door to an awaiting taxi. Evidently, the intern had known to arrive early that day.

No forewarning. No explanation. No apology. I was baffled … but not surprised. This was the latest in the succession of humiliations I had encountered since joining this, er, unusual workplace nineteen months ago. I decided to pass the rest of that day sat at my desk wearing headphones, listening to my music and purposefully doing absolutely no work, a silent (and wholly unacknowledged) protest at my treatment. I felt even more humiliated than usual because the office’s parade of ‘interns’ were, in reality, merely the pampered offspring of posh media bosses whom Enders had befriended. Sat at a spare desk in our office, their mere presence would look good on CV’s already boasting a private education, despite their evident disinterest in our work.

On a separate occasion, an initial meeting had been arranged with the new chief executive of the UK’s largest commercial radio group, Global Radio, whose wealthy father had financed its acquisition, following his offspring’s lack of success securing a significant role within the industry. I was to accompany Claire Enders to meet Ashley Tabor at his office and had prepared a list of questions to ask about his plans to resuscitate the sector’s recent dismal performance. We travelled together from our office by taxi and, only once our destination was reached, did Enders turn to me and say:

“I think this meeting should be millionaire-to-millionaire so you should return to the office.”

Not only was I humiliated to have to make the return journey back across London but I had to pay the bemused taxi driver for the privilege. Although I was employed as the analyst specialising in the radio sector, Enders never debriefed me on what had been discussed at this or her other meetings with senior radio industry personnel. There seemed to be no notion of teamwork in this workplace. I was forced to gather my own intelligence about the industry whilst not meeting its bosses. It was reminiscent of some kind of ‘gentlemen’s club’ where entry was denied to those of us without wealth or influence. Meetings of the privileged elite appeared as much social events and opportunities to propagate gossip as they were business discussions.

On another occasion, I was required to produce a company presentation for the management team of Disney whom I met, accompanying Claire Enders, in the boardroom of its Hammersmith office. Disney was considering launching a national sports radio station in Britain and seemed to believe it could achieve this objective without concern for Ofcom’s regulatory regime that prescribed every commercial radio station’s format and content. I was required to be the harbinger of disappointing news to Disney’s highly paid, but seemingly oblivious, managers that it would prove necessary to proceed within Britain’s media ownership regulations, regardless of how much cash might be on the table.

After the meeting closed, Claire Enders and I adjourned to a side office with the female Disney executive who had invited us to make the presentation. I anticipated that we would be discussing further the regulatory issues I had raised. How wrong I was! For the next half-hour, I sat there while Enders suggested multiple routes for the young woman to bag a wealthy man, proposing potential candidates. Not for the first time, I felt akin to a servant whose presence could be safely ignored because ‘the help’ were paid expressly to turn a blind eye to the intimacies of their masters and mistresses. Neither woman displayed the slightest embarrassment in discussing such personal matters in front of a silent middle-aged man who self-evidently was not of their breeding or status. I was as good as invisible. For me, it merely offered an insight into Enders’ modus operandi.

On a different occasion, I recall a weird taxi ride across London to a client meeting, accompanied by Claire Enders alone, during which she just kept repeating the phrases “I’m a self-made woman” and “I am, you know” to nobody in particular. I stared out the window and remained silent. I had no idea what had prompted this line of monologue. It felt somewhat like it might to be locked in a tiny room with a tragic escapee from a mental health facility.

During that journey, I was reminded of the occasion sixteen years prior when I had attended a public meeting concerning the award of the commercial television franchise for south and southeast England that had been operated by ‘TVS’ for the last decade. Contributions were made by a succession of those seated within the tiered lecture theatre, before an American woman in the back row behind me stood to unleash a loud stream of consciousness that seemed to leave the audience baffled. An audible gap followed, as might occur after an outburst by a wordy aunt on speed at a family Christmas dinner, before the debate resumed in earnest. Afterwards, I pondered whether I might cross paths with that woman again. TVS lost its franchise the following year.

Shortly before I discovered my time working at Enders Analysis was finally up, I was invited to make a presentation to the ‘2008 European Radio Symposium’ to be held in Portugal. I spent two months creating a 39-page PowerPoint and had booked my flights and accommodation when, a few days beforehand, Claire Enders insisted that I undertake an unrelated project, unconcerned with radio but with an immediate deadline. I was forced to explain to the conference organisers that I had become unexpectedly unavailable and then pass my work to a colleague who knew nothing about radio to travel to Portugal instead to make my presentation.

I have never understood how ‘humiliation’ could be perceived as a productive means of managing personnel within a business. Given how my colleagues at Enders Analysis appeared accepting of this situation, I can only guess that their experiences attending private schools might have conditioned them to regard such treatment as ‘normal’. For state-school-educated me, it was as abnormal as any workplace behaviour I had ever witnessed. There were times when I wondered if my own mental health might be damaged by the experience of working within that environment. It had been such a long, long time since my great grandparents had lived and worked as servants in a ‘big house’. I had no desire to emulate their lives.

Following my abrupt exit from Enders Analysis after almost three years, I applied for every ‘media analyst’ vacancy I found, for none of which I was called to interview. After rejection by one small analyst business beside Charing Cross station, I requested a meeting with its chief executive to explore freelance opportunities. I showed him my published work and the regular coverage it had attracted on radio, television and in the press. He listened and then told me:

“Even if we were to hire you, you would have to take a backroom position. We could not send you out to meet clients.”

After that damning verdict, I gave up applying for jobs as an analyst. Apparently, it was evident to employers that I lacked whatever was ‘the right stuff’ necessary to be in the presence of the posh masters commanding Britain’s media industry.

I never did get to meet Carolyn McCall.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-media-analyst-in-cupboard-2006-2009.html ]

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no regulation : 2003 : Dumfries & Galloway licence, The Radio Authority

 When my wife took a job at the United Biscuits factory in Harlesden, she understood she would be making ‘Digestives’ … and she was correct. When I took a job at The Radio Authority, I anticipated I would be regulating Britain’s commercial radio industry … but I was wrong! Although it was nowhere to be found in my job description, not even hidden in the fine print, my bosses regularly required me to ‘turn a blind eye’. Perhaps this was the underlying modus operandi of government regulators: to sit in cossetted London offices, execute as little ‘regulating’ as possible and await comfortable retirement.

Before taking this job, I was aware of The Radio Authority’s, ahem, ‘chequered’ history. Seven years after it had been demerged from its precursor the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA], I had watched open-mouthed a November 1998 BBC2 ‘Newsnight’ report in which The Radio Authority’s former Company Secretary, John Norrington, accused his ex-employer of misconduct in its award of new commercial radio licences to ‘Vibe FM’ and ‘Sunrise Radio’. It took until March 1999 for the Authority to respond publicly that “the independent assessment by Grant Thornton makes clear that there was no abuse of process, no improper conflict of interest, and no bias.” Of course!

Though this denial was deemed sufficient for ‘The Independent’ newspaper to headline its story ‘Quango “not corrupt”’, the article also noted casually that “Janet Lee, the Authority’s programming and advertising director, is on police bail …” following her arrest by the Fraud Squad in November 1998 on corruption charges. What a bam-bam! Having arrived for my new job in 2002, I found that the organisation’s prime objective seemed to have nothing at all to do with radio, but everything to do with avoidance of further public embarrassment at all costs. Janet Lee had kept her job and occupied a huge office, larger than the one opposite that I had to share with five colleagues, but which she shared only with a jungle of huge potted plants.

Having been given few tasks to perform, I had time to conduct my own industry research. One of my papers (‘Tools For Radio Content Regulation #1: Playlist Diversity Analysis’) studied the music played by competing commercial radio stations in the same market to determine whether their formats were truly complementary, as their licences required. I was unsurprised to find my analysis demonstrated that the most played records on London station ‘Heart 106.2’ were by (in descending order) these artists: Westlife, Nelly, Liberty X, Blue, Atomic Kitten, Atomic Kitten (again), Liberty X (again), Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes and Anastacia. To my knowledge, its music policy had never squared with its licence which required:

“The music will be melodic or soft adult contemporary and will exclude the extremes of dance, rap, teenage pop, indie and heavy rock.”

I circulated my document to managers within The Radio Authority and, not for the first time, received no response. There were evident forces within that workplace which were way above my pay grade. I had apparently become a pesky nuisance by trying to remind the organisation what objective ‘regulation’ of commercial broadcasting in the public interest should have been about. As a result, I was marginalised and belittled, particularly when it came to my year-end appraisal … which I was told I had failed with flying colours. They’ll take your soul if you let them, but don’t you let them!

“That was a good meeting,” my colleague commented as we exited The Radio Authority’s meetings room. My immediate thought was that he was being unnecessarily sarcastic. Our meeting had barely lasted ten minutes and had been completely uncontentious. Then it dawned on me that I was an oddity here who had spent half his working life in meetings within commercial businesses, some of which had lasted six hours or ended in acrimony. However, since joining this governmental organisation, I had never been called to a team, departmental or work meeting. They simply did not exist here because tasks were allocated by bosses approaching their underlings and bellowing at them in the old-fashioned master/servant style. On reflection, I realised my colleague’s comment had been made in seriousness.

My boss had allocated me the task of assessing an application by an existing local radio licensee seeking its renewal, versus a competing bid. I had been instructed that, as a direct result of the auditor’s report concerning ‘the affair whose name was never spoken’, it was now deemed necessary to convene one meeting with two colleagues from other departments about every licence application and to minute it on paper. It did not seem to matter that such meetings served no recognisable purpose or objective, except for each to produce an A4 page that documented they had happened. That was the sole reason I had had to call the meeting. It was a direct outcome of “the auditors [having] recommended that the [Radio] Authority tighten up some of its procedures for awarding licences,” according to ‘The Independent’.

The licence for Dumfries had first been awarded in 1989 by the IBA to ‘South West Sound’ at a time when each geographical area was only permitted one commercial radio station. Since then, the regulator had probably never heard the station’s broadcasts as I found that it interpreted its role narrowly as the award of licences, rather than regularly checking that the terms of those licences were being fulfilled. Being me, I insisted on reviewing the station’s output in a period when almost no UK commercial radio stations streamed on the internet, requiring the Authority to identify someone within the transmission area who would record some of its output. It took a few attempts for me to receive recordings that were even audible.

These recordings were full of regulatory surprises. The breakfast show was being relayed from co-owned station ‘West AM’ in Ayr, complete with incorrect station and frequency identifications. Similarly, its evening show was relayed from co-owned ‘West FM’ in Ayr, complete with different again, but still wrong, station and frequency identifications. The music played in those evening shows also contravened the music styles specified in the licence. Three hours of local programmes required by the licence on both Saturday and Sunday were also absent.

To get to the bottom of these issues, I interviewed managers at the station and recorded our phone conversations. Those staff appeared entirely nonchalant about these breaches of their licence, could not explain how long such practices had been pursued, or promise when these programming errors would be rectified. I was made to feel as if my questions were an undesired intrusion into broadcasting systems that had existed there for years, regardless of the station’s licence, the details of which the staff claimed to be unaware. I felt like the big, bad regulator in London interfering in the running of a little local business that had retreated into its own parochial ways.

Reporting these findings to my manager, rather than being thanked for discovering multiple regulatory breaches, I was vilified for being pedantic. I had unexpectedly opened up a hornets’ nest and my bosses swung into action to ameliorate the ‘damage’ I was apparently doing by being over-scrupulous. Although one competing bid had been submitted for the licence, it quickly became evident that the decision had already been made internally to re-award the licence to the incumbent … regardless of its licence transgressions. I was suddenly thrust into the middle of an internal ‘damage control’ exercise as the result of me having believed my job was ‘to regulate’.

My 17-page report had to be repeatedly edited severely by management to remove what were considered to be my ‘accusations’ that the station had broken the rules, even though its staff had admitted their failures to me in recorded phone conversations. Management finally settled on a careful wording that implied the breaches I had discovered were irrelevant to the re-award of the incumbent’s licence:

“Staff have thus identified two apparent breaches of the station’s Format – too much chart music in the evening and only occasional local programming at weekends. These will be investigated separately by staff, but should not be considered by Members in the context of this licence award as they do not form part of the station’s proposals for the new licence period.”

I was instructed to write a script for pre-approval to present to the ‘Members Meeting’ of the ‘great and good’ that would consider my report and make a decision. I was not permitted to deviate from this script or to mention further details of the licence breaches I had discovered. Unsurprisingly, the Meeting willingly re-awarded the licence to the incumbent, despite a stinging criticism I had managed to sneak into my report:

“Not only has South West Sound failed to give direct answers to many of the questions required within the application process, but it has barely articulated a convincing argument for being re-awarded the licence, save for the obvious benefit that its ratings are extremely high.”

Immediately after the Meeting, it was my responsibility to contact the chairman of the winning applicant, Hal McGhie, by phone to officially confirm the outcome. My call was answered by a woman who told me he was too busy to come to the phone. I had to insist that I needed to converse with him personally, if only briefly, to relay that afternoon’s result of his re-application for the local commercial radio licence. She put me on hold and returned after a while to explain that, after speaking with him, he had insisted that he was far too busy to talk presently and that I would have to call back at some other time.

I suspect he had no need for my phone call to inform him of the result he already knew.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/01/see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no.html ]