In the south, many well-loved, local voices are being removed from the airwaves as the BBC’s “Digital First” initiative bulldozes its way through the schedules. This is part of a trend. Access to all local radio news has been severely impacted in recent months: across all sectors, public, commercial and community.
As far as the BBC goes, the London-centric over-egging of the digital pudding chooses to ignore the reality that rural areas often barely get a mobile signal of any kind, let alone 5G, while a fifth of radio listening is when people are on the move and mostly need broadcast sources. Local voices now front just eight hours on BBC local weekdays, fewer on weekends. Confidence in maintaining even that diminished commitment cannot be sustained easily.
The departures have upset many listeners. “What sad and upsetting news”, a message sent to a departing BBC local presenter states. It’s a common theme in the messages – “so sorry that you are leaving. You’ve seen me through a broken back, lockdown, and so much more” and “you really helped me after losing my business due to Covid and losing my father.”
Deregulation and defunding
Sophie Little used her last broadcast on BBC Radio Norfolk to expose the real dangers of the cuts: “This is unbelievably unfair to those who need local public service broadcasting the most – those who are lonely and isolated, or those who are unable to leave their house, or unable to use the internet, or unable to pay for broadband or smart devices. Those who not only take joy from the company of a familiar voice coming out of their radio but who truly rely on it to keep going.” At the same time, the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie admitted to a government committee that the changes are “very difficult and unpopular.”
It’s a similar story in the commercial sector. Large behemoths like Bauer Media, which owns and operates a sizeable chunk of radio across the UK and Europe, are systematically cutting key elements of local radio. FM frequencies, once buzzing with local voices, now churn out generic national brands with brief interjections of “news”, mostly token titbits from your area. The offerings becomes poorer and poorer while the regulator seems to take little interest.
A recent complaint to the regulator about local news content on Greatest Hits Radio’s Salisbury transmitter resulted in a hasty backtracking from the broadcaster. Although the company appeared to be in breach of their licence conditions, all they got was a minor ticking off from Ofcom, not a sanction. This may have been a small inconvenience to Bauer’s ambition for a UK-wide single programme service, devoid of anything local, but the new Media Bill will help ensure Bauer’s profitability and momentum.
There is a similar story at heritage station Wave 105 which has been hugely popular across the central south since 1998. In the absence of robust regulation, it has also been thrown into the Greatest Hits Radio bucket. There are far fewer local voices on the station now, replaced by presenters like the ubiquitous Ken Bruce, omnipresent across the region and across the UK. The same fate befell Cornwall’s Pirate FM, a trusted local companion to many in the Duchy for over 30 years. Local voices remain for a few hours a day on each service – for now and for how long?
The hollowing out of local democracy
This should all be seen in the context of the decreasing power of local democracy. An Unlock Democracy study found that “local government services have been hollowed out through the increased use of outsourcing, and now local authorities have to operate within a complex, expanding web of partnerships that dilute accountability”. It’s that challenge around accountability that has been a driving force for local radio and TV. It was Nick Wallis, then a journalist at BBC Surrey, who first broadcast reports on the Post Office Horizon scandal back in 2011.
“Local journalism is vital to democratic society”, a DCMS committee asserted in 2023, very much stating the “bleedin’ obvious”: they added that “accurate, trustworthy reporting on local councils, courts and other public bodies enables people to hold those in power to account for decisions that affect their everyday lives”.
And that’s not all. We know that, by 2026, it is predicted that more than two-million people in the UK will suffer from loneliness. We also know this can be mitigated with the support neighbourhood groups bring and by the sense of community fostered by local radio. Two-thirds of people value local radio news which demonstrably promotes a deeper connection to a local area.
Community radio is trying its best to fill the gap here but is under-resourced and more regulated than its commercial big brothers. Martin Steers, a Director at the UK Community Radio Network, cites Ofcom broadcast news rules that deter the sector’s ability to provide local journalism – “community radio stations can sometimes be hesitant [and] on the whole normally lack the resources or experience to have the confidence to get it right.” He’s clear that “the vital role that community radio can play in supporting their communities, and also supporting local public interest news … news that can bridge the democratic deficit, is so vital, but we need funding.”
The starving out of local radio is well advanced and the negative impact on our social fabric is clear. This government has prioritised the profitability of private companies over the potential benefits that clearly follow from strong, well-funded local radio. The government cannot fix the loneliness epidemic or the mental health crisis by itself but it is apparent that the company of a trusted voice, talking about what’s close to you, is a comfort to many, whether in a pandemic or not.
Local radio stations don’t have to do anything local
Now, as we head into the election, the long planned local radio legislation, prepared when the government had the confidence of an absolute majority, has been rushed forward and, now constituted as the Media Bill, has survived the rush of the last day parliamentary “wash-up” to become law. It includes a curious clause which hands Ofcom carte-blanche to say that a local radio station doesn’t have to do anything local! By such sleights of hand are bad policies and injurious actions rushed through.
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