Radio Days

The BBC is considering scaling back its local radio stations to broadcast only at Breakfast and Drive-time. At present it's just a discussion, part of a difficult one that the BBC has to have about a number of its services. However, at a time when the Corporation is looking to be more relevant to the country outside London it makes little sense and is ladled with irony.

I started my broadcasting career at BBC Radio in Bristol in the early eighties, at a time when money was ‘tight’. We had no money but creative juices in abundance. In those days city radio stations had seasoned producers who were not chained to a computer but ‘out there’ seeking local material.  Local contributors provided spots on everything from angling to Asian programmes, religion to specialist music shows, arts, motoring, cinema and sport – all within a local context. We tried all kinds of formats: schools quizzes, an education programme wrapped up in a rock show, late night chat, consumer shows, comedy, children's shows, a plethora of outside broadcasts...it had ambition.

The music choice was random – we were only allowed to play a tiny number of commercial discs each day but local music was recorded and found its way onto the airwaves. When I left to pursue a career in network television I took my eye off local radio and it wasn’t until sixteen years later, after I’d left the BBC and was working as a writer, that it came back onto my radar. I was invited to present a show back in Bristol. I found a very different kind of local radio. 

The RL Show team: Ben Orr, Jo Hurst and RL

Most of the voluntary contributions by local folk had gone, the staff numbers were now tiny and ambition had been scaled back. The local radio ‘sound’ now owed much to a centrist agenda. 

Having said that thanks to a great supporting cast, a good producer and a nose for what works I had a great time illiciting wonderfully bizarre and extraordinary stories from listeners about their lives and the places they lived (one day I'll write about the Elephant buried under the high street in a district of Bristol).

BBC Local Radio was still there, staffed mostly by enthusiastic youngsters, under funded, constantly under the kosh but still relevant to thousands of people’s lives, people whose only radio listening was the local station. 

If it is whittled away to nothing more than breakfast and drive-time shows it will lose its character, sustained outside those hours by broadcasts from either 5Live or Radio 2.  The BBC has a huge financial problem on its hands but I suspect it has no idea of the depth of feeling out there for local radio. Without it who will challenge local politicians and champion local sport on the airwaves – certainly not the commercials boys.

Could it be better? You betcha, of course it could. It has as many detractors as it does satisfied customers. There are so many things it could do better; it needs to be ambitious, relevant, dispense with the hackneyed and the clichéd and be local. 

It’s time to shine boys – or sink.