How radio still rules the air waves and matters to local towns – J Peter Wilson

I don’t know but it is numerous times in newspaper articles and on TV shows by self-important pundits.

As many well-known local radio stations, with their local shows and presenters, became part of national networks, the death of radio was again predicted.

People wrote that radio had become boring as stations all played the same few songs and nobody, meaning themselves, was listening to radio anymore.

Well, they were all wrong!

In the UK can now hear more than 60 radio stations on DAB/DAB+ – compared to just three BBC stations and off-shore radio in the mid-1960s.

There’s been a dramatic increase in listening choices including the emergence of new All-Digital Local Radio (A-DLR) stations that broadcast online to their own local area.

These include Armagh City Radio, 
East Herts Radio, My Salisbury, Radio West Norfolk, RB1, Rhubarb 
Smoothies, The Beach Radio and Your Harrogate.

These new local stations are found online via computers, mobile apps and on smart speakers.

They broadcast alongside a plethora 
of stations with some playing specific artist music – Always Elvis Presley 
Radio, or specific era music – Atlantis 
& Caroline Flashback, or specific 
types of music – BSJ (Best Smooth 
Jazz), Linn Classical & Rockabilly 
Radio and over 10,000 other stations worldwide playing other genres of music or speech.

We are starting to see the roll-out of small-scale DAB (SSDAB) across the UK with these online stations already on or will appear on DAB+ alongside FM community stations.

Despite Ofcom saying that there would be no more FM licences, the DCMS Digital Radio & Audio Report, published in October 2021, stated that FM would continue until at least 2030 and Ofcom has recently given a number of community stations the go ahead to increase their coverage areas by increasing power of their existing transmitter or by adding FM relays.

This has meant that a community station in Scarborough is now allowed extra transmitters to cover Whitby and Ravenscar, while further down the Yorkshire coast the community station in Withernsea has been allowed two FM relays.

In my neck of the woods, due to a 
quirk in the regulations, Bridlington, the largest town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, cannot have a FM community licence, as the regulations were 
planned to safeguard small-scale commercial stations with small population coverage.

However, the town’s local FM transmitter no longer broadcasts Yorkshire Coast Radio service but the networked station Greatest Hits Radio, so unlike other smaller local towns in the East Riding including Beverley and Driffield, the town cannot have a FM community station.

In view of the DCMS report there is a compelling case for towns, such as Bridlington, which were previously denied a FM community station to be granted a licence so listeners who do
 not have access to DAB or smart 
speakers can listen to a local community station.

Radio is also expanding at a national level. Boom Radio is a new national station playing music for the ‘‘Boomer Generation’’ and using presenters of the same age.

The station started in 2021 as just an online station but soon found available space on DAB and it now broadcasts nationally in DAB+ reaching 233,000 listeners per week.

There is also a new speech national DAB station, Times Radio, and it has 637,000 listers each week for its mix of news, comment and debate, but no phone-ins.

Wherever you live in the world, radio, in its many forms, is alive and kicking. It continues to be the best way to listen to an ever-increasing range of music and speech.

Whether it be on radio sets at home, at work or in the car, via our tablets/computers, on mobile phones, on digital TV and streaming devices or by asking our smart speakers – you’ll find a way to play the radio we love.

J Peter Wilson is a retired broadcasting regulation consultant. He lives in Bridlington.

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