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AM/FM Newsletter Number Three — Summer 1993

Welcome to the first AM/FM Newsletter for, umm, 2 years it seems. Which means I suppose that I ought to bring you up to date with the events that have happened here in the meantime.

The biggest of these is probably the launch of the AM/FM Online Edition. This is a new electronic magazine distributed to around a thousand readers over the computer networks that now span the globe. It compiles together all the stories that have been carried on the AM/FM Newsline during the previous month and it's also free!

There are several ways of getting hold of a copy of the Online Edition. It's made available on London's CIX conferencing system in the amfm topic of the broadcast conference. On CompuServe you can find a copy in the Music/Radio library in UKFORUM. If you've got access to a system carrying Usenet news, then you'll find it in the rec.radio.info newsgroup.

We're also looking at making the Online Edition available by fax for a small charge, and possibly introducing a paid-for weekly edition with similar content to the Newsline for distribution by e-mail and fax. If you would be interested then do please contact us to let us know.

The Newline itself continues reporting the hottest news as it has done for the past seven years. After a few problems earlier in the year, regular updates in time for Monday morning should be guaranteed again as of this month. The various AM/FM lines that used to exist have now been consolidated into just the single Newsline. However, you can rest assured that the Newsline still retains its high on information, low on waffle style. You won't have to sit through long introductions on this service! For the fastest and most comprehensive way of keeping up to date with events in the industry, there's still no competition.

While putting together this newsletter, I dug out the final copy of Radio Today magazine from back in Autumn '88. Some of you may remember that this was the magazine I used to run, aimed at "today's listeners and tomorrow's broadcasters". The radio listings section for London gave details of 4 BBC Network Radio stations, 1 BBC Local Radio station and 3 Londonwide ILR stations (Capital Gold had just started) alongside 48 pirate stations doing a mixture of weird and wonderful things.

In the four and a half years since then, things have certainly changed a lot for the London listener. Within the M25 you've now got access to 5 BBC Network Radio stations, that same BBC Local Radio station (but two mutations later), 2 INR stations, 14 ILR stations, a whole host of new satellite services and the occasional restricted service station. Also, contrary to what some people believed and despite this massive explosion in radio, we've still got over 20 unlicensed stations. Away from the Capital there have been changes too. The major cities have benefitted most, but even the remotest areas now have Atlantic 252 as an alternative to Radio One. Mention should also be made of Radio Luxembourg which after sixty years was finally made redundant by the changes in British broadcasting.

Over the next few pages we look at the current state of British radio. We find out how the different sections are shaping up and ask why, despite the changes, the opportunities for new, innovative broadcasters are still limited. With the closing date for applications fast approaching, we also look at who's likely to be broadcasting with an ILR licence on the London airwaves as we head towards the 21st century. I hope you'll find it interesting reading.

BBC Network Radio

The BBC's first new national radio station for 23 years, Radio Five, was launched in 1990 with its collision of education, sport and young people's programming. Next year it will be joined by the BBC's new 24 hour a day rolling news service. Although stalled for a while by the protests from listeners to Radio Four on Long Wave, it now seems almost certain that it will take to the air as planned.

The BBC's existing National services have been changing too. Whenever new opposition has arrived, the BBC has traditionally moved into the area that its new rivals had planned to occupy. Shortly before Classic FM launched, the BBC introduced a more 'listener friendly' format for Radio Three. With Virgin 1215 about to launch, Radio One announced (yet again) that it was moving away from singles towards album tracks, and introduced a new Sunday night album chart to prove it.

Radio One and Radio Two are also seeing changes for political reasons. In 1996 the BBC's Charter is to be renewed by the Government. This has resulted in a debate over the future direction of the BBC and what sort of services it should provide. Many of the BBC's critics have long thought that Radio One and Two should be sold off or closed down as they don't offer anything different to the commercial stations. To try and counteract these complaints, Director General John Birt has ordered Radio One and Two to become more different from their commercial rivals.

To do this, Radio One is increasing the speech content on the station to around 30 percent during daytime programming. It has also brought in new magazine programmes in the evenings, more comedy and more social action campaigns. While this may take it away from the standard pop radio format, it's also likely to drive away the listeners. It's not even likely to gain any brownie points from its critics: while One FM continues to play anything vaguely resembling pop music they won't understand how it differs from ILR.

What Radio One does do that is different is its championing of new music and its support for some of the branches of the pop tree that the bland playlists of most ILR stations never reach. With a bit less emphasis on the rock music its aging controllers seem to favour and more on black and dance music, Radio One could fully satisfy its public service obligations. After all, there aren't many calls for Radio Three to add more speech because the music it plays is just the same as Classic FM.

BBC Local Radio

BBC Local Radio has also been upping the amount of speech programming for similar reasons to Radio One and Two. Here it perhaps makes more sense, with many of the BBC's ILR competitors cutting back on the amount of local news coverage that they provide. This change in BBC Local Radio has helped boost audiences in some areas, but apparently at the expense of some sections of the community who did't otherwise listen to BBC radio.

However, things aren't so clear cut in somewhere like London where speech stations LBC and Radio Four both do well in the ratings. BBC Local Radio in the Capital has been a problem for some years. Radio London was badly underfunded and its programming was a mess. With the success of the big soul pirates in the early eighties, it changed its daytime format to try and target that audience. Later it transformed into the rather more coherant adult rock and talk station GLR. However, the launch of Virgin 1215 to poach both its listeners and best presenters has left GLR with nowhere to go. Perhaps the best solution would be if the BBC put its rolling news service on its local stations, with a percentage of each hour given over to local news.

Independent National Radio

If you're going to have politicians deciding a country's broadcasting policy then I suppose it's enevitable that you'll end up with a station like Classic FM. The industry wanted to see an adult rock service on FM. The sort of station that would fit the gap between ILR's chart FM and gold AM services and pull in lots of cash from the people who were now thirty and forty-somethings with big salaries. Instead, the politicians decided they wanted INR to aspire to something greater and dictated that of the three national stations on offer, one had to be for something other than pop and another had to be all speech.

Having said this, Classic's playlist of short, popular classical pieces has brought in a bigger audience than many industry observers first anticipated. Nine percent of people in the UK tuned in each week during the first three months of broadcasting. The latest research shows them building on this success. Classic won't be pulling in massive ratings but it seems to be doing okay. The only question is whether in the long term it can convert the ratings into the sort of advertising revenue that's needed for a national station.

Newly launched on 30 April is Virgin 1215: an FM rock station on AM. It's difficult to know how much the choice of waveband will affect the station. If people really want to listen to something then they'll put up with a great deal to do so, as pirate radio shows. However, unless listeners think Virgin is sufficiently different from what's already on offer elsewhere, they're unlikely to brave the mush on AM. After dark is likely to be a particular problem for the station. Reception becomes increasingly difficult and there's also competition on FM from rock programming on Radio One and on some ILR stations.

Virgin's DJ line-up seems to be largely based around the friends of Richard Skinner, joint Programme Controller at Virgin, drawing heavily on former GLR staffers. The station does sound very much like a GLR with the talky bits taken out and adverts put in. It's also interesting to note that the average age of Virgin's DJs is 10 years younger than Radio One, despite aiming at an older audience.

The last of the INR stations (for now) will be advertised in Spring 1995. This will be the licence for the speech-based station which will broadcast on the AM frequencies currently used by Radio One. The Radio Authority delayed advertising this licence because of doubts over whether the economy would be able to sustain it if it was offered earlier. When it does come on air, INR3 will be facing competition from the BBC's new rolling news service. It seems likely that rather than being the 'commercial Radio Four' that the politicians wanted, INR3 will instead become a 24 hour phone-in station.

Independent Local Radio

How much Independent Local Radio has changed depends very much on whereabouts in the country you are. Away from the cities, some of the smaller ILR stations have only recently begun separate AM and FM services. Tuning in, you'd discover that the major changes in places like London have largely passed them by. Deregulation appears to have only brought with it the chance to cut costs and bring in new revenue earning opportunities, such as sponsorship. Although now free from the IBA's creativity-stifling restrictions, the quality of programming and presentation remains woefully poor and unoriginal. You soon begin to realise just why Capital Radio is the most successful commercial station in the UK.

Perhaps it's time to kick out some of the old stations and bring in some new people and companies with fresh ideas? Starting back in January and continuing on till the end of next year, the Radio Authority has been re-advertising each existing AM and FM service in the country. However, before this process even began, Radio Authority Chairman Lord Chalfont had stated that the Authority didn't want to see "change for the sake of change". On the evidence of the licences that have been re-awarded so far this certainly seems the case. In many areas, potential competitors took this as a signal that they would be wasting their time and money by applying.

What about all the new licences that were promised by the Government for new and exciting radio services catering to specialist tastes? The Radio Authority has decided that its priorities lie in bringing Independent Radio to those places which don't currently have it. In practice, this seems to mean the same old tried and tested generic ILR format from the same old half-dozen media companies who now own most of the Independent Radio system.

Where there are new specialist services, it's mostly those same companies who seem to own them again. Take for example the new regional licences, designed to bring an new format to the airwaves in five areas in the UK. The first winner was Galaxy Radio, owned by Chiltern Radio, who plan to expand the pop/dance format of their Bristol station to the whole of the Western region. The North West franchise seems set to go to an easy listening station owned by another major radio owner.

It seems that it's now unlikely that there will be the flourishing of a large number of specialist stations as was originally hoped for. There just isn't sufficient advertising revenue to support more than one station in many areas. There isn't a large enough audience to support all but the most mainstream of formats. There isn't a large enough amount of space on the wavebands to fit the new stations in — particularly if the space at the top of the FM band that becomes available in 1995 goes to new INR services rather than local ones. And the Radio Authority is too conservative to take a chance anyway — they'd much rather just licence safe stations that will give them an easy life and won't cause any trouble. With a few token exceptions, it seems unlikely that we're going to get any new groundbreaking services from ILR.

Satellite Radio

Chris England, former Programme Controller of satellite station Euronet, looks at the the new radio stations beaming down from above.

The two Astra Satellites provide 32 different television stations in a variety of formats, catering mainly for the English and German markets. Everybody has heard of Sky Television, less well known is the fact that Astra also delivers radio stations direct to the home. Seemingly, people are catching on, and the BBC has committed itself to satellite radio, by placing Radios 1, 4, 5 and the World Service on Astra. Rumours abound that Virgin 1215 will be supplementing its mono AM broadcasts with full hi-fi quality stereo from satellite.

Satellite Radio 'piggybacks' on the main television signal, using its own soundtrack, or 'sub-carrier', and can be easily selected by a listener using the 'Audio/Radio' button on the remote control unit associated with his satellite receiver.

The original concept was that for every set of pictures being transmitted there would be a number of different soundtracks in different languages. This is the case with, for example, Eurosport, where along with the pictures of a football match come simultaneous commentaries, one in German, one Dutch, one French, and one English. However, copyright problems have left a lot of television stations unable to provide simultaneous soundtracks, and a lot of sub-carriers unused. Slowly, these have been sub-let to radio services.

At first the idea was that companies would provide their radio service on satellite to then be picked-up and rebroadcast by ordinary radio stations as an overnight sustaining service, or on cable systems. Gradually they realised that there was also a sizeable audience of those who were actually tuning in and listening directly via their home satellite receiving equipment. In many cases, listeners would switch off their television sets after plugging their satellite receivers into their hi-fi units. This Direct-to-Home (DTH) audience has appeared in polls carried out by reputable companies as being 13% of the satellite receiving homes in Britain.

Radio via Satellite is really the final frontier, and ideal for innovative newcomers. Within the UK all radio is allocated by competitive tender for geographically pre-defined areas allotted by the Radio Authority. Satellite radio, whilst having to be fully licensed by the Radio Authority, can come and go as it or market forces please. Anybody with the odd couple of hundred thousand pounds can start their own station by sub-leasing an unused sub-carrier. They don't have to wait for the Radio Authority to ask for tenders. There is no 'promise of performance', so stations can experiment and evolve their own formats without the restrictions that plague conventional stations. It's all a sort of legalised pirate radio, the perfect place for new programming ideas to be nurtured, rather than the North Sea or top of towerblocks this country's disgusting broadcasting laws force the innovators to.

Many satellite stations have come and gone, notably Richard Branson's Radio-Radio, as well as Radio Nova, and Euronet. In most cases, the stations have closed through a lack of advertising revenue. RAJAR don't accept that satellite radio has an audience, and so don't include it in their research. Without any 'official' audience figures, the advertisers with the big budgets won't place their campaigns into satellite radio. No money, no station.

Some satellite-only stations manage to survive. Quality Europe FM (QE FM), a soft music station supposedly relying on the DTH audience only, actually sells off most of its airtime to a German religious organisation, who use the satellite to deliver their programmes to other radio stations throughout Europe who are re-broadcasting them. It's cheaper than renting landlines. Other stations survive by also having a main outlet on land. Radio Asia, and Sunrise Radio (also Asian) have land-based stations picking their services up and re-broadcasting them, as well as considerable audiences listening directly to the satellite.

So, for the moment at least it seems, the survival of satellite radio depends upon the satellite transmissions also having a distribution purpose. The sad thing is, of course, that when it becomes viable or accepted as capable of standing alone, the few big boys who between them own all of British radio at the moment, will make sure that they have such a large slice of the action. Then where do the innovative newcomers go?

Restricted Service Licences

Got a few thousand quid to spare? Want to run a radio station for four weeks? Provided you're not offering a similar service to what's already available locally, the Radio Authority will grant your station a Restricted Service Licence.

Since the Radio Authority took over, around 450 licences have been given for a wide range of services. Student radio stations have been popular, offering a chance for University stations to broadcast to a wider public than their normal closed-circuit operations. Some groups applying for local licences get an RSL to test out their format and drum up support for their application. There have also been charity fund-raising stations, such as the Christmas Radio Cracker network. The only downside is when the stations have to come off air at the end of their 4 weeks and discover that despite their success a full-time licence is unlikely to be on offer.

Pirates

In 1984 the Government made changes to the law to tighten up on unlicensed broadcasting. The Radio Interference Service (as it was then known) had complained that were unable to do their job properly due to loopholes in the law. They were sure that when the new laws came in they would be able to rid the airwaves of the pirates for good. Although scared off at first, the pirates were soon back on the air in bigger numbers than ever before — in one month in 1988, 48 illegal stations operating in the London area were logged.

The Radio Investigation Service (as it had by then become known) began complaining to the Government. They wanted the law tightened up to make it easier to do their job. Rather than having to spend time going out raiding stations, they wanted to stay in their warm, cosy offices and write threatening letters to people instead. So along with the laws that brought in the new Independent stations, the Government also brought in a major tightening up of the pirate radio laws. Goodbye pirate radio for good this time? I don't think so... just take a listen to the 20 plus (and growing!) pirate stations regularly on the air in the Capital.

Things have become harder for the current crop of pirates. The outlawing of advertising on stations has resulted in some businesses being threatened. To date there don't appear to have been any actual prosecutions though. Getting sufficient evidence to be able to win a case against an advertiser can prove difficult. For the rash of breakbeat techno stations pushing underground events such laws are useless anyway.

Where the RIS have been more busy is in cutting off the cellphones and pagers used by pirate stations. Here again though the pirates can usually move fast to get phones reconnected elsewhere, possibly under false names and addresses to avoid being traced. The new GSM phone system also offers pirates the chance to use a mobile phone registered in another country where the RIS's tentacles don't reach.

New technology has also made the job of the RIS more difficult in tracking down the stations themselves. Undetectable microwave links between studios and transmitters are now ubiquitous on all but the lowest budget stations. With fines now set at a maximum of UKP 5,000 in a Magistrates Court and unlimited if a defendant opts for a Crown Court trial, such systems are seen as a worthwhile investment.

The lack of success in defeating the pirates directly seems to have led the RIS to try different angles. There have been attempts to try and win sympathy from the general public. For example, last summer they alleged that gangs were setting up pirate stations to promote raves where they were involved in illegal drug dealing. The reality is that whilst there have been a small number of cases of pirate deejays dealing, there is little evidence to promote such a grand conspiracy theory.

When they haven't been able to do anything about stopping pirate radio directly, they've tried to stop people talking about it instead. My own company had its mail intercepted and a Post Office box number withdrawn after complaints from the RIS that we were involved in unlawful activities. The telephone company through which we run our information services was threatened. Another box number through a private agency was withdrawn after further RIS complaints. Although we had some success initially in countering the RIS through our solicitors, eventually we were forced to give up reporting on pirate radio because of the risk to the rest of the business. At no time were we prosecuted so we could prove our innocence: the RIS instead just relied on intimidation. We weren't even involved in broadcasting — just reporting it!

New London Licences

At the start of March, the Radio Authority advertised eight ILR licences for London. Two of these were for new stations on 990 AM and 1458 AM. 990 was previously used by Spectrum Radio when they had problems with Radio Caroline on their main 558 frequency. 1458 is currently in use by GLR. The remaining six are for stations whose licences are up for renewal: Jazz FM, Kiss FM, LBC Newstalk, LBC Talkback, Melody Radio and Spectrum Radio.

The four neighbourhood licences, currently held by London Greek Radio / WNK, Radio Thamesmead, Sunrise Radio and Choice FM, will be re-advertised once the Londonwide licences have been awarded, together with a new local licence for East London.

Here's our verdict on who's likely to be the winners and losers when the Radio Authority announce the results in the autumn.

Eagle Radio is a country music service, put together by former County Sound boss Mike Powell now at radio investment company UK Radio Developments. Our verdict: win — rumblings from the Radio Authority say they want a country station in London and Eagle has the right credentials.

London Rock Radio wants to provide an AOR service on FM and includes Jasper Carrott , Chris De Burgh and Complete Communications as backers and the deposed boss of Virgin 1215 on the management. Our verdict: lose — too close to Virgin 1215 in format, plus they didn't win last time.

Celador productions is proposing another adult rock service. Our verdict: lose — the Radio Authority don't want another Virgin.

Virgin are considering applying for a licence for a station to do on FM what they're already doing on AM. Our verdict: lose — Virgin competing with Virgin doesn't seem too likely as a winner does it?

XFM is already well known to the Capital's indie fans. Run by Sammy Jacob (ex-Solar, Q-102) and backed by Fiction Records, it has had two extremely successful Restricted Service Licence broadcasts in support of its bid and would provide a format that's desperately needed. Our verdict: lose — sources suggest that the Radio Authority don't like XFM and think it will overlap with Virgin too much.

Melody Radio are still doing well with their MOR format, although audiences have dropped slightly since the start. Our verdict: win — well, it's the sort of format you'd expect the wrinklies at the Radio Authority to like and with that nice Mr Hanson as owner it's not going to have any financial problems is it?

Golden Rose, owners of Jazz FM, are putting together a bid for a new AM station to target 30-something women. Viva AM would have a 50/50 mixture of talk and 70s-based light pop. A second station would help to make their expensive Marble Arch headquarters more viable. Our verdict: win — the sort of safe choice the Radio Authority would go for.

Jazz FM are now breaking even, but still aren't pulling in a very large audience and the format isn't exactly jazz is it? Our verdict: win — but mostly through the Radio Authority's conservatism.

David Lee, founder of Jazz FM, wants to start a new jazz station. He reckons he's learned from the mistakes of the Jazz FM launch and wants a station on the air once more which plays real jazz. Our verdict: lose — you don't get no second chance!

LBC also faces competition from former staff, with a bid from former Finance Editor Douglas Moffat and former Managing Director Peter Thornton. Our verdict: lose — despite having Radio Authority friendly credentials, with LBC now over it's financial troubles they're not gonna win.

LBC have to apply for two licences this time round, one for AM and one for FM. Our verdict: win FM, lose AM — LBC are now over their financial problems but there isn't a big enough difference between their services so goodbye to AM.

Sir Peter Yarra, chairman of the Sports Council, and Sir Colin Cowdrey, former Cricketer, are behind a bid for a sports station. Our verdict: win — jolly decent chaps, plus we could do with some more sport on the radio to compete with that Radio Five.

London Transport want to run a station that just provides London travel information in conjunction with a private partner. Our verdict: lose.

Comedy producer John Lloyd is putting in a bid to run a 24-hour comedy station, with backers including Douglas Adams, Angus Deayton, Ruby Wax, John Walters, Paul Whitehouse, Sean Hardie, Victor Lewis Smith and Chris Donald. Our verdict: lose — bit too radical for the Radio Authority and not really enough people onboard with commercial radio experience.

West London Asian station Sunrise Radio wants to go Londonwide, with a bid opposite multi-cultural Spectrum Radio. Sunrise made an unsuccessful bid to take over Spectrum last year. Our verdict: win — Sunrise seems to be well liked by the Authority as an example of ethnic broadcasting that gets it right.

Spectrum Radio has had a large number of problems since its launch, but has been more stable recently since its tie-up with TV Asia. Our verdict: lose — the Radio Authority have been reportedly keen to dump Spectrum for some time and everyone seems to have decided that multicultural stations just don't work.

Star Radio are an East London group who also want to run a Londonwide Asian station. Our verdict: lose.

Kiss FM are now breaking even, have the backing of the successful EMAP group, have a unique format (even if daytimes could still do with some improvement) and are pulling in a reasonable audience. Our verdict: win.

United Christian Broadcasters want to run a popular Christian station. Our verdict: lose.

Edited by Stephen Hebditch, with thanks to Ken North and Chris England.