Community Benefit

Bevan Jones, Chair of the Community Radio Association, discusses the potential for new small scale and specialist radio stations in the UK.


What is community radio, or CR, as it is often known? The definition is straightforward: it is radio that is owned, managed and made by its audience. It provides the most direct kind of access to broadcasting because, in its purest form, any member of the public would be able to become a member of the group running their local station and then to make and broadcast programmes, without being filtered through the mediating hands of the professionals.

This is not a case of naive idealism. CR actually works. There are now probably over a thousand community or 'public' stations throughout the world. They vary hugely in scale and character, but what binds them together is that they are, uniquely, the creature of their listeners.

So if that is what CR is, what is it for? One clear area of consensus is that CR must increase the diversity of choice for the listener. It is a fundamental plank of the CR platform that, however high the quality of existing radio services, they do not, or cannot, cater for the full range of listeners' interests. They do not supply truly local, parish-pump programmes; while special interest material always has been and always will be marginalised in a mainstream schedule. More importantly, entire ethnic communities are excluded from the present system, and see CR as the only practical way of meeting their broadcasting needs.

But how do you achieve such a diversification? It is at this point that those arguing for CR as a new and distinct tier of third-force stations part company from those who want a simple deregulation of the airwaves. Luckily for the re-regulators, the lessons of France and Italy furnish an awful warning that just taking the lid off - allowing virtually anyone to open a station - leads, after the initial big bang, to a thousand crude clones of Radio 1, with a few zealots in the bigger cities thrown in.

Surely the sensible alternative is to license groups with a genuine desire to communicate. This is the approach adopted over the past decade in Australia. There, a network of more than 70 autonomous non-profit stations now provides a range of services that does not duplicate those of the national and commercial broadcasters. The not-for-profit principle is rather brutally enforced by a ban on advertising. But in consequence, Australia's public stations have developed a variety of funding mechanisms. These include sponsorship, subscription, sale of airtime, grants from statutory and voluntary bodies, benefit concerts, radiothons and so on.

As far as the programmes are concerned, they reveal just how innovative and diverse CR can be. A not untypical Australian CR station's weekly schedule may include several hours from an adult education college, a daily show made by school children, a single-parents' request show, coverage of district council debates, a half-hour comedy from the town prison, five hours in different languages, material made by local churches and political groups (no balance imposed but an automatic right of reply), a folk music and jazz strand - and a programme about the arguments over station policy. That may all sound a little worthy but what actually comes over to the listener is often the shear fun ordinary people get out of making radio for themselves.

This commitment to doing radio differently is what motivates community broadcasters around the world. Even in the supposed home of unregulated radio, the USA, CR stations are allocated special licences in recognition of their not-for-profit dedication to public service. They are even given grant-aid under a scheme initiated by President Nixon. Similar arrangements are in place in Canada, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and a growing number of other countries. In fact it now comes as a surprise to overseas CR enthusiasts that Britain has yet to accommodate CR within its system.

The frustrations faced by those who have been campaigning for CR in the UK may in part be attributed to a certain smugness about the overall achievements of British broadcasting. Any government might be exercised by the fact that when CR arrives, it will not be run exclusively by loyal members of the party in power. But the other arguments traditionally used against its introduction have now worn very thin indeed. It is now accepted that there will be room in the frequency spectrum for some 300 stations in the immediate future. It could be argued that the mass of pirates currently clogging up London's FM band have already found room enough - as long as you don't try to listen to Radio 3 in South London ... or develop new legitimate stations in the metropolis.

It is to be hoped that one of the nastier reasons suggested for the delay in introducing CR - racism has been laid to rest. The motive of would-be ethnic broadcasters is that CR will be an invaluable tool for promoting racial harmony. A black station in Brixton could do wonders to educate the wider community about black concerns and aspirations. 1 would expect Afro-Caribbean, Asian and other ethnic communities to be a prominent part of a CR sector, achieved through their own station and their involvement in generalist neighbourhood stations.

The aborted experiment in CR would have fully acknowledged the potency of ethnic demands. It would also have tested a variety of styles of station ranging from the democratically-accountable voluntary organisations to the hard-nosed professionally-managed type. But one lesson can be drawn from the experience. It is that there is real and widespread interest in CR. The meagre 21 licences on offer attracted an astonishing 277 applications. The abrupt cancellation of the experiment failed to dent the enthusiasm of CR campaigners.

Publication of the February 1987 Green Paper was a blow, in that it seemed to see CR as no more than a means for expanding the radio advertising market. But subsequent ministerial statements have provided some reassurance. At the Radio Festival in July last year, Douglas Hurd acknowledged the social benefits CR could bring to deprived communities, and he was prepared to reconsider the blanket ban on public funding which was proposed in the Green Paper. One Tory MP with a keen interest in radio matters recently said 'CR should not be distracted from meeting community needs by commercial pressures.'

The most recent official pronouncement, made by Douglas Hurd on 19th January, incorporates these sentiments, with its references to 'local identity' and 'cultural diversity'. But it still fails to distinguish properly between commercial and community radio and, worse, gives no clear timetable for action.

The decision to establish a new Radio Authority has taken many observers by surprise, not least because it commits the government to the creation of another quango. Whether or not it will be the IBA's Radio Division in exile remains to be seen. But the Community Radio Association will continue to press for CR to be licensed on a distinct basis and to be given priority over other new stations - for the simple reason that there is already a plentiful supply of pop-based radio and an absence of access and special interest radio. Keeping such a distinction is surely in the interest of the commercial and the community camps: they should not tread on each others' toes, or revenues.

It is frustrating that the introduction of CR is again stalled while the new framework for radio is being put together. The Community Radio Association, having made useful friends in the media. the voluntary sector and the unions, now needs to establish a solid parliamentary presence to voice its ambitions. And one way of convincing MPs of the virtues of CR will be to invite them down river to Radio Thamesmead: a real community station pushing out programmes on an elderly cable system. It has a sustaining service from BBC Radio London and now receives support from Community Service Volunteers. CR does work in practice; now let's get the theory right.

[Source: IBA. Bevan Jones Head of the Community Radio association] [1987]


SOUNDS LOCAL

The First Of The New Community Radio Stations Go On Air

Since April the IBA has been awarding contracts for 'incremental' franchises, creating an entirely new breed of radio station for the UK. Here are some thoughts from the first four winners about their plans for going on air.


MANCHESTER (102.0 MHz VHF / FM, ethnic)

FIVE years ago Mike Shaft appeared on the Radio Festival platform to put the case for non-white radio in the UK. This year he was there once again, this time as Managing Director of Sunset Radio, the incremental station for Manchester, due to start 24-hour broadcasting in mid-September. His theme was targeting audiences.

'When you know whom you want to broadcast to, it is easy to target them,' he says, with confidence born of having at last won a hard-fought battle for ethnic broadcasting. His contention has long been that ethnic groups are not served by the existing broadcasters in Manchester or elsewhere. Sunset intends to devote itself to this audience, with a balanced mixture of soul, reggae, jazz, blues and Asian music, together with a minimum of three hours ethnic speech daily.

Shaft is an experienced broadcaster himself, having presented on Piccadilly Radio for eight years until 1986, and also for the BBC's local station GMR and BBC TV's Open Air. He may well present his own show on Sunset between 3 P.m. and 6 P.m. each day and occasionally at weekends. He has been officially employed by Sunset since 1 st June, with three other staff due to arrive on 1 st August. The plan is to have a total of 33 staff, 20 full-time and the others on contract. The only difficult area he anticipates is finding good daytime presenters who can attract and hold an audience. Sunset itself will not be running any training programmes until it goes on air, though some journalists will have been to Radio City for work experience.



The station, funded by £250,000 share capital, was originally hoping to launch in late August, but finding premises has proved more difficult than expected. Weeks of delay ended in some good fortune, however, when newspaper coverage in the Manchester Evening News led to them finding accommodation on the top floor of a building devoted to small workspaces within two miles of the city centre.

Now the priority is finishing the building and installation of two on-air studios and three small production studios. Equipment for these and the transmitter site on the roof of an office block in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester is likely to total some £110,000.

Shaft has already launched the promotional campaign for Sunset with a mixture of handbills and posters distributed on a local basis. He is confident of achieving a substantial reach among what he estimates as an ethnic population of 100,000 in Manchester, which includes Afro-Caribbeans, Asians, Chinese and other smaller groups such as Poles and Armenians. While daytime programming will be aimed mainly at the young black audience, evening slots will provide access for the Asian and Chinese communities in particular.

A local news team of an editor, three staff journalists and up to four trainees will supplement national and international news from IRN and Reuters. There are also discussions with the Caribbean newspaper The Voice about setting up a news agency both to provide and take Afro-Caribbean items.

Shaft predicts first-year advertising revenue at over £1 m, based on a sizeable daytime audience and more targetable minority audiences for specialist programming in the evenings which could even attract multilingual advertising. He anticipates that advertising slots will divide between 40% sold locally and 60% sold nationally, the latter through BMS, the national radio sales agency, which has a 10% shareholding in the station.

Although Sunset will establish links with the other new incremental stations around the country - Shaft is already talking to FTP in Bristol about sharing concerts bought from PPM Radiowaves - he sees the service as essentially local. Directed at an audience which has been more used to listening to cassettes and perhaps one radio show of black music a week, the intention is to woo new radio listeners both for entertainment and information.

'Ethnic minorities are our main target,' he comments. 'If Benazir Bhutto is in Britain, she may get three or four minutes on World at One, 30 seconds on Piccadilly, but we will try to give her an hour on Sunset.'

Sunset Radio broadcast on 102.0 FM from the Sunley Building. However the Radio Authority threatened to withdraw Sunset's licence in mid 1993 due to no compliance with expected procedures. The transmission provider, National Transcommunications Limited, discontinued the use of the transmitter in August 1993 due to non payment. The station did make it back to air for a short time thereafter, but went bankrupt in October 1993.

Faze FM were awarded the re-advertised 102.0 FM licence and operated under the name Kiss 102 (a name used under licence from Kiss 100 in London). Rather than a community station, Kiss was a dance music station and was later sold to Galaxy Radio.  [MDS975]


STIRLING (96.7 MHz VHF / FM )

Stirling may be surrounded by radio stations but none of them actually reflects the concerns and interests of the local people. That is the contention of the Stirling Community Radio Association, winners of the incremental contract for the area, who are due to launch CentreSound at the end of the year.

'Stirling is only 30 miles from Glasgow but our lifestyles are very different,' says Liz Stobo, one of the four founders of the winning group. 'Glasgow is concerned with big business, but we are a market town and farming community.'

An experienced group, all with BBC experience, and led by media studies lecturer Dan MacLeod, they have been working on the idea of a local community station since 1986. Activity stepped up dramatically on the advertisement of the Stirling incremental contract in January, since when expertise and support have been sought throughout the area.

The plan is to run the station with just five full-time staff. The first the station manager will start on 1st October with the rest to follow as equipment and workspace allow. Although both the station manager and a senior producer will be expected to take the microphone on occasions, the bulk of broadcasting will be provided by local volunteers.

Training programmes have already started with voluntary help from local professional and amateur broadcasters who are taking CentreSound volunteers with varying degrees of experience through every aspect of radio broadcasting skills. 'Everyone is going to have to turn their hands to a bit of everything,' says Stobo.

CentreSound will be providing a full evening (5 p.m. to midnight) and weekend service (7 a.m. Saturdays and 8 a.m. Sundays to midnight) with a mix of local information, request programming, discussion, phone-ins and specialist music including specifically Scottish tastes. Weekday breakfast programmes from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., catering specifically for the local audience, will be produced on a shared costs and revenue basis with Radio Clyde and a sustaining daytime (weekdays) and night-time service will be provided direct from the Clyde FM relay signal.

Broadcasting over a six-mile radius from a transmitter based at Stirling Castle, the catchment area has a population of some 90,000. CentreSound is working on a 25% reach, aiming to win listeners through appealing to essentially community interests ranging from localised traffic reports ('We don't have Glasgow's traffic jams,' comments Liz Stobo) to problem sharing programmes.

CentreSound will operate as a trading company, whose board of directors will be drawn from both the Stirling Community Radio Association and the professional business world, with the Association retaining control though the chair. Start-up funding has come from Clackmannan District Council, Stirling District Council, Stirling University and an issue of £100,000 share capital. Local banks have also offered favourable terms should extra finance be required.

The bulk of expenditure will be taken up on conversion of their premises, part of a former John Player cigarette factory in the Stirling Enterprise Park. Plans have been drawn up for two self-op studios, a larger sound studio, small news studio, editing suite and production area. The group is particularly concerned to allow for disabled access to the studios.

The proximity of ILR stations Radio Clyde, Radio Tay and Radio Forth, as well as two other prospective incremental stations to be based in Bathgate near Edinburgh and in Glasgow at Easterhouse, means that CentreSound will have to seek a very localised advertising market, . supplemented with some national sales through SIRS (Scottish and Irish Radio Sales). With local sales the group is hopeful that low advertising rates will compete well with the local press and Radio Clyde's substantially higher charges.

Although the launch date is still some way ahead, Liz Stobo feels that local promotion is all important. Having run a series of seminars to gauge local opinion and demand before making the application, the plan is to reconvene these groups and continue the consultation process. 'We want to make CentreSound what locals want it to be, so the community input is crucial.'

A recent fete run by Central Region was indicative of the scale of potential interest. CentreSound drew a good audience with its use of a Radio Clyde disco roadshow at the event and that afternoon secured support from two experienced presenters willing to part with their sizeable album collection, another broadcasting professional keen to get involved with the new station, and various local people who have said they would be willing to go on air to talk about their hobbies - true community involvement.


BRISTOL (97.2 MHz VHF / FM)

There's a new listening audience out there which is not being catered for,' declares Clement McLarty, Managing Director of FTP, or For The People, the incremental station due to be launched in Bristol in the autumn. Calling itself a 'youth orientated music-based multi-cultural station'which will cover the whole spectrum of black music,' FTP will be building on its 11 months' experience as a pirate broadcaster during 1988.

To Clement McLarty, winning the franchise for Bristol was like 'a dream come true. I intended to take FTP to its limits and now I am able to do so. ' Having given up his job as a social worker at the end of last year (at the same time as FTP went off the air as a pirate), he has devoted his time to preparing the application and, since the announcement of the award in late April, to making a legal FTP a reality.

Premises have proved the biggest problem. Having lost its intended site and then found others far too small, FTP was eventually hoping to complete a deal on a former warehouse in the Easton area of Bristol in early July. The plan is to convert this into a broadcasting centre with one or two on-air studios, a preparation studio and news booth, plus offices for sales and marketing staff, by early September. Work on a transmitter site is going ahead, the cost of construction and equipment for this and the studio complex estimated at around £150,000.

Hoping to be on air by October in order to catch the Christmas market which McLarty anticipates will see them through until the spring, FTP's presenters are currently undergoing an intensive radio course run by Bristol Polytechnic's Broadcast Journalism Department. McLarty plans to keep several of FTP's former presenters - 'If we got rid of the old staff, we'd lose the magic of FTP' - but knows that their skills, learnt on the job, need honing. 'They should keep their personality, their charisma, but refine their radio skills.'

McLarty himself presented on FTP, especially in its early days, but gradually stood back as the station developed, able to delegate and to rearrange the schedules as the audience grew. He may well take the microphone once a week on the new station - his first love is presenting but realises that there will be plenty of other matters to occupy his time.

Although the bulk of broadcasting content will be music based, there will also be slots for current affairs (some of which will be provided by students from Bristol Polytechnic), children's interests, talk shows, phone-ins and community access. Two producers will have responsiblity for encouraging input from local community groups, many of whom already have strong contacts with FTP from their pirate days and have previously made programmes. There will also be an hour of Asian language programming each evening from the local Asian Consultancy Committee.

Local news and information will be gathered by a news reporter, while a feed from IRN via the local ILR station GWR will provide national and international news.

With plans eventually to broadcast around the clock, the station will launch with a weekday service from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. extending to 2 a.m. at weekends. From previous experience McLarty anticipates that the bulk of listeners an estimated 40,000 or 10% of the available audience - will be under 35. Although the station is likely to win some listeners from both Radio 1 and GWR, McLarty feels that there are potential listeners who found nothing to keep them with the other stations which have, after all, to meet the demands of what he terms 'the broader imperative'. He is confident that FTP will have the edge on attracting the youth element with a friendly, spontaneous approach to music and information.

Backed with share capital of £210,000, mainly held by small shareholders but with 20% (10% voting) from GWR, whose Managing Director Ralph Bernard is on the board, the station anticipates first-year revenue of £234,000, of which nearly £100,000 would be from local advertisers.

FTP has been promoting its launch during the summer and is clearly raring to be back on the air. McLarty stresses the responsibility which he feels should be attached to radio and which he claims permeated the station last year through its work in the community with schemes such as Neighbourhood Watch. 'We even had a Christmas card from the police,' he adds proudly.

FTP launched in 1990 using 97.2 MHz from a low power transmitter at Pur Down to just cover the city of Bristol. However the station barely lasted for one year. The then Chiltern Radio Group bought FTP and launched their dance music station on 97.2 in Bristol. This was a pre-cursor their south Wales and west of England regional station Galaxy 101. Once Galaxy 101 was launched the 97.2 transmitter was merely used as a relay to infill an area of poor reception in Bristol. Due to different ownership and ownership rules this station has also been known as Vibe 101 and Kiss.  [MDS975]


HOUNSLOW / EALING / SOUTHALL (medium wave/AM, ethnic)

Avtar Lit has recognised the enormous potential for an Asian broadcasting operation in West London for several years. His conviction eventually led him to go on air with Sina Radio in 1984 in an act of 'enlightened disobedience'.

The label 'pirate' does not spring to mind as a description of the station's activities however. Sina quickly established itself in the local community, adopting a politically and religiously neutral stance to overcome the undoubted cultural and social differences which abound in the area. Listeners clearly appreciated the 'Sina sound' as something they could not get elsewhere and the aerial even became something of a selling point on local property.

Advertisers welcomed the service and bemoaned its closure last autumn when it was announced that the IBA would be going ahead with plans to launch the first incremental stations. One local firm claimed a 100% rise in sales due to advertising on Sina, followed by a 50% drop when the station went off air.

Despite its pirate status, it was also being used extensively by local statutory bodies such as the education department, the health service and the community services department. The police estimated that one Sina slot for Asian recruits had been more effective than any other approach they had tried.

Against this background, there is a feeling that Lit's new enterprise, funded with £250,000 share capital under the company name West London Radio Ltd, can hardly fail. Indeed the group is anticipating first-year advertising revenue of £809,000 for Sunrise Radio, based on assurances from some 400 local businessmen of their support and an estimated 30% of revenue from national advertising to be sold through one of the main radio advertising agencies.

Sunrise plans to appeal to a mixed audience of up to 200,000 people with 40% English language programming, 40% Hindustani (understood by 90% of the Asians in the coverage area) and 20% other languages, including Tamil and Armenian. There will be a balance of Eastern and Western popular music, with multilingual presenters to maintain continuity. Compared to his pirate days, Lit plans to introduce more current affairs programmes, phone-ins and sport, plus programming specially designed for women and children provided by a community group called the Friends of Middlesex. National and international news will come from IRN with local news, including news from Southern Asia, provided by a small news team plus input from an Asian news agency. It is also hoped that teams from Sunrise might go to India to make their own programmes. There will be a two hour slot for minority language programming mainly Tamils, Armenians, Poles, Punjabis and Gujaratis each evening at 9 p.m.

Since being awarded the franchise the priority has been to establish a working base and recruit and train staff ready to meet the proposed launch date of late August or early September. Initially on air from 5.45 a.m. to 11 p.m., the plan is to provide a 24-hour service within six months.

Three studios have been built at the company's headquarters in Hounslow in a building formerly occupied by a cable radio operation, Carousel Radio. IBA engineers will be installing the transmitter at a green field site in Isleworth. Sales and promotional staff are based in Southall in Sina Radio's old headquarters, but the plan is to develop an entirely new site on an industrial estate in Southall. This will act as a broadcasting centre with the flexibility to be let out to other broadcasting operations; the Hounslow base would become a production and training centre. Tamil and Armenian groups have been training on equipment there since the end of May.

Aiming for 22 full-time and 35 part-time staff, Sunrise will be drawing largely on Sina's experienced broadcasters, who are well used to dealing with the sensitivities of a mixed audience. In particular Lit stresses the need for a cosmopolitan and sophisticated approach to current affairs programming where issues can so easily become personalised.

Religious programming is inevitably another area in which Sunrise must be acutely aware of the divergent allegiances among its audience. Sina carried more religious music than speech something which had appeal across the board and the plan is to continue this idea in a daily early morning programme.


The station has its own religious adviser in Dr John Walshe, a director of Sunrise, who has long been associated with the group. Searching for a way of expressing the station's aims to meet the needs and expectations of its audience in the franchise application, he came up with the terms 'aggregation' and 'disaggregation' respectively to encompass the idea that people from ethnic minorities appreciate both programming to make them feel part of the wider British community as well as other more specialist programming about their own particular concerns.

The plans are ambitious but realistic, on the grounds that there is a proven audience for a predominately Asian station in this area of London. Indeed, Lit clearly feels there is ample scope for an Asian radio network in the UK - he is also involved with the winning incremental franchise in Bradford - but, failing that, he knows that there will be a healthy sale for Sunrise's programmes on tape and possibly via satellite sub-carrier abroad. Having spent some time in California and set up an Asian station in the US in which he still has a financial interest, he knows that the Asian community there will be a ready customer.

Fortunately for Sunrise, this appetite for sounds of 'home' is matched by an appetite for business among the Asian community. The combination should be a winner. For Lit, who himself intends to present a morning programme each weekend, it will mean the beginning of a new era. It will also mean an end to listening for the knock on the door. At last, he says, 'Everything should start and finish on time.'

Avtar Lit's Sunrise Radio has been one of the great successes of this new layer of commercial radio stations. Sunrise launched on 5th November 1989 from studios in Hounslow and a relatively low power transmitter on 1413 AM located at Glade Lane serving West London twenty four hours a day.

Sunrise quicky expanded, first into Bradford, taking over the licence for the failed Bradford Community Radio frequency of 103.2 MHz and then, in 1991 on to satellite. In the 1990's the BBC had to relinquish its London wide high power frequency of 1458 kHz (used for BBC Radio London) - In 1994 Sunrise Radio won the Radio Authority licencing process to expand its programming across the whole of London and the surrounding counties from the 50kW transmitter at Brookmans Park.  [MDS975]




Contract awards for incremental ILR stations in other parts of the country have been made as follows:

Bathgate, West Lothian (medium wave/AM); decision deferred until October;

Belfast (VHF/FM) - Belfast Community Radio;

Bradford (VHF/FM, ethnic) - Bradford City Radio;

Coventry (VHF/FM, ethnic) - Radio Harmony;

Easterhouse, Glasgow (VHF/FM); East End Radio;

Greater London (medium wave/AM, ethnic): Spectrum Radio;

Greater London (VHF/FM); UR (London Jazz Radio);

Haringey (VHF/FM, ethnic) - London Greek Radio and WNK Radio;

Isle of Wight.(medium wave/AM) - Isle of Wight

Radio; Kettering (medium wave/AM) - KCBC Radio;

Stockport (VHF/FM) - KFM Radio;

Sunderland (VHF/FM) - Sunderland Community Radio Association;

Tendring (medium wave/AM) - North East Essex Community Radio.


[Source: IBA] [1989]


The Bathgate station RWL 1368 (Radio West Lothian) failed very quickly in 1990.

Radio Harmony, the ethnic station in Coventry, remained on air for several years on 102.6 FM before being taken over by KIX-96, a lively mainstream pop music station, in the mid 1990's. KIX-96 quickly moved from 102.6 to a clearer frequency of 96.2 . KIX itself was bought by Cumbria based CN Group some years later and became the rather bland Touch Radio.

Belfast Community Radio (BCR) went on air in 1990 on 96.7, but after six years of struggling it changed to a mainstream ILR style pop format in 1996.

Bradford City Radio went on air in the early 1990's as the community radio station on 103.2 FM. Shortly afterwards the licence was taken over by Sunrise Radio.

East End Radio in Glasgow lost its licence several years after going on air.

Spectrum Radio serving greater London on 558 kHz medium wave has been a successful project and remains on air.

London Jazz Radio - a.k.a. Jazz FM 102.2 - went on air with ambitious plans, a very professional team of presenters and a thoroughly researched and wide ranging selection of jazz. The station had good coverage, similar to Capital Radio, from its 2kW transmitter at Croydon. The organization also won the North West of England regional licence - launching in 1994 on 100.4 with 5kW from Winter Hill. However, it seems, that Jazz FM could never make sufficient money to be sustainable in that form. The name was changed to JFM in an effort to re-brand. However the Jazz FM name was re-instated a few years later but when GMG Media bought the stations the format was changed to oldies/tuneful pop and the name changed to Smooth Radio. Jazz FM was re-launched in 2008 as an on-line and digital station.

The Haringey licence on 103.3 was transmitted from Alexandra Palace. Initially the frequency was shared for four hours at a time by WNK and London Greek Radio, but when WNK stopped producing programmes LGR took over 103.3 full time.

Isle Of Wight Radio was a very successful local station covering the whole of the island from a 500 watt transmitter at Briddlesford Farm using 1242 kHz. It was one of the finest sounding local stations in the country. However the station remained independent for a mere two years,at which point GWR bought the station. It was later acquired by The Local Radio Company in the 1990's and also closed its medium wave transmitter - instead transferring to FM, in 1998, from a 0.1 kW transmitter at Chillerton Down on 107.0 MHz with additional very low power relays on 102.0 MHz.

In Kettering and Corby, KCBC launched on 1530 kHz medium wave from two transmitters, one in Corby and one in Kettering, using the same frequency - but synchronised to minimise reception problems. KCBC was a lively sounding full service style radio. The station later moved to 1584 kHz and then to FM from transmitters at Geddington on 107.4 and Wellingborough on 97.2 whereupon the name was changed to Connect FM.

KFM in Stockport was another commercial failure, though aguably a good alternative radio station. The frequency, 104.9, was taken over by Signal Radio after a couple of years and the output from 104.9 has undergone many confusing identity changes.

Sunderland Community Radio Association launched their station as Wear FM on 103.4 MHz, brodcasting from the University of Sunderland. It remained on air until the licence was readvertised, in the usual way, by the Radio Authority. From 1995 Sun City 103.4 took over and this station underwent several name cahnges; Sun City FM, Sun FM - and changes of ownership; GWR, Border Media, Capital Radio and latterly The Local Radio Company.

Tendring launched as Mellow 1557 on 1557 kHz medium wave from a transmitter site at Telstar Nurseries. It remained on air on medium wave until converting to FM in 1998, from the same transmitter site, and changing name to Dream 100 FM (100.2 MHz).  [MDS975]