GWR Chief Blueprints The Future Of Radio

Ralph Bernard, chief executive of GWR Group, yesterday outlined his plans for the future of UK radio in the digital age. He proposed the creation of five sectors in the industry, alongside two new public service elements.

The advent of digital audio broadcasting (DAB), Bernard told the Birmingham Radio Festival, will necessitate significant changes to the legislative framework of the Broadcasting Bill.

“Until now the UK radio system has traditionally been divided into two fundamentally different groups: the BBC and commercial. I believe we need a new definition based on public service and public interest. Who owns and runs these services is not the issue. What is important is how we regulate what is broadcast and how those services we choose to define as public services are funded,” he said.

Bernard’s proposals support the BBC’s licence fee funding system as well as advertising-funded national and local commercial radio. The latter should be regulated with a lighter touch in the future, he says.

Bernard went on to say that community radio should become a subsidised public service broadcaster with a remit to broadcast to those communities too small to be covered economically by local commercial stations. They would be funded with money gained from the licence fees paid to the Radio Authority by national commercial groups.

In order to preserve community radio GWR has asked the BBC to relinquish its FM frequencies – replacing them with digital channels – to allow community radio to take over the frequencies.

Another sector in the proposal was Devolved Radio. This “comprises regional subsidised radio networks, which mirror the increasingly independent nations of Scotland and Wales along with the English regions.” This public service sector would serve those regional interests not currently catered for, other than by the fairly centralised BBC.

Bernard says: “Now may be the time to loosen the regulatory restrictions which beset local commercial radio and use that new found freedom to develop a new public service structure which lies partly outside the BBC.”

GWR Group: 0171 344 2718