CRCA Claims BBC Radio Neglects Public Service Role

The Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA) has accused the BBC’s most popular radio services, Radio 1 and Radio 2 of making minimal contributions to the public service requirements detailed in the Government’s green paper on charter renewal, A strong BBC, independent of Government.

In its response to the green paper, the CRCA claims that independent research shows 71% of Radio 1’s weekday daytime speech and 90% of its weekend daytime speech output makes no contribution to the new public purposes prescribed in the Government paper.

Meanwhile, the trade body states, commercial radio makes a substantial contribution to the public service requirements, despite receiving no public funding.

“Similar research into the output of two commercial stations has shown that both Lincs FM and Radio City deliver more public purpose speech than Radio 1 across the day as a whole,and more public purpose speech than both Radios 1 and 2 at the key listening time of breakfast,” the CRCA stated.

According to the CRCA’s audit of public service broadcasting, conducted in 2004, 67.9% of commercial radio stations broadcast more news output than is promissed by Radio 1 in its annual statement of programme policy

The CRCA’s research also claims that, without any change to investment or output, Radio 1 and 2 could both be commercially funded. However, the body is quick to point out that it is not calling for the privatisation of the two stations, but rather making the point that public funding should be better used to provide public service broadcasting.

Commenting on the findings, Paul Brown, chief executive of the CRCA, said: “A strong commercial broadcasting industry is vital to plurality, competition and quality. CRCA believes that if the BBC is allowed to continue to expand and compete without restraint, the wider UK communications ecology will suffer to the detriment of the consumer.”

Other points raised in the CRCA’s response to the Government’s proposals for the BBC’s future governance and funding included opposition to new BBC local radio services, which, it is claimed, represent an “unnecessary level of growth that will threaten the survival of existing commercial radio stations”.

The CRCA also proposes that the licence fee funding mechanism be reassessed in five years in order to “keep pace with a rapidly changing communications industry”.

The official response also reitterates Paul Brown’s statement at a recent Westminster Media Forum conference that the proposed BBC Executive Board be headed by a non-executive chairman, providing greater separation between it and the new BBC Trust (see BBC Trust Needs Non-Exec Chairman says CRCA Boss).

The CRCA also claims that the BBC gives tens of millions of pounds worth of “back-door” advertising to event sponsors, and that, in some cases, the value of the product mentions exceeds the price paid by the sponsor to attach their name to the event.

CRCA: 0207 306 2603 www.crca.co.uk