RA Receives 4 Applications For Tayside Small-Scale Licences

The Radio Authority has announced the applications for the new small-scale Independent Local Radio (ILR) licences within Tayside; the closing date for applications was 7 April. Each licence is being offered for small-scale coverage of a location within the former Tayside region comprising the areas of Angus, City of Dundee, and Perth and Kinross.

The following stations have applied:

• Discovery FM Ltd. (George Mackintosh, 01382 776 403): a fluid mix of easy listening and soft adult contemporary artists together with locally focused speech content targeting the 35-64 year old market with a proposed music to speech ratio of 75:25, for the City of Dundee and immediate environs.
• ESK FM (Martin Gilbert, 01674 673 506): a lively mix of music and speech together with community news, information and specialist music, for Angus.
• RNA FM (Malcolm Finlayson, 01382 660 111): a generalised music-based service that would contain health care information and advice, community announcements and news of interest to the public, and promote education, the local economy, and voluntary organisations, for Arbroath/Carnoustie and surrounding districts.
• Radio Tayside (Martin Campbell, 01382 225 656): a radio service run for the community by members of the community, bringing together all the local voluntary charity groups within the community, for the city of Dundee and its environs.

The Radio Authority hopes to announce its decision about the award of the licences this Summer.

…The Radio Authority has also agreed to the transfer of control to independent trusts of the four radio licences controlled by Owen Oyston. The Authority says that it has taken into account the best interests of listeners, staff and minority shareholders at the stations and decided that the removal of control was a preferable alternative to revocation.

In December 1997, the Authority decreed that Owen Oyston was not a ‘fit and proper person’ to hold a radio licence following his unsuccessful appeal against charges of rape and indecent assault.

As a result, Oyston’s shares in the companies which hold the licences for The Bay, Heartbeat 1521 AM, Gold Beat and City Beat 96.7, may be transferred into one or more trusts, provided the trustees are independent of Owen Oyston.

Oyston is required to complete the transfer of his radio shareholdings within six weeks.

Radio Authority: 0171 405 7058