Community radio stations struggling to provide regular news, claims Ofcom report

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The ability to offer a regular news service is a "major difficulty" facing a number of community radio stations, a report by Ofcom suggests.

The broadcast regulator's third Community Radio Annual Report for 2009/2010 claims to provide a "snapshot" of community radio in the UK. Overall the latest study, which is based on the annual reports from more than 100 stations, claims to reveal a "flourishing sector" with the number of people now able to tune into community radio stations up 17 per cent on last year.

According to the report since the first station went live five years ago a new one has been launched, on average, every ten days.

But issues were raised by some of the stations who say they are unable to offer a regular local news service, which the report recorded under programming as a "major difficulty" in the report.

"The single key area of programming difficulty continuing to cause most concern for Cheshire FM has been providing a quality regular local news service," one respondent said.

"Based on our initial business plan, it had seemed possible to fund one FTE [full-time equivalent] role to provide a daily news service and provide training and guidance to other volunteers in the area of speech programming. Unfortunately, levels of achievable and sustainable funding have precluded filling this role. Additionally, it has proven difficult to attract volunteers or student journalists interested in news presenting.

"The rural nature of Cheshire FM’s area and the ‘bright lights’ of the adjacent metropolitan areas of Manchester, Liverpool and Stoke-on-Trent have meant that we have struggled to attract suitable individuals. We have delivered a news service for several periods using volunteers, particular student journalists. However, unlike other programmes, a daily commitment is required to deliver a news service and this is not sustainable for prolonged periods. We believe a regular news service would be the one element that would take Cheshire FM to the ‘next level’ and we continue to examine our finances to see how this may sensibly be achieved."

According to the study Ofcom has licensed 228 stations over two rounds of licensing, 181 of which are broadcasting while 17 have decided not to launch or have handed back their licence, mainly due to funding problems. The remaining stations are preparing to start broadcasting, Ofcom says.

Now that the second round of licensing has concluded Ofcom added that it is currently considering whether there will be a third round.

"The Community Radio Annual Report provides an encouraging picture of the state of community radio in the UK," Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said in a release.

"In general, it’s been a challenging few years for the radio sector. Community radio has shared these challenges. Despite this, it continues to deliver local content and other community benefits. It is a genuine success story, and a great credit to the thousands of volunteers and enthusiasts that make it happen."

In the study Ofcom estimates that volunteers at the stations currently contribute more than two million hours per year to community radio.

One respondent from Tudno FM, Llandudno in Wales, said eight of their volunteers have gone on to gain media employment at stations including BBC Radio Cymru, GMR, Heart FM and Sky News.

A number of stations also work in partnership with local media organisations, such as Salford City Radio, for example, which worked with BBC Radio Manchester to give six of their volunteers work experience placements, or Oldham Community Radio which worked with its local newspaper and a local commercial radio station to offer a 'Community Reporters' course with the University College Oldham.