OFCOM Consultations and Digital Britain

Having waited the majority of my year as Development Officer for some OFCOM consultations to respond to, two have come along at once.

Earlier this month, the consultation on Access and Inclusion closed: I’ve written a response on behalf of the SRA, which will be published shortly.

Yesterday, OFCOM launched a Broadcast Review: we’ll also be responding to it in due course.

Part of our response will be based on the Digital Britain final report, which was published earlier today. 

Our response for the Access and Inclusion consultation stated that we believe the 2Mbps broadband speed targeted as the minimum for 2012 is acceptable but requested that OFCOM clarify their position on Digital Radio.

To a large extent, that question was answered with the publication of the Digital Britain Final Report today.  The proposals indicate that commercial radio should move from both FM and MW solely to DAB, by a date no later than 2015, with at least 2 years notice and only if 50% of radio consumption is via DAB.

It also suggests that “ultra-local” commercial and community stations should be allowed to either retain existing spectrum, orto be provided with FM frequencies as they are vacated.  MW will be phased out.

I see this as very good news for student radio, as many stations have the necessary equipment to broadcast on FM, but can’t due to lack of available spectrum.  However, costs need to be limited for FM spectrum and I won’t be surprised if the number of pirate stations increases: that remains my main concern from the proposals.

The OFCOM Broadcasting Review is, I think, a very radical document from OFCOM.  It proposes allowing community radio to not be restricted by the current 50% limit of funding from any one source and suggests allowing Outside Broadcasts to be sponsored by the venue.

I’ll publish my thoughts in full once we’ve submitted our response.

As always, get in touch with any thoughts.

Heartification: round 2

I’ll cover this in more detail via this blog within the next week but thought it would be a good idea to do a quick update on Heartification, the name given to Global Radio’s major rebranding of the majority of it’s heritage stations to the Heart name and format.

At 6am today 12 heritage stations owned by Global Radio were rebranded using the Heart name and format, bringing the total to 24. There are a further 9 stations that will lose their heritage names and join the Heart network later this year.

Round 2 affects stations in the South and South West of England, roughly covering the M4/M5 corridor from Reading to Plymouth (the only South Wales station owned by Global Radio, Red Dragon FM, is retaining it’s heritage name).

You can find the full map that covers all affected stations here.

All Heart network stations promote the same website on-air: Heart.co.uk (with helpful links for finding the station by it’s former heritage name).

Expect more on this in the next few days…

Survival Guide & Factsheets

Last week I planned out what will be my main contribution to the Student Radio Community.

The SRA has had the intention of writing a guide on radio broadcasting, specifically tailored to student stations.  This idea was 1st mentioned about 18 months ago… and to date has seen little progress.

So I’ve decided to push ahead and write “The Student Radio survival Guide” (currently a working title).  I’ve set a deadline of the next Student Radio Conference (late March/early April) to complete a draft version, with the intention of publishing the complete document in around a year’s time to allow for printing and redrafts.

This also ties in with the Factsheets that have been available over the years.  There were  good selection back in 2001 (as found via the web archive) and there’s a few on the existing website…

…but I feel it would be a good idea to expand on them and take the opportunity to make a few changes.

The new Factsheets will be just that: a maximum of 2 sides of A4 providing the essentials on various topics, sticking to the options and keeping the documents fairly concise.  The guide will expand on the factsheets and provide further ideas and suggestions, along with some opinion where appropriate.

As a starter, here’s a list of potential factsheets that took just 2 minutes to think up:

1: Applying for a community license as a student station
2: How to produce a news bulletin for students
3: How to produce an appropriate playlist for a student station
4: Suggestions or ideas for training presenters in terms of content
5: How to use Facebook in the most appropriate way
6: a guide to licensing, what you need for different circumstances
7: How to build a radio studio on the cheap
8: How to approach people (unis/SUs/other) for money
9: How to do marketing on the cheap

Naturally there are plenty of more topics I could cover and will undoubtedly do so in the coming months… for the time being the plan is to have 6 completed and ready to publish by early November.

Feel free to post any suggestions in the comments below.

NUS Media Reception 2008

Monday was the NUS Media Reception 2008.  Historically there has been very little if any contact between the NUS and the SRA, so at their invitation I went to their reception held at Amnesty International.

It’s a difficult day to sum up: while the talks were interesting they were of little relevance to the SRA and it’s work.  This was partly due to the political nature of the talks and, while the NUS is a party-neutral organisation, politics is very much at the forefront of it’s events.  A quick look at their previous presidents shows several people who are prominent politicians in the UK.

In particular, 2 of the talks didn’t really have much to do with student media other than fairly flat statements in the final minute of a 45 minute presentation along the lines of, “now we’ve told you about what this is, go and tell everyone about it.”  Not exactly the best way to sell events of publications!

On a more beneficial note was the breakout session, with the other people from radio stations.  While all bar one of the people were from an existing SRA member station, very few know anyone from the exec or how we can help, so it was useful to be able to provide that and talk about what we’re doing.

Unsurprisingly, some of the questions I regularly hear cropped up, such as what does the SRA do and is it fair that some stations win more because they broadcast for more time during the academic year… well:

1. Along with providing national representation for student radio stations to OFCOM, PPL, PRS/MCPS, Global Radio, Bauer, the BBC and other radio organisations we hold the annual conference, awards and now arrange the Student Radio Chart and Hearing fundraising events.  We also do significant amounts of work behind the scenes that isn’t obvious until its completed: more on that in November…
2. Quality is always the most important part of entering the awards.  This year we received a record breaking number of entries for the SRA awards.  However, the quality is usually variable and the judges are usually able to find the best ones fairly quickly.  Obviously having more time does allow entrants to select their best from a significantly greater pool of material but if you’re good enough to win an award you won’t need more than a few hours of material to have a potential winning entry.

Generally speaking it’s always good to meet our members: without doing so it’s difficult to know exactly how we’re perceived by our members and if they think we’re not doing something that we should be.  Having said that, usually we don’t hear about problems or concerns until we actually meet the membership: part of the reason behind this blog, as the Development Officer position in particular is difficult to show my achievements until I’ve completed them.

There’ll be another update in a few days: plenty has happened in the last month…

Meeting with BBC Bristol

I’ve just come back from a meeting with Sophie Oliver from BBC Bristol.  I’m pleased with the content of the meetin and it may lead to presenting opportunities for SRA members… I’ll update when there’s been more progress.