Sources:
http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2010/11/18/small-stations-bring-big-benefits-for-local-communities/
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/radio/community/annual-reports/09-10/
Full report available at
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/radio-ops/cr-annual-report-09-10.pdf
London, 18 november 2010
Around 11 million people are now able to tune
into community radio stations across the UK.
This figure is up 17% year-on-year and an
increase of more than a third (36%) since 2008,
according to a new report by Ofcom.
The Community Radio Annual Report provides a
snapshot of community radio in the UK, which
reveals a flourishing sector. Since the first
station went live five years ago, a new
community radio station has launched, on
average, every 10 days. Today, a record 181
community stations are broadcasting and another
30 are preparing to take to the airwaves.
Community radio stations typically cover a small
geographical area with a coverage radius of up
to 5km and are run on a not-for-profit basis.
They serve a wide range of communities,
targeting diverse audiences from rural to inner
city areas with content ranging from community
news and information to religious issues to
experimental music and RnB, for example.
Ofcom Chief Executive, Ed Richards, said: ?The
Community Radio Annual Report provides an
encouraging picture of the state of community
radio in the UK. 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.?
2 million hours of volunteering
All stations involve volunteers in various jobs,
including as presenters. The average station
reports the involvement of around 75 volunteers
over a year. Across the industry more than
40,000 volunteer hours are spent each week
producing more than 15,000 hours of original
radio output. Ofcom estimates that, with over
180 stations on air, volunteers currently
contribute more than 2 million hours per year to community radio.
Chris Jones from Harborough FM in Market
Harborough said: ?One of the most satisfying
achievements is watching people who initially
came to us with little or no broadcasting
experience being transformed into very competent community radio broadcasters.?
Diverse audiences
A large number of community radio stations
provide services for minority groups.
For example, Diverse FM in Luton broadcasts in
community languages such as Bengali, Hindi,
Gujarati, Urdu, Pahari, Polish, Arabic, Swahili and Patwa.
Ashuk Ahmed at Diverse FM said: ?Communities are
offered radio slots to broadcast dedicated
programmes, enabling them to ?have a voice? by
raising issues that are relevant to them and
promote better understanding of each other?s
culture, religion and issues ? this has brought
about better community cohesion, enabling
celebration of cultural diversity and understanding.?
Several stations also provide services for rural
communities, such as Tempo FM in Wetherby (West
Yorkshire). ?The station provides a much
appreciated ?Voice for Wetherby? to the
considerable benefit of the community, on a very
limited budget,? said Stuart Robinson from Tempo
FM. ?Creating a new focus for the area through
the medium of radio, by linking the various
communities within the associated towns has been a great achievement.?
Social gain
In addition to providing unique content,
community radio stations deliver wide benefits
to people in the areas in which they broadcast.
This includes offering training and work
experience opportunities, contributions to local
education and providing a voice to those, such
as older people or speakers of minority
languages, who may find it harder to access the media.
Rob Green from Halton Community Radio in Runcorn
(Cheshire) said: ?Our station reaches parts of
the community that other stations and community
groups cannot reach; for example the house-bound
and severely disabled. Without the station they
would not be able to participate in local
discussions and debate. This was the main aim of
the station and we are proud that we have managed to achieve this.?
shmuFM in Aberdeen has worked with a range of
partners to create a full-time training
programme for prison inmates including the
production of programmes for broadcast on the
community radio station. Murray Dawson from
shmuFM said: ?The scheme has provided
encouragement, motivation and support to
prisoners who continue to develop their skills,
post release, which has contributed towards a
break in their cycle of re-offending.?
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Executive summary
1.1 Community radio stations are not-for-profit
radio services designed to operate on a small
scale and to deliver community benefits, known
as 'social gain', to one or more communities.
The legislation enabling community radio
services to be licensed was introduced in 2004
and amended in January 2010. The first community
radio station launched in November 2005. This is
Ofcom's third annual report on the community radio sector.
1.2 Ofcom has to date licensed 228 stations over
two rounds of licensing. 181 of these are
broadcasting and a further 17 have either
decided not to launch or have handed their
licence back, largely to due to funding
problems. The remainder are preparing to start
broadcasting. The second round of licensing has
now concluded and Ofcom is currently considering
whether there will be a third round of community radio licensing.
1.3 Community radio serves a diverse range of
communities. The majority of stations licensed
serve a general audience in either an
urban/suburban area (17%) or a town/rural area
(43%). Many services, however, serve smaller
communities of interest. This includes, for
example, those aimed at minority ethnic groups
(14%), a youth audience (11%) and religious
groups (7%). Of the licences awarded, 184 are in
England, 14 in Northern Ireland, 20 in Scotland and 10 in Wales.
1.4 The legislation governing community radio
sets out the characteristics of community radio
services and defines social gain. Each station
has a set of 'key commitments', which forms part
of its licence and sets out how it will meet
these characteristics and deliver social gain.
It includes how a station will make itself
accountable to its target community and ensure
access, its programming aims and its commitments
in respect of training and other social gain objectives.
1.5 The legislation also requires that Ofcom
sets licence conditions limiting the amount of
income that individual stations can generate
from on-air advertising and sponsorship. For the
majority of stations this limit is 50%, however,
two stations have lower limits (25% and 10%) and
a further 17 stations cannot take income from
on-air advertising and sponsorship at all. These
additional restrictions have been put in place
to protect existing smaller commercial services
whose coverage areas overlap with the community services.
1.6 Each station that has been broadcasting for
more than a year is required to complete an
annual report. The reports detail how each
station has performed against its key
commitments and identifies its sources of income
and expenditure. The financial aspect of the
reporting enables Ofcom to check whether the
station has stayed within the legislative restrictions on funding.
1.7 For the period April 2009 to March 2010
Ofcom received key commitments annual reports
from 128 stations and financial annual reports
from 125 stations. Two stations were excused
from providing financial reports and one station
did not provide its financial report in time to
be included in this report. One station did not
submit either its key commitments or financial reports.
1.8 Annual reports were not required from
stations that launched during this period or
subsequently and are therefore not included in this report.
1.9 In 2009/10 the average (mean) station's
income was around £74,500. The median figure,
the mid-point in the distribution of station's
income, was considerably lower at £44,500. This
is because a small number of stations are
earning significantly more than the majority.
1.10 The total reported income of the four
highest earning stations, each reporting over
£250,000 income for the reporting period and
earning a total of just over £1.6m, equates
roughly to the total income of the 66 lowest
income stations. If we exclude the four highest
earning stations' income then the average income
drops to £62,000. The median figure remains relatively similar at £42,000.
1.11 Stations targeting a community of interest
(rather than a geographic community) reported a
higher income than the sector average. For
example, services targeting minority ethnic
communities had an average income of £80,000.
Stations serving a general audience in an urban
area reported a higher average income than
town/rural stations (£83,000 as opposed to £56,500).
1.12 The average (mean) sector income is down by
around 6% on the previous year's reported
figures. In the 2008/09 period income had
dropped by almost 20% compared to the period
prior to this. The median income for this
reporting period has dropped by 11% compared to the 2008/09 period.
1.13 When compared to previous years, the
proportion of income from specified sources to
any significant extent appears similar. The most
significant type of income for the sector is
grant funding which accounts for 35% of the
total. Income from on-air advertising or
sponsorship accounted for around 22% of total
income across the sector. Thirty stations (24%
of those from which we had financial returns)
had no income from advertising and sponsorship.
Of these, 19 stations chose not to take this
type of income as a matter of choice or policy.
The remaining 11 stations were prohibited under their licence from doing so.
1.14 Public sources of funding accounted for 37%
of the total sector income. Local authorities
accounted for around 8% of the sector's total
income. 25% of income came from other public
bodies such as the Arts Council, health
providers, educational establishments and
various national lottery award schemes.
1.15 The Community Radio Fund, which is
administered by Ofcom on behalf of the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport,
accounted for £348,000 (around 4% of the
sector's total reported income). The Community
Radio Fund continues to be the largest single
source of income for the sector although a small
number of individual funders made grants or
entered into service level agreements (SLAs) -
negotiated agreements between two parties where
one is the customer (e.g. the local council) and
the other is the service provider (the station)
- of more than £100,000 in the year under review.
1.16 Community radio stations, on average, are
spending roughly the same as their income.
Stations cost, on average, around £74,500 to
run. This has declined by 8% compared to the
previous reporting period. The median
expenditure for this reporting period has
remained stable compared to the 2008/09 period.
1.17 The highest cost for community radio
stations remains staff expenditure, which
accounted for almost 50% of stations' costs.
Premises and technical costs, as in previous
years, account for the next most significant outlay.
1.18 Individual circumstances range from a
surplus of £83,000, to a deficit of £158,000.
Almost 50% of stations that returned a financial
annual report were in deficit. Of these 59
stations in deficit, 21% reported this to be in
excess of £10,000. In most cases, large deficits
are being funded by parent organisations; any
surpluses are typically invested in the operation of the service.
1.19 Community radio stations broadcast live for
around 80 hours per week on average, and, in
general, broadcast a further 10 hours per week
of original pre-recorded material. On average
around 31% of daytime output is speech and this
can feature a wide range of local organisations and community initiatives.
1.20 Some stations focus on particular genres of
music, while those serving a geographic audience
generally broadcast more mainstream music during
daytime programming, often moving to specialist output in the evening.
1.21 The average station reports the involvement
of around 75 volunteers although there is a wide
variation - from 1 to over 300. Together these
volunteers give on average of around 213 hours a week of their time in total.
1.22 At a cost of under £10 million pounds,
based on the reports received from stations in
this reporting period community radio in the UK delivered:
* A total of almost 10,000 volunteering opportunities
* Over 25,000 volunteer hours each week
* Over 10,000 hours of original radio output each week
* Output broadcast in a wide range of community languages
1.23 There are now over 180 stations
broadcasting and Ofcom estimates that volunteers
contribute close to 170,000 hours a month or
over two million hours per year to community radio.
