No Static At All?
All good stories begin “once upon a time” don’t they?
Once upon a time, specifically at the end of August 1990 a 16-year-old boy sat at the desk in his bedroom and began to work through the pile of university prospectuses which had arrived through the door while he’d been away on holiday. I read each one in turn, noting the selling points of each institution, how everyone lived, how they played, what the courses themselves were like (of course). Each one got a rough grade from me based on what I’d read.
At the end of the process, just one had a near-perfect score. Lancaster University was an unexpected choice. But it was in the north (close to home), had this idyllic-sounding campus environment, laid on some very interesting courses, but most importantly of all had its own campus radio station. One of the oldest and longest-established in the country in fact. And as far as I was concerned this was the deal-maker. University for me was just a brief stop along the road while I built the radio career I had long aspired to have. So the fact that I got to play at being on the radio while writing essays on 19th Century European culture was a perfect choice.
So my first choice of institution became my first preferred choice on the application, the one which gave me the most favourable offer, and the place where I would spend the first three years of my adult life. During that time I would practically live at the offices of the campus radio station. I managed the record library, took the minutes of the weekly meeting and adjudicated at the termly elections for committee places.
Every person I can count as a lifelong friend dates from that period and every one of those people was someone I met through a shared love of making radio. During our time as custodians of the fragile brand we took the radio station out of the mushy doldrums of its closed-loop Medium Wave transmission system and ran a month-long FM Restricted Service Licence for the first time — prompting people to tune in who had never done so before and startling them with just how good we could be.
Not long after I graduated the university and its radio station, thanks largely to its isolated location in the Lancashire countryside next to the M6, was granted one of the first ever low-powered permanent FM licences. University Radio Bailrigg was one of a tiny handful of student radio stations to have the privilege of broadcasting on a channel that people actually wanted to tune into. And as Bailrigg FM it has thrived ever since.
Yet now that whole environment, that whole platform, faces the sternest threat to its existence in decades. Because the Students Union, source of the funding of all campus-based media, has decided in its wisdom that the circa £1000 annual licence fee for the radio station is no longer something it is prepared to fund. And with little consultation, they have elected to pull the plug. Here is the statement from the station themselves:
The general mood around the station is one of sadness and confusion due to this decision. Bailrigg FM and its members have taken great pride in their FM capabilities, in terms of our history, identity, and employability. We were the first student station to broadcast on FM radio, for over two decades our frequency on 87.7FM has been an important part of our identity and brand, not to mention the countless of our alumni who have achieved their dreams in broadcast media partly thanks to the invaluable experience that Bailrigg FM could offer in FM and OFCOM-regulated radio.
It is a crass, shortsighted, and wholly unwarranted decision. Lancaster University Students Union (LUSU) genuinely believes that nothing will be lost by forcing the radio station to retreat to an online-only service. To become little more than a glorified podcast outfit. To no longer be constrained by the need to comply fully with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (because they no longer occupy the public airwaves) is, we are told, a liberating move. The freedom to say and do whatever they wish.
But here is the thing. A full broadcast licence gives the student radio service a legitimacy beyond merely playing records. These days anyone can set up a streaming PC in their bedroom and call themselves a “radio station”. But without being bound by technical standards or the need for quality of output, they just deteriorate into self-indulgence. We felt the difference for ourselves back in 1994 when we went on FM for the very first time. Our broadcasts had a focus, a meaning, a purpose. We were presenting the best product possible for our new audience, for our generous sponsors, for those in the university hierarchy who had backed us and allowed us to erect a new transmitter for the purpose. Programmes sprouted features, worthwhile guests and interesting topics. With the best will in the world, the motivation to do this on a link tucked away in the corner of the LUSU website will not be as strong.
Compliance in broadcast media, I won’t sugar-coat this, is a ball-ache. The need to consider every possible live issue and pages of regulations before electing to put a story or a topic on air. I’ve seen at first hand the consequences of getting it wrong, I’ve worked myself as recently as last week on programmes that are under intense regulatory scrutiny and have a far more urgent need than most to get things right. The need to constantly train staff and keep them appraised of issues is an expensive one, but not half as expensive as getting it wrong. And to be able to hire people with that kind of real-world experience already is far more valuable than you might realise. To grow up being constrained by the rules is to enhance your broadcast, service your audience properly, and to further impress any potential employer. An online-only service has no need, no requirement, and no motivation to force people to work on that kind of level. And it will be all the poorer for it.
“Audiences for the service are so small that the cost of the licence cannot be justified” was another LUSU rationale. But given the radio station is not a commercial operation this is a moot point. There are precious few student-led activities which can boast an audience or interest levels outside of the small groups involved in them. Universities are supposed to be real-life’s playground, the chance for young adults to become the people they are destined to be, to be able to kick around ideas — be they political, social or creative — in a sandbox of development. That is precisely the duty that the student union performs in its dispersal of the funds allocated to it. They fund football teams that nobody watches outside of the girlfriend of the week of the centre-forward but do so in the knowledge that they are contributing to the personal and social development of their students. Student media is no different. It is there to help people learn and grow outside of lectures. But that means they have to back it and fund it.
If anything student media is more vital than ever before if the industry is to progress. After I graduated, my student media years meant little other than to indicate to any potential employers that I’d already shown an interest in the art. I started from the bottom once again at my local radio station, proved my worth reclaiming and then playing tapes before fighting my way in front of the microphone and hosting the biggest show on the station. It is a route largely closed to most people now, local radio stations fast becoming a thing of the past, or at the very most a shell of their former selves. They broadcast for three hours a day and then network everything else from London. The avenues into the industry from nowhere have all but dried up.
So where do we in national radio recruit our raw talent? Increasingly it is straight from university. The team of people I manage for national radio networks are a mixture of full-time professionals and eager, learning students. Their work on their student stations isn’t a waste of time, but the living proof that I am right to step from their playground into the real world of proper broadcast radio. The evidence of this is all around. The Radio One breakfast show, literally one of the most high-profile slots in all media, is presented by a man who jumped straight from his student station to working on air for the BBC. That’s the kind of opportunity available to any talent unearthed at Lancaster University if they were prepared to put in the work. But not from this summer it seems.
LUSU themselves have addressed the criticism in a statement they posted yesterday (9th):
In it they say:
The main reason we’re looking to make this change to ensure the sustainability of the station’s operations.
Holding an FM licence comes with numerous responsibilities and some complex technical requirements.
Removing the FM licence will mean that the station will no longer need to adhere to Ofcom regulations and will give the station more freedom and flexibility, such as removing the requirement to broadcast 24/7, and relaxing restrictions on timing of certain content. It will also free the considerable staff time that is currently spent managing the Ofcom licence.
Members of the current Bailrigg FM management team have offered to crowdfund the money to pay for the licence, but finding the money elsewhere does not address the broader questions of sustainability and relevance to our wider membership.
The union has already provided additional funds to Bailrigg FM this year to update its website, and has pledged further support to the station for rebranding following the end of its FM broadcasting.
In short, any offers to make up the shortfall privately, to crowdfund the money for the licence have been summarily rebuffed. And this is itself absurd, there are enough interested parties, enough alumni throughout the industry who still care enough, who would not only be prepared to help but might, if asked, help staff a board of trustees who would take on the apparently onerous task of managing the licence. If community radio stations can sustain themselves on minimal funds broadcasting to whole towns, it is hard to see how much harder it is to maintain a service broadcast to an area less than a square mile across. But hey, they’ve given some money to do up the website, and that’s pretty noble isn’t it comrades?
Those who volunteer at Bailrigg FM presently can be reassured that their fight does not end here. Their row has already made local media, been featured on the local BBC station and through this post will hopefully come to the attention of far more people than might otherwise have been the case.
My student radio days confirmed that I wasn’t living a pipe dream. That I did have just enough talent to become a broadcaster. And gave me the confidence and the practice time I needed to demonstrate that potential to an eventual employer. It was vitally important to me that I was there. And I intend to do what I can to ensure the next generation has the same opportunity that I did.
