[CMA] Community Radio strategy

[Trevor Lockwood]

Javed is right - we do need a coherent policy with a strategy that is clearly defined and recognisable.

Community radio serves specific sectors, and is ideally placed to do so. It should have no real concern for audience numbers, particularly now when broadcasts can be archived and made available in different ways; as podcasts, streaming from sites, downloads - and can be distributed in several different ways.

It's this flexibility which provides the key to the future, which when it is combined with the energy that comes from a small group of people working together to achieve an objective, will bring recognition and listeners. 

We can straddle the two camps: conventional radio has passive listeners to content put together by professionals. We can bring together and assist those people who now just listen but want to broadcast by bringing a professionalism not found elsewhere, or only rarely, and we can be identified as stations that provide a certain range of content, whether that be by ethnicity, language, interest, geography or whatever.

I've just been talking to a Business Link (part of the East of England Development Association) Business Advisor. He couldn't understand the concept of community radio. He suggested we should persuade BBC presenter Libby Purves (who lives a few miles away) to make programmes for us. He said advertisers would not be interested - that they wanted large audiences. I disagree, as I believe that the radio broadcasts and the web sites, and the reach out into the local community with events covered by us will encourage local advertisers, who get very poor return for expensive display adverts in local newspapers and magazines.

We can't make good programmes all the time - but we should be prepared to air those made by other CR stations. Perhaps we need an annual awards ceremony (sponsored) for the 'Best of ....'

Cooperation agreements with the BBC will only be fruitful when they start broadcasting our material, and perhaps we need a marketing and promotional agency that can take the best of our work and sell it to the world.

It's democracy at work, but unfortunately we have a society that only understands profit in monetary terms. We must sell quality instead.

Trevor Lockwood
Ipswich Community Radio www.icrfm.co.uk
and the fledgling Felixstowe Radio www.felixstoweradio.co.uk
 
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