Stephen Lax

Stephen Lax chaired the seminar, and in his opening comments remarked upon the different fortunes of digital broadcasting systems in the UK: on the face of it, at the time of the beginning of their technical development, both television and radio stood to gain in similar ways from the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. The two technologies were based on the same principles, and both offered the potential for more channels and stations, and better quality of picture and sound. Both, in their different ways, were held up as technologies for the ‘information age’ with their new capacities for delivery of data alongside traditional broadcast streams: digital TV was to be the gateway to the internet, particularly for those households not equipped with computers, while digital radio offered the prospect of data on the move, delivered by broadcast to handheld devices which would then use mobile telecoms as a return channel.

While neither TV nor radio has fulfilled all of that potential, the stark differences between the two are the level of adoption of the new technology by consumers and the public response to each. Digital TV is widely adopted, and digital switchover is universally accepted (even by those who don’t welcome it); in comparison, awareness of digital radio is low (according to Ofcom, one third of the population has not heard of it) while there exists widespread scepticism, or even hostility, towards the prospect of the eventual migration of many popular radio services to digital-only operation.

Against that background, the government published plans for digital radio switchover (following its outline in the Digital Britain White Paper). The proposal is that all BBC and larger commercial stations will become digital-only – i.e. their analogue transmissions will cease – when two criteria are met: 50% of listening is to one or other digital format, and digital signal coverage levels match current FM. These, the government suggested, could be met by 2013, and switchover would take place in 2015. The vacated analogue FM frequencies could then be used to expand the number of small stations – small commercial and community stations. Both within and outside the industry, many see these target dates as highly optimistic, suggesting that digital radio policy is responding rather more to the needs and desires of the industry, or rather sections of the industry, than in response to the needs of listeners or to any public consultation or deliberation.

These were the themes the speakers picked up on.

Katharine Sarikakis (University of Vienna) discussed the broader policy framework in which digital radio was developing. She suggested that the ‘public’ was missing in the development of media policy in Europe, and instead the goal was a single digital marketplace. Industry bodies such as WorldDMB (the digital radio standards group) and AER (the European commercial radio body) were lobbying heavily. Even so, radio was largely absent from EU policy. In contrast with TV and the internet, audiovisual policy had little to say about radio, with the development of radio policy left to national governments. Unlike TV and other media, the market for radio and its products was seen as national rather than international.

Rob Watson (De Montfort University) spoke about the notion of media literacy and the development of media policy. He suggested that media literacy was defined by a logical assumption of a linear development: media literacy led to critical thinking resulting, consequently, in the empowered citizen. Instead, Rob suggested, we should think in terms of the participative citizen, as the producer as well as the consumer. In particular, as station manager for community radio station, Demon FM, he argued that the shift from the linear broadcast model to communication based on social media reflected the strength evident in the emergence of community radio in the UK, with its emphasis on participation rather than the ‘top down’ approach of traditional media organisations.

Michael Starks (University of Oxford) reflected on his involvement in the development of plans of digital television switchover in the UK. As a former member of the BBC, he was involved in the development of Freeview before joining the government digital television project to plan migration to digital TV. He outlined the differences between television and radio: 1) infrastructure ‘drivers’ that existed in TV migration plans were not replicated in radio; 2) the content changes promised by digital radio are less significant, and so less appealing to listeners than the changes offered by digital TV; 3) the number of (analogue) radio receivers sitting in people’s homes vastly outnumbers the number of TV sets; 4) the 30+ million receivers in cars and other vehicles would need replacement or upgrading. Thus from a public policy perspective, there was little similarity between TV switchover and radio migration.

Lawrie Hallett, from the University of Westminster, works in community radio and also part-time for Ofcom. Community radio has emerged in the UK only recently, later than many other countries where it is long-established. Ofcom has been supportive of the development. Plans for digital switchover will free up analogue FM spectrum as stations migrate to the DAB platform, and this offers scope for further expansion of community radio (a significant hindrance at the moment is the difficulty of finding available frequencies for broadcast). However, if all BBC radio and most commercial stations migrate to digital only transmission, and particularly if they begin to exploit further the multimedia capability of that platform, there is a danger of community radio becoming confined to an ‘analogue ghetto’, seen as a marginal form of radio.

Robert Clark, from the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV), has acted as their representative on the Consumer Expert Group, a group set up by the DCMS o report on the consumer’s perspective on digital broadcasting. The CEG’s report was critical of plans to migrate stations to digital-only operation by 2015. Though Robert himself lived in a ‘dab-only household’, and so had extensive personal experience of digital radio, the VLV saw digital switchover as driven mainly by sections of the radio industry. For example, the Digital Radio UK promotion group was inextricably linked with the industry, even being based at RadioCentre, the hub of UK commercial radio, which supported all of DRUK’s ICT operations.

Justin Schlosberg from Goldsmiths described research he’d conducted on ‘pirate’ radio in the UK, and the implications of digital radio for this ‘unofficial’ but significant radio sector. Estimates suggested that at any one time there were 150 pirates on air in the UK, concentrated in London, where typically two-thirds of stations on the FM band might be illegal broadcasters. This, Justin argued, reflected a deficiency in radio policy and regulation, in which ‘diversity’ was seen as achieved through locality, and the encouragement of larger numbers of local radio stations resulted in economic challenges that encouraged more conformity: in short, to generate advertising revenue, cash-strapped local stations tended to veer away from niche audiences. Digital radio, in London and elsewhere in the UK, has seen little change in this tendency. Thus, illegal broadcasters continue to fill a void. One of the constraints on diversity has been the limitation on the number of frequencies available for radio broadcasting, governed in part by considerations about interference between stations. Given that any digital switchover would free up large segments of the analogue FM spectrum, opportunities for new stations are greatly increased. Just as community radio stations anticipate being given greater capacity, similar capacity would become more accessible to illegal broadcasters. To date Ofcom has suggested little about how the post-switchover FM spectrum might be licensed. With apologies for mixing metaphors, the new era, it was suggested, might become a field day for pirates.

This brief summary demonstrates the range of complicating factors in what, for some, will have seemed like an obvious, even inevitable, transition from an ‘old’ analogue radio system to a digital era technology. What all agreed upon, however, is that a 2015 switchover would not happen: your analogue radios are safe for now.

The Radio Journal

Abstracting and Indexing

MLA; Academic Search Elite; Academic Search Alumni Edition; Academic Search Premier; Academic Search Complete; Associates Program Source Plus; British Humanities Index; ArticleFirs

Editor
Tim Wall 
Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies
Birmingham City University
radio.journal@bcu.ac.uk 

Associate Editors
Peter M. Lewis 
Senior Lecturer in Community Media
London Metropolitan University
p.m.lewis@londonmet.ac.uk

Kate Lacey 
Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Sussex University
k.lacey@sussex.ac.uk

Ken Garner
Glasgow Caledonian University
k.garner@gcal.ac.uk

Salvatore Scifo

Radio Studies Network chair

Salvatore Scifo is in the final stages of his doctoral research on the development of community radio in Britain under New Labour in the decade 1997-2007, based at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster. A former Lecturer in Media Policy at the European Union Institute, Marmara University, Istanbul (2008–10) and Lecturer in Community Media at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University (2007–8), he is currently a Tubitak Visiting Research Fellow in Istanbul, Turkey.

He has published on European Community Media Policy, Student Media and British Community Radio. He is an editorial board member of Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture and the Journal of Radio and Audio Media (JRAM).

A former member of the MeCCSA Executive Board (2008-2010), and of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Executive Committee (2005-2007), he is currently Executive Board member of ECREA (2008-2012), as well as Vice President of the Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE), 2011-2014.

salvatore.scifo@communitymedia.eu

Anne Dunn

Anne Dunn was educated in Britain and Australia and is a graduate of the universities of Sydney and Canberra. She was appointed to the Department of Media and Communications of the University of Sydney in 2001. She has also held positions teaching journalism in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Western Sydney and as Senior Lecturer in Broadcasting at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.
Her recent administrative positions include acting as Director of the Media and Communications program at the University of Sydney.
and as Associate Dean . Anne is currently Pro Dean Academic for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the same university.

Prior to taking up a full time academic career, Anne worked across the print, television and radio media. Altogether, Anne spent some 13 years with ABC Radio and Television, in management, in policy and in broadcasting, including as a presenter, journalist and producer. She has also worked for the BBC in documentaries as well as in Australian commercial television as a journalist/researcher; for SBS Television as a reporter; and as a freelance director, reporter and writer in both the television and print media. Anne currently holds an Australian Research Coıncil (ARC) Linkage Grant with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation looking at the impact of cross media work in broadcast news.

anne.dunn@sydney.edu.au

Janey Gordon

Janey Gordon is a Principal Lecturer in the School of Creative Arts, Technology and Design; Media Undergraduate Field Chair and Associate and Fellow for the Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Bedfordshire. She teaches radio broadcasting and her research interests and publications are in the areas of community radio, mobile phones and media pedagogy.

She has a background as a professional radio broadcaster and started in radio as a BBC studio manager before going on to produce in schools radio and then into BBC local radio. Her book “The RSL, Ultra-local Radio” (ULP) is used at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and came about from working with the students on the University radio station, Luton FM, which Janey organises. Her recent radio research, comparing Australian and UK community radio stations was funded by the British Academy. The resulting first paper may be accessed at www.cbonline.org.au

She is the editor of Notions of Community. A Collection of Community Media Debates and Dilemmas (Peter Lang, 2009).

janey.gordon@beds.ac.uk

Stephen Lax

Steve is a Senior Lecturer in Communications Technology at the Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds

His research interests are in the implications of new communications technologies and the relationships between technological changes and social factors, in particular the role of media and technology policy. He has studied the emergence of digital broadcasting, including new radio technologies, and is a member of Drace, the Digital Radio Cultures in Europe research group.

He is also on the editorial board of two journals, the Journal of Radio and Audio Media and the International Journal of Digital Television.

s.e.lax@leeds.ac.uk

Peter Lewis

Peter Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in Community Media in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at London Metropolitan University, and Visiting Professor in Radio at the University of Sunderland.

He has been involved in several EU projects and is currently a member of the evaluation team for COMAPP, a community media training project funded under the EU’s Lifelong Learning programme. COMAPP is a successor to Crosstalk and earlier projects, discussed in From the Margins to the Cutting Edge -Community Media and Empowerment (Hampton Press, 2006), co-authored with Susan Jones.

He is a member of the International Editorial Board of The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media (Intellect Books) and the Communiity Media Forum Europe (CMFE) Expert Group.

With Jerry Booth, he wrote The Invisible Medium: Public, Commercial and Community Radio (Macmillan 1989). His Council of Europe report, Promoting Social Cohesion: the role of community media, can be accessed at the Council of Europe website.

p.lewis@londonmet.ac.uk

Katie Moylan

Katie Moylan is based at the Department of Media and Communicaton at the University of Leicester. Prior to that, she lectured in media studies at the University of Ireland – Maynooth, teaching modules on globalisation, media and critical theory and media policy. She has previously worked as a features journalist and arts and film reviewer across Irish print and broadcast media before completing her PhD in 2009.

Her doctoral thesis, which was funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, examined radio programming produced by and about new Irish migrant communities, incorporating analyses of programme content, institutional production practice and broadcasting policy in relation to Irish national public service broadcasting (Radio Telefís Éireann) and community radio. Within a national and cultural context posited as historically homogenous, the study set out to address questions of how new migrants are represented in Irish radio and how radio in particular can facilitate migrant community participation. She is currently revising this research for forthcoming publication under contract with Intellect Books.

She maintains a research interest in the representation and negotiation of ‘diversity’ and discourses of difference in radio and television. In particular, she hopes to develop a comparative dimension of my radio research for future analysis of the representation and participation of new migrant and ethnically-defined communities in local and national broadcasting.

km264@leicester.ac.uk

Eryl Price-Davies

Eryl Price-Davies manages the Radio Studies list (with Richard Berry), a lively forum for teachers, researchers and broadcasters active since 1998, including members from all over the world with an interest in radio studies. His research interests include community radio in a global context, and the teaching and learning of radio studies.

erylp-d@ntlworld.com

Eleanor Shember-Critchley

Eleanor is a research student in the Department of Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University, where her research is supported by The Information Research Institute (TIRI). Her doctoral research project is looking at ethnic minority radio and audience identity in the UK.

mscrow@mscrow.com

Guy Starkey

Guy Starkey is Professor of Radio and Journalism at the University of Sunderland. His professional background is in radio presentation and the production of magazine and sequence programmes. His publications include: Radio in Context (2004) London: Palgrave; Balance and Bias in Journalism: Representation, Regulation & Democracy (2007) London: Palgrave and Radio Journalism (with Professor Andrew Crisell, 2009) London: Sage.

Guy is Head of the Media Department at Sunderland and Chair of the Radio Research Section of the European Communications Research and Education Association, (ECREA).

guy.starkey@sunderland.ac.uk

Jo Tyler

Deborah Wilson

Deborah Wilson is Programme Leader for Journalism at the University of Lincoln. Previously a full-time broadcaster with the BBC, she now combines her teaching with work as a freelance broadcast journalist for the Corporation and as a media trainer for a number of bodies from the National Centre for Policing Excellence to the Islamic Foundation.

Deborah is an external examiner in radio and broadcast journalism and is on Skillset’s East Midlands Education Focus Group and the region’s committee of the Radio Academy. She is also an active member of the Association for Journalism Education and the Broadcast Education Association (US).

Deborah is on the Advisory Board for Siren FM, Lincoln’s university-based community radio station, and her current ADM-HEA funded research project is focusing on developing civic journalism on the station.

debwilson@lincoln.ac.uk

Helen Wolfenden

• Digital Radio Cultures in Europe
  A European research network.
• ECREA European Communication Research and Education Association
  Among its sections and networks, one is dedicated to Radio Research .
• Intellect, publisher of the Radio Journal, have a news blog for press releases, news and commentary about their publications.
• GRER: Groupe de recherches et d’etudes sur la radio
  A network of radio researchers based in France.
• HEA subject centre for Arts, Design and Media
  ADM-HEA was established to support and enhance learning and teaching in higher education art, design, media theory and practice, the history of art and design and cultural studies subjects.
• North American Radio Studies Network
  Sister organisation of the RSN.
• Radio Research Ireland
  A network of radio researchers based in Ireland.

Other links

• CB Online
  Information about community broadcasting in Australia.
• Community Media Association
  Information and resources for community media in the UK.
• Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE)
  Information and resources for community media in Europe.
• Ofcom
  Office of Communications, the UK’s regulator for media and communications.
• One World Radio
  Radio programmes and ideas on development.
• Radio Academy
  Professional body for people working in the UK radio industry.
• Voice of the Listener and Viewer
  Represents the citizen and consumer interest in broadcasting.

• Old Radio Studies Network site (zip, 480kb)

]]> http://www.meccsa.org.uk/networks/radio-studies-network/radio-studies-network-committee/feed/ 0 http://www.meccsa.org.uk/events/unlikely_voices_radio_documen-2/ http://www.meccsa.org.uk/events/unlikely_voices_radio_documen-2/#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:53:03 +0000 Einar Thorsen http://meccsa.stowaway.net/2010/07/unlikely_voices_radio_documen-2/  

Friday 10 September, 12.00 pm

A MeCCSA Radio Studies Network event, within Sounding Out 5

Hosted by Bournemouth University

Further details on RSN events page.

Bournemouth University, Friday 10 September, 12.00 pm

Speakers:

Mark Burman, Producer, BBC Radio Features

Ieuan Franklin, freelance film archivist

Matthew Linfoot, Director, Undergraduate Media Studies and Course Leader, Radio Production, University of Westminster

Paul Wilson, Curator, Radio at the British Library Sound Archive

Chair: Peter Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Community Media, London Metropolitan University

This event is open to any member of MeCCSA. The £45 fee covers any other event on that day only, from 10.00 am to tea and conference closure at 15.00

To attend please complete this form and send it to the address on the form.