An assortment of organisations have criticised the BBC’s newly updated plans to launch four new digital radio stations, which will be spin-offs of Radio 1, 2 and 3.
Although the broadcaster has amended those plans after going through a ‘public interest test’, critics say there remain “unanswered questions”, that media regulator OfCom should still reject the proposals, and that the revised plan “smacks of typical BBC arrogance”.
That’s despite BBC Director Of Music Lorna Clarke insisting that, “we have received a wide range of feedback and reflected much of it in our plans, including significantly redeveloping our proposal for the Radio 2 extension to increase its editorial distinctiveness”.
The revised plans, she adds, are “unique” with “context, curation and storytelling done in a way only the BBC can do, meeting the evolving expectations of audiences and providing more choice to licence fee payers”.
The BBC announced earlier this year that it was planning to launch four new digital radio stations. It then began its own public interest test, which is now complete. Having revised its plans based on that process, the proposed new stations now need to be approved by OfCom before they can be launched. Among other things the regulator needs to consider the impact of the new stations on commercial audio services.
Two of the proposed new stations are spin-offs of Radio 1 - one focused on music from the 2000s and 2010s, the other the dance music service already available within the BBC Sounds app. The Radio 2 spin-off will play pop music from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and a Radio 3 spin-off will provide a “classical music experience that helps listeners unwind, destress and escape the pressures of daily life”.
The Radio 2 spin-off has caused the most controversy, with Boom Radio previously urging its listeners to write to their MPs to oppose the creation of a new BBC service that will compete with the commercial golden oldies station. As a result, it’s plans for the Radio 2 spin-off that have changed the most as a result of the public interest test process.
A document published last week outlines some of the changes. They include a commitment to play a broader range of music “with at least 6000 unique tracks a year, including lesser-known album tracks”, plus an increase in the amount of speech content and a plan to partner with the BBC’s local radio stations to “draw on local experts and voices to tell the story of the significance of the music of their specific regions across the UK”.
But Boom Radio CEO Phil Riley says that all of his concerns remain that the new Radio 2 station will compete head on with his station. “Boom Radio is hugely disappointed that the BBC is pursuing its plans for a BBC Radio 2 spin-off station”, he says. “This is likely to lead to a 35% drop in our listening and the potential closure of Boom Radio”.
The BBC has already launched versions of the new Radio 1 and Radio 3 spin-offs within BBC Sounds, because less scrutiny is required to add new services to the BBC’s app. However, OfCom raised particular concerns about the new Radio 2 service and said the full public interest test process should be completed before even launching it on BBC Sounds.
Riley reckons that those concerns at OfCom should have been enough for the BBC to abandon the Radio 2 spin-off idea entirely and the fact it didn’t “smacks of typical BBC arrogance”. He adds, “Clearly, the BBC has not listened to those concerns. It prefers to spend unnecessary cash to attack what we do, whilst it demolishes its own news content, local radio and much-loved TV drama”.
The fact the BBC is planning on launching new national radio services while cutting back its local radio output has been particularly criticised by the National Union Of Journalists, whose members have been hit by the downsizing at local radio stations.
“Journalists are still feeling the effects of drastic cuts to local radio made by the BBC, and the pursuit of new stations despite concerns raised on their value for money will come as a surprise to our members”, says the union’s Laura Davison, who adds “we have unanswered questions about why the BBC is seeking to pursue this plan in the face of opposition”.
The union also notes that one of the aims of the new Radio 2 service is to attract an older audience, but - it argues - that audience “can already be found among listeners of local radio, where attention must be redirected”.
With the BBC’s revised proposals now with OfCom, critics of the plans have turned their attention to the regulator, with Radiocentre, the commercial radio trade body, urging it to block the launch of all four of the new digital stations.
Its CEO, Matt Payton, says, “The process so far has consisted mainly of the BBC marking its own homework. We now look forward to working with OfCom on an independent assessment of these proposed changes, where we will continue to highlight the negative effect on audiences and competition”.