BROADCASTING (LOCAL STATIONS) (Hansard, 11 November 1968)

§ Mr. Edward Lyons (Bradford, East)
Within the last year the B.B.C. has set up eight local radio stations. They opened to a notable public apathy and have continued in a Parliamentary silence; yet these stations are now lusty infants, enjoying enthusiastic support in their localities, and are full of exciting potential. Run on a shoestring budget, they are yet served by staffs who are fanatically devoted to broadcasting and, in particular, to local broadcasting. None the less, the central B.B.C. appears to direct little attention to its small offspring.
It is time that local radio was discussed, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman tonight will present us with a progress report of this local radio experiment. Perhaps he can shed some light on the tentative answers of the Government to some problems of local radio. Local radio was what my right hon. Friend the Minister of Technology forgot when he regretted that broadcasting was left to the broadcasters.
For example, into Radio Leeds, run by the energetic Mr. Sidey, no fewer than 100 people walk daily to comment, to suggest or to take part, and 50 of them daily go on to the air. Local radio is walk-in radio. Further, many local groups and societies use Radio Leeds for their own programmes. The local churches and the university are building studios in which to produce their own programmes for Radio Leeds. There is a staff of 22, and about 500 Leeds citizens broadcast weekly with no fee from the B.B.C. The amateurs greatly outnumber the professionals.
They recognise their radio contributions as a service to the public, just as any other public service on a voluntary basis. The cry today is that ordinary people feel remote from their administrators. Participation is a vogue word and it is said to be sadly lacking. Only on juries in criminal courts do ordinary 168 people feel that they are sharing in a public process. But there is nothing remote about local radio. It is a platform upon which people confront local leaders with the local problems intimately affecting their lives.
It is true that radio does not have the impact of television, but, unlike television, it at least can satisfy the need of people to take part in public issues, and can increase the individual's feeling of belonging, even though he may live alone and be friendless in a major city. As in ancient Greek city states, so in local radio. The citizen debates with his leaders upon issues important to them both.
People speak disparagingly of parish politics, but today local authorities deal in millions of pounds. For example, Bradford is spending £10 million on its water supply. Through local radio people are informed both of these decisions and the reason for them. There is the opportunity, too, of examining local problems in depth and examining them early.
Local radio provides the regions with a voice of their own. It increases and fosters local creative activities and, for example, it can perform services such as teaching English to immigrants in areas which have a high immigrant population. None the less, despite all this, the Government have, as far as I know, given no indication of their future attitude. The people in local radio and those who listen to it are entitled to some clues about that attitude.
There is in local radio great uncertainty about the future. Certainly, the financial arrangements are totally unsatisfactory. It is no use whatever relying on voluntary contributions from local authorities. This system is at the mercy of changing fortunes and personalities in local politics. The stations are at risk in every so-called economy drive and a weak station manager could be open to pressure from local political leaders. People's jobs should not depend on whims as variable as these.
Would it not be better if local authorities were compelled to support local radio in their areas? Alternatively, can we not consider that some of the taxation from the profits of independent television 169 should be used to support local radio? After all, the public, by paying a little extra for consumer goods, are providing the costs and the profits.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving)
Order. I ought to remind the hon. Member that on the Adjournment he cannot raise a request for legislation. I think that he is getting near to doing that.

§ Mr. Lyons
I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
At least, I ask my right hon. Friend to bear in mind methods of financing local radio on a sounder basis. I wonder whether: he Government have considered putting advertising in the way of local radio stations and, indeed, encouraging local authorities to do the same.
Although I have talked about local radio, I would be more in favour of district radio. If local authorities are to meet the bill, as at present, of local radio, it would spread the load widely and more lightly if we acknowledged the reality that a local station penetrates beyond the locality into the region.
For example, Radio Leeds receives 40 per cent. of its mail from Bradford and is widely heard there. If there can be a Leeds/Bradford airport, why cannot there be a Bradford/Leeds radio station, or even a West Riding radio station? It is, of course, true that Bradford ratepayers have the benefit of listening without contributing. On the other hand, Radio Leeds does not feel obliged to cater especially for Bradford or other West Riding towns which receive its programmes. Nor does it have any studio in those other towns. Perhaps, therefore, the Government will consider district rather than local radio.
Will the Government tell us what they think about a national network of district radio stations? There was talk not too many years ago of the B.B.C. setting up a national network. Perhaps the Government now have a view on this suggestion. The cost per station is not high, and in each area there would be a second voice on local issues, second to that of the local newspaper. Local radio does not compete with local newspapers, but it can serve to keep them on their toes by reporting what the local newspaper may omit to notice or decide not to print.
170 In my view, it is a serious matter that monopoly of local news is becoming a reality in Britain. With fewer and fewer newspapers—and those in fewer hands—it is essential to have numerous radio voices, each with local autonomy and in the great B.B.C. tradition of awkward independence. To abandon local radio would be to abandon the only feasible alternative source of local news in many parts of Britain.
I know that only 40 per cent. of the population has V.H.F. radio, and that it is only on V.H.F. radio that local stations can be heard. None the less, the rôle and cheapness of local radio makes its continuance worth while. With many stations, there would be greater individuality and variety in broadcasting and, through the local broadcasting councils—one for each station—many more people would be involved in responsibility for broadcasting.
I do not want to go into the problems of commercial broadcasting, but I would ask my right hon. Friend at any rate to consider that course unfavourably. Commercial radio would be more expensive. Local radios have the use of the B.B.C. national programmes without charge; they do not have to employ sales staff to obtain advertisements. Unlike television, a local radio would have to seek hard for advertisements, and local advertisers could then possibly have some control over the policy of the local radio station. In my view, it would be unwise to hand over local radio to commercial interests.
I conclude by asking my right hon. Friend to give us his views on an extension of district radio broadcasting, and what proposals there may be for putting those stations on a sounder financial basis.

§ The Postmaster-General (Mr. John Stonehouse)
I am grateful, and I am sure the House will be, to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, East (Mr. Edward Lyons) for raising the subject of local radio. He has obviously taken a great personal interest in this matter, particularly from a constituency point of view.
I am very much influenced by some of the points he has raised, but I think that he will understand that I am not yet in a position to follow all the detailed points he raised, as the experiment has been 171 going a very short time. I have already told the House that we should let the B.B.C. get on with the experiment and review it at the appropriate time. By July next year the eight stations will have been running for a year or so, and that will be the right time, I think, to review the experiment.
I think that it would be useful if tonight we reminded ourselves what the experiment is all about. The Government's White Paper on Broadcasting, Cmnd. 3169, published in December, 1966, recorded this view: Local radio, properly organised, would provide a valuable service to the local community; and by giving a new means of expression to its particular interests and aspirations, serve to reinforce its distinctive character and sense of identity. We already have four national services of radio programmes covering a very wide range of entertainment, information, and education, from pop music to political philosophy. As I see it, the purpose of a local radio service is to provide an entirely different kind of service, one which is of particular interest only to the locality served by the station.
This view is, I think, shared by most hon. Members. Hon. Members opposite may well also share this view—although it is noteworthy that none of them is here to take an interest in this very important subject. In July, 1962, the Conservative Government recorded in their White Paper on the Pilkington Committee: The justification for local sound broadcasting would be the provision of a service genuinely 'local' in character. I am sure that that is right.
Let us be quite clear, therefore, that by local radio we do not mean merely that there should be many stations with small or relatively small service areas, but all providing much the same general programme of popular music, interspersed, perhaps, with local news bulletins which might contain some local items. This would simply be a very inefficient way of providing a general service un-differentiated either by area, or, in any real way, by programme content.
The sensible way to meet the need for such a general service as this is by high-power stations serving large areas, and this is the purpose of B.B.C. Radio 1. I am not, of course, saying that any 172 given transmission area is always the right one for local radio. My hon. Friend has suggested that the areas served by some of the present experimental stations are too small. He suggested that district radio may be the answer.
May I recall that the Durham station has, quite deliberately, been established to serve virtually the whole county, and in the review we shall be able to see how this variation has worked out in practice compared to the other stations.
We would all agree that there is no single answer to the question: what is the right radio service area for a local radio station? The general proposition that I am making relates to the character of the service rather than to the area served, and it is this: if the programme content of each station is to be genuinely local in character, we must see that the form of constitution and organisation adopted is inherently likely to promote this objective and not inherently likely to promote a service of a general and undifferentiated character.
My hon. Friend has referred to the current experiment being conducted by the B.B.C. with eight local stations broadcasting on V.H.F. He has asked me to give the Government's views on the progress of the experiment so far, particularly as regard financing. I have noted his own views on the experiment, particularly on financing and the constitution of a local radio service and the possibility of stations having a wider coverage than they do at the moment. These are just the kind of points on which the Government hoped an experiment would throw light, and this is why we decided to proceed by way of an experimentation.
The first of the B.B.C.'s local stations, at Leicester, has been running now for just a year; the last, at Durham, for barely four months. As I said at the outset, I think that it would be wrong for me to make premature judgments at this stage. However, a few days ago, I received a monitored report on the activities of the radio stations that have been going for these last few months, and I was very impressed with the variety of local programmes for which they have been responsible. We should also recall that the Report of the Maud Commission on Local Government is expected in the new year, and that this could have a 173 bearing on the structure of any local radio service in the future.
However, there is one thing that I should like to make clear at this stage. There is, of course, no service of local radio, however it is financed, that will be "free". Stations cannot be run and broadcast programmes without cost. One way or another, the cost will have to be met if there is to be a service of local radio. It is important that people should not be led into thinking that radio financed by advertising would cost them nothing.
The cost would be an item in the price of the goods advertised and would be met by the people who bought them. It bears thinking on that many of these people might live outside the range of stations financed from the advertisements, so that the service would not be available to them even though they were indirectly helping to pay for it.
My hon. Friend has referred to partipication. In the contribution which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services made recently in the Granada lecture, he spoke of the growing feeling of alienation in our democracy, of the sense that people were mattering less and less, and he spoke, too, of the only way that this feeling could be removed—by active participation. I entirely agree with this approach. We have to improve the sense of participation by ordinary people in the way that policies are arrived at. They must not feel that the centres of power are all too remote from them. I think that the local radio experiment may help to make people feel they are participating more in their local democracy.
Another point that is important is that the population is far more mobile than it has ever been. Many of us live in large towns, where families have no roots. Where local radio can be so useful is that it can help to integrate people with the community around them within a very short time indeed. People can be helped to take an interest in local activities by hearing about them on the radio.
The reporting of the debates of municipal authorities, which are all too often ignored in the Press, will also be extremely helpful. Bringing councillors to the microphone to discuss current topics, and officials into the studio to explain the details of a council's scheme, can help 174 to increase the community's knowledge of the way it is governed, and the issues that are at stake. People will see that local government is a very lively and active thing; not something remote, conducted by people in town halls without any interest in the people around them.
I think that we could find that this could lead directly to a greater participation in local elections, and in the local government process itself, which has such a very important effect on the every-day life of the ordinary man and his family. It is these aspects of participation in the life of the community and in local government which we had in mind when we said in our White Paper that we thought local radio would at its best prove an integrating and educative force in the life of the community.
I have talked of local radio as a means of encouraging greater participation in the life of the community, but we must not forget that local radio also offers a greater chance for participation by more people in this important means of communication, though here I must say a word of warning. It is of fundamental importance in any discussion on broadcasting that we should not forget the nature of the medium, not only in its strengths, but also in its limitations.
Discussion often tends to accept the strengths and ignore the limitations. There is only a limited amount of broadcasting time available, and this has to be shared among many subjects, so choices have to be made, and someone has to make them. I do not see how someone can ever be one of the groups, or organisations, or people, with a claim to communicate. They are innumerable, and they are all, by definition, interested parties. They cannot be left to sort it out among themselves, for in the carve up that would follow the general interests, and I mean the listeners' interests, would get nowhere very special.
In other words, there must be an answerable body charged with the duty of making the choice in the general interest. To me, it does not seem much to matter what one calls this duty. It is everybody's right to complain if he thinks that the choices are wrong. Most of us will often think they are, and sometimes we will be right, but I do not think that any of us would deny that there must be someone, considerate of and sensitive to 175 opinion in all its variety, to make these choices in the general interest.
For the experimental stations there are local broadcasting councils to guide and support the station managers in the difficult choices they have to make. Here, I want to endorse my hon. Friend's tribute to the way in which the stations have been run so far, particularly Radio Leeds, which I had the opportunity of seeing just a few weeks ago. The local broadcasting councils can be the custodian of the local listeners' interests, and I think it important that they should be recognised as such.
176 I have said that I shall not pre-judge the experiment, and I must stick to that, but it would be less than fair to the local broadcasting councils, and to all those who are running the services, if I did not say that I am encouraged to believe, from the results of their work, that local radio has, as my hon. Friend said, a valuable part to play in promoting public awareness, and, in consequence, public participation.