It’s time to cull BBC local radio

I originally published this back in October last year…

The idea that BBC local radio might cease to do much more than relay Radio 5Live has been conveniently leaked into the world of muttering and chattering.

A bit like when talk is of shutting libraries that nobody uses, suddenly there is now uproar from the meeja muttering and chattering classes.

Apparently, we are supposed to keep libraries open even though nobody visits them any more, and we are supposed to keep local (well, regional) BBC Radio stations open in England even though nobody listens to them any more.

I’m not quite sure what the point of BBC local radio actually is anyway.  Its output always seems confused, safe, and uneventful, as well as probably only of interest to those over the age of 80.  Not that there’s anything wrong with radio stations being targeted at the over 80s, but should this be a cost borne by the BBC in return for no audience, when a local radio station could be more things to more people?

Is this really just an old folks’ rest home?

When I first moved to Liverpool, the first thing I noticed was the complete lack of radio stations (Not that I’m a radio anorak or anything) and tuning in to those that existed was like taking a step back to the 1970s.  I can hear a number of BBC Local Radio stations, including those for Lancashire, Manchester, and of course the one for me, BBC Merseyside.

The standard daytime format will typically be long drawn out tedious talking bits, broken up by old music so bland that it wouldn’t even appear on Smooth’s playlist.  The talking bits are on the most uninteresting subjects, and dominated by promotions for the obscenely richly funded arts and culture industry (Why oh why weren’t they affected by recent cut-backs? Hmmm. Hospital operating theatre -versus- a theatre group that specialises in some obscure African mime that not even Africans have heard of. I know which deserves the funding!).  The vast majority, in fact, probably all, of the arts and culture industry is so out of touch with the ordinary Scouser that it is only the wealthy middle classes (from outside of Liverpool) that bother to attend any of these highly over-funded events.  And yet, publicity for them dominates BBC Merseyside.  Aha, it’s the chattering classes that are listening to BBC Merseyside alongside the 80 year olds!

Dominating the output over and above the local doffing of caps to highly funded art projects are generic conversations about non-local subjects.  Yep, 60 local radio stations are will complete sets of presenters, producers, heating, lighting, etc., etc., all discussing the fact that, for example, Apple’s Steve Jobs has died.  All taking time with the same industry experts ‘down the line’ to talk to one local station after the other after the other about Steve Jobs. This has to be pointless.  It’s not a local radio subject, it’s a generic national radio subject.  It would make far more sense for the stations to be broadcasting just one single programme, with one producer, one presenter and one set of studios, networked across all the stations rather than the huge expense duplicating the output.

BBC Merseyside’s presenters have all been on the station since the First World War, and their pre-historic attitudes and denture whistles compete to find the cure for insomnia.  Who IS listening to BBC Merseyside?  Well, apparently, just a few of the same people who were listening decades ago and so have grown old along with its very old presenters.

At night of course, as with most BBC local stations, BBC Merseyside is host to programming aimed at minority interest listening.  Yes, I suppose an hour for lovers of Bavarian nose-flute music is important, as is an hour for “ethnics”.  Hey, that makes the station so damn ‘right on’.  But, nobody’s listening!  Why spend all that money producing ‘right on’ stuff nobody wants to bother to tune in for?  Surely it makes far much more sense during ‘off-peak times’ to re-broadcast Radio 5Live, a station so wrongly starved of an FM outlet, and save the small fortune being spent on producing local programming that nobody knows is there.

My masterplan for BBC Local Radio, assuming it cannot be modernised to appeal to people under 80, would be to fund ‘local’ breakfast and drive-time talking only shows (no pointless bland songs needed!), plus maybe ‘opt in’ newscasts at certain other times junctioning with Radio 5Live.  So, just as at the end of the BBC1 TV Six O’Clock News the nice newscaster says, “And now it’s time to join the news teams where you are,” which allows the network to cut away to regional news for each transmission region, so too could the person on 5Live.  Then on comes a local news sequence, rejoining 5Live at a point when the main programme starts.

I’d also fund local sports commentaries and special regional events that needed extended ‘local’ output, but definitely all the tedious and pointless general all-purpose generic daytime rubbish needs to be axed straight away.  At night, just network 5Live.  This is what people want, even the 80 year olds.

Unfortunately, the moaners and complainers who force us to keep funding pointless libraries that nobody uses have started the same types of campaigns to save ‘local’ programming on BBC Local Radio.  Waste of money!