Dial the Difference—How and Why BBC Local Radio and Independent Local Radio Developed Different News Services

This article is principally concerned with how and why these 2 types of radio news developed. It discusses the culture, ethos and practices of the 2 services and, in particular, if and how each was influenced by the other. Much of the article is concerned about how the new commercial stations developed practices and styles that were consciously different from, and in some cases in direct opposition to, those at the BBC, both nationally and locally. The article argues that it was the BBC which adopted and integrated commercial radio’s style and practices, rather than, as is often supposed, the other way around.     

Factors Influencing the Adoption of HD Radio™ by Local Radio Station Managers

A sample of 114 radio stations measured attitudes toward the adoption of HD Radio? and found that stations that have gone digital were motivated the most by 2 of 5 identified factors: image enhancement and programming considerations. The lesser factors were competition, revenue, and cost. The study also examined the relation between risk and survival. The data confirmed the importance of managerial attitudes toward disruptive technologies and their relation to image, programming, and competition.     

BBC Experiments in Local Radio Broadcasting 1961–62

In the early 1960s, the BBC was given the opportunity to demonstrate that it had the skills and resources to create localized broadcasting, by organizing a series of experimental stations across the UK. Although the output was not heard publicly, the results were played to the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, who were deliberating about the future direction of radio and television. Using archival research, featuring contemporary BBC documents, this paper argues that these experimental stations helped senior managers at the BBC to harness technological innovation with changing attitudes in society and culture, thus enabling them to formulate a strategy that put the BBC in the leading position to launch local radio a few years later in 1967.     

Local Radio Audiences in Iran: An Analysis of Ardebilian People's Trust in and Satisfaction with “Sabalan” Radio

There are numerous local radio stations across Iran. Considering the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural characteristics of their audiences, local stations endeavor to produce and broadcast diverse programs. One local station is “Sabalan” situated in Ardebil province in northwest Iran. Since the audience of this station speaks the same language as the inhabitants of the neighboring countries of Azerbaijan and Turkey, whether Sabalan can attract and satisfy its audience becomes significant. The paper is the result of a research project done in relation to the extent to which the Ardebilian audience is satisfied by Sabalan and trusts its programs. The findings reveal that the audience is less than satisfied with Sabalan and has almost no trust in the news, information, and programs. The reasons they mention for their attitude are: censorship of the news and little reflection of reality, lack of respect for indigenous culture and language, and broadcasting too many programs in Persian.     

Radio Reverb: The Impact of “Local” News Reimported to Its Own Community

According to recent data, more than 40% of radio stations now do news for stations outside their own market. This “outsourced news,” as one former Federal Communications Commission commissioner called it, raises questions about how local news decisions are made when removed from their local context. Using research on news conventions and decision-making processes, and data from field work in a small radio market served by news produced in a large market, this study frames issues of news selection and presentation within the context of a deregulated environment where the lines of what is “local” in local news are blurring.     

Different Standards: Engineers’ Expectations and Listener Adoption of Digital and FM Radio Broadcasting

As digital radio broadcasting enters its third decade of operation, few would argue that it has met all expectations expressed at the time of its launch in the mid-1990s. Observers are now more circumspect, with views divided on the pace of transition to an all-digital future. In exploring this mismatch between expectation and actuality, this article considers the introduction of FM radio in the 1950s. It too was expected to replace its forebear (AM) but, like digital radio, its adoption by listeners was slower than anticipated. An examination of published literature, in particular engineering and technical documents, reveals a number of similarities in the development of digital radio and FM. Assumptions about listeners’ needs and preferences appear to have been based on little actual audience research and, with continual reference in the literature to the supposed deficiencies of the predecessor technology, suggest an emphasis in decision making on the technical qualities of radio broadcasting over an appreciation of actual audience preferences.     

Sports-Talk Radio Symposium—Introduction

In 1928, the fledgling National Broadcasting Company hired Boston-based marketing consultant Daniel Starch to conduct the first wide-ranging survey of the national radio audience. Starch oversaw more than 5,000 interviews of U.S. radio families living in states east of the Rocky Mountains. The survey's findings provide a glimpse of the early network radio audience prior to the Federal Radio Commission's 1928 reorganization of frequency and power allocations and the industry's subsequent expansion. This paper examines Starch's findings and places them within the historical context of the developing radio industry.     

Towards a Democratic Public Sphere: A History of Radio FreeDom in Réunion

The history and present practices of talk station Radio FreeDom in the French Overseas Department of Réunion are explored in terms of their relevance to the concept of a democratic public sphere. The station uses a listener centered, call in format to aggregate rather than segment demographic groups and to offer non-hierarchical (lateral) communication among common people. The station’s success in achieving ratings dominance and financial sustainability in a competitive market is presented, as well as discussion of the potential for similar practices to work elsewhere.     

The Greater London Council’s Initiatives: A Precursor of British Asian Radio Broadcasting

By the mid-1970s, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Independent Local Radio (ILR) sector started catering to the local Asian migrant listener community in England, by producing Asian radio programming output in English and in Asian languages such as Hindi and Urdu. In the 1980s, the Greater London Council (GLC) came up with its own initiatives to cater to London’s Asian migrant community. This article describes GLC’s initiatives through its Community Radio Unit, which encouraged independent British Asian radio broadcasting in England.     

Symposium: Radio broadcasting in Scandinavia—Part II

Radio stations were organized in Europe during the 1920s as state‐regulated public service institutions. Contrary to the model in the U.S., radio thus was embedded in the cultural and political spheres and accordingly kept outside of the market forces, although some countries allowed limited advertising. Radio's role as a national service faced increasing legitimation problems, and in most Western European countries, local radio was introduced as a divergence measure to balance political and cultural convergence of national radio. Generally, local radio activities were initially an attempt to revitalize a vivid public sphere. This article describes the development in the Scandinavian countries, where local radio developed in different ways with a rather strong commercial component that filled the “commercial deficit”; resulting from public service policies and a rather fragile component of noncommercial community stations. Although the structural development in many ways showed a different pattern than expected and wanted, local radio will have an ever greater role to play in a globalized media and information society.