Earlier this year, the media conglomerate Global Radio announced that it would be culling the majority of its local breakfast and drivetime shows on Smooth, Heart and Capital. Around 60 shows will be replaced overall and local news bulletins will be remodelled. This comes on the heels of a series of depressing developments for local culture. Recent research published by Press Gazette shows that, since 2005, 245 local newspapers have closed. Of the 127 libraries shut down across the UK last year, a high number belonged to small cities or towns. And it doesn't look great for theatres either. This year's Theatres At Risk list (an annual report released by Theatres Trust) showed an increased figure of 31 UK theatres in danger of being closed in 2019. Twenty-seven of them are outside London.
Every now and then headlines about local culture appear in the news, and the news is never good. Whether newspapers, arts centres, libraries, theatres, or radio, it always means cuts. But whereas the threat to theatres, libraries and especially newspapers have attracted serious, furrow-browed coverage from urbanite journalists, local radio closures are usually given a few token columns and then ignored. Part of this is because radio isn't given much coverage generally. But it's also because local radio is a source of ridicule. In a country where the most famous radio presenter is Alan Partridge, perhaps it's unsurprising that the demise of local radio isn't lamented with the same handwringing remorse as that of other local outlets. The problem, however, is that this ignores the centrality of radio to those communities. Ultimately local radio stations are not just a source of news but a source of culture.
I grew up deep in the rural wilderness of Somerset, where local radio was a marker of daily routine. In the same way that the newspaper rounds once punctuated time for older generations (morning ration, evening ration), so it was for radio shows in my hometown. Morning meant a blast of Orchard FM's “Ian and Laura” during the school run, after a struggle to avoid Radio 4 ("driver’s choice.") Afternoon meant the drivetime show, during which the same six songs would be played in rotation for three hours: two early 1970s pop tunes, one 80s dance anthem, one contemporary boyband pop song, one not-quite-contemporary ballad (last year's X Factor winner, for example) and a wild card. The evenings were slightly more focused genre-wise: Retro Classics and Smooth 70s preceded the chart hits, before nose-diving back into disorder with the Request Show. The Request Show, by the way, was really the highlight of the local radio repertoire. Evenings after homework would be spent trying to drum up the courage to phone in and leave an answer machine message requesting the jam of your choice (always: "Life is a Rollercoaster" by Ronan Keating). You would then wait between 20 minutes and an hour to hear if your particular request had made it onto the airwaves, and if it did, the sound of your own voice booming through your radio speakers would elicit a very specific kind of euphoria: a rush of adrenaline; a sense that you could be heard, a sense that fame—even national fame—might one day be achieved.
Nostalgic wafflings these may seem, but the weirdness and specificity of local radio establishes a unique connection to your community. Being from Taunton is not just about drinking cider, or becoming a hardcore cricket fan as a result of there being no other good sports teams in the area. It's also about having a very obscure, specific knowledge of late 70s and early noughties pop. It's about knowing the words to all the Orchard FM adverts between the years of 1999 to 2005. (Bad news: a broken windscreen. Good news: Phoenixwindscreensathomeorwork24hoursaday and we're insurance approved!). So yes, London traveller: you personally may not want to listen to Neil from Chard wax lyrical on sheep-shearing practices for four plus minutes while you drive to Glastonbury festival. You personally may not want to listen to the Bee Gees, Olly Murs and Spandau Ballet on repeat. But there is no other general platform for Neil to vent about community issues such as sheep-shearing, and that peculiar mish-mash of nostalgic and just-about-dated-pop music is basically the soundtrack to the west country. Get over it.
Things have changed since Ye Days of 2003 (for one: the internet is wireless) and generally speaking this is for the better. But wide-reaching, largely free resources available on the internet have led to homogeneity in culture as well as news. It's no surprise that, over in the US, Facebook admitted last month that it’s having problems sourcing local news to splash freely across its platforms. That's what happens when you squeeze out the people who are actually doing the reporting. Undoubtedly they will soon discover the same problem over here, assuming there is a culture to report on in the first place. (Taunton's theatre, The Brewhouse, was shut down for a spell in 2015 after 100 per cent of its arts funding was cut. It has now reopened and is run entirely by volunteers—but what will happen when these volunteers retire?) Local radio offers something unique, in that it is a free listening platform which discusses the concerns of a tiny community and which is, in its form, specific to place. That so many stations are being closed down means that pockets of culture across the UK are gradually being erased. Voices are being silenced. That's a real shame.
