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A Licence to Kill
BBC and commercial radio stations at loggerheads over report
A report just published by the UK's Commercial Radio Companies Association
says that the BBC's market dominance is threatening the existence of many
smaller commercial radio stations. The report, compiled for the CRCA by
research company Indepen, suggests that one option for scaling back the
impact of the BBC on commercial radio would be to sell the BBC’s
own 'commercial' services, namely Radio 1 and 2.
The report, called 'A Licence to Kill', claims that
the original rationale for the entry of BBC into formats such as Radio
1 in 1967 was to counter the loss of listening caused by North Sea pirate
stations, a rationale that no longer applies following the introduction
of licensed commercial radio services in 1973. Actually, this claim is
inaccurate. The offshore stations (except Radio Caroline) had already
been closed by Act of Parliament several weeks before Radio 1 launched.
The rationale was simply the popularity of the former offshore stations,
which Radio 1 attempted to imitate.
In reponse, the BBC says that "Many of the arguments put forward
in this paper have been debated at length during the Charter Review process,
not least during Lord Burns' extensive review of BBC analogue radio and
Tim Gardam's review of our digital services. The BBC absolutely refutes
the idea that it imitates formats and that commercial radio alone has
been at the forefront of innovation. Listeners tune in to the BBC's services
because they provide innovative and distinctive content and provide the
widest possible audience with services that the market alone would not
provide."
Read
the CRCA report
Source: Media Network
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