Beacon Radio in ‘we’ll do it’ offer to run Radio Shropshire
Tuesday 22nd March 2011, 11:29AM GMT.
Executives of a Shropshire commercial radio station today revealed that they had made an offer to take over the running of BBC Radio Shropshire.
It was revealed earlier this month that the station could have virtually all of its programmes replaced with Radio 5 Live content under plans by the BBC for a shake-up of the entire local radio network.
As part of a massive cost-saving exercise, the BBC is proposing to axe all local radio programmes across the country, except breakfast and drive-time shows and replace them with audio supplied by the national station.
The National Union of Journalists has warned the move could lead to at least 700 job cuts nationally.
But officials at Beacon Radio today said they had offered to run BBC Radio Shropshire at a significantly reduced budget with a saving to the BBC and the licence payer.
The BBC today confirmed it had received a letter from Beacon’s parent company but said “no decisions” had been made.
Phil Riley, chief executive of Orion Media – parent company of Beacon – said it was “unthinkable” that the Shropshire region should not have a fully operational news talk service.
“The suggestion is outrageous. This county creates a mass of news and sport stories every day,” he said.
“It is unacceptable that the BBC should be cutting back on its service to the area. We already have an accomplished and credible news and sports team based at Beacon and are willing to provide the service.”
He added: “The financing of the service is not an issue. From our understanding of the costs of running BBC Radio Shropshire, we believe we could achieve a 50 per cent saving.”
Jo Waters, a spokeswoman for the BBC, said: “I can confirm that we’ve received a letter from Orion Media about this and we’ll respond in due course.”
Ms Water said the corporation also wanted to reiterate its statement, made last week, which stressed that “no decisions” about the future of BBC local radio have been made.
By Russell Roberts
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I love BBC Radio Shropshire. Hands off Beacon Radio. Not everything has to sound alike and end up as a dull grey radio station.
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Beacon Radio? Oh dear, get ready for more of the same records every hour, infuriating adverts and inane morning DJ “banter” then.
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Couldn’t agree more Mark. I tuned in to Beacon on my last visit to the UK,,,BIG mistake. What a load of drivel the presenters spout and what a boring format.
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I totally agree with Mark. The last thing we want is another Beacon. Recently, I was forced to endure Beacon’s total drivel, packed to the gills with moronic adverts, whilst sitting in a waiting room. It nearly drove me mad. Unfortunately, I can only get BBC Shropshire on FM whilst driving. I made the mistake of upgrading to DAB at home and found that, due to the transmitter beaming the digital signal to the most populated part of the county, it doesn’t reach me in North Shropshire. This is to please the advertisers on the commercial stations that share a multiplexer with the BBC, so commercial interests clearly override those of listeners.
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If this happens it will be a sad day for Shropshire.
Ever since it first went on the air the station has provided an invaluable channel for local news and debate, without being influenced by commercial interests.
Can’t we get anything right in this country any more?
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But officials at Beacon Radio today said they had offered to run BBC Radio Shropshire at a significantly reduced budget with a saving to the BBC and the licence payer.
Beacon Radio is obviously an organisation that operates by knowing the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.
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Publicity, gimmick, cheap.
Got Beacon some free PR, so fair play to them!
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I love Radio Shropshire but in these times of cuts perhaps someone can explain why it now takes two presenters in the morning and two in the afternoon to do the job that just one presenter did in each of these slots – make the savings and keep the station going.
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Are you serious Sam?.
Its a proven format. Its a bit dull listening to someone take the mickey out of themselves.
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It works IF they have two good presenters! Take the breakfast show that runs until 9am, superb, then look at the “Drivetime show” Adam Green’s good but ….!!!
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Being a bit presumptuous, aren’t we, Beacon executives?
The plans for the BBC are just one of a number of proposals, and wouldn’t involve BBC Radio Shropshire disappearing altogether, just a cutback (albeit a significant one) of their output.
I can’t see Beacon wanting to give airtime to the kind of local interest story covered by the BBC – unless you can shoehorn in some advertising that is.
If these proposals turn into something more concrete I urge all likeminded people to register their disapproval.
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Does that mean Eric Smith will still be in a job? He does sometimes have a holier than thou attitude in some of his reporting and when he used to be in Spillers pantomimes the show would be mentioned at least four or five times each morning leaving listeners in no doubt that he was in it.
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What do you mean sometimes?
You only have to check out the car park and the number of cars bearing their stickers to realise how many people are employed there, then check it out after 5pm or at weekends.
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I work at one of the businesess that ALSO use that car park, many people use it, so its not just Radio Shropshire staff. Of course there are going to be less cars after 5 and at weekends. Thats when people go home from work Please get your facts right and dont make assumptions
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I quite agree with all of you, the car park is usually quite full and I wouldn’t know who owns what, but having been waiting a number of times to pick up somebody from the shops the numbers that come out of the radio station is but a scale version of seeing people leaving the football ground at the final whistle.
We have a corporation demanding public money for a 24hr service by a 9×5 workforce.
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poor idea and very typical of today – corporations grabbing things the public owns.
Don’t let R Shropshire and their time-honoured A Partridges get morphed into bland blur of awfulness that services advertisers and nobody else – at least Radio Shropshire is useful.
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I wondered what you were on about then I suddenly realised you were talking of Alan Partridge, rumour has been for many years that AP was actually styled on one of the Shrops presenters, which is quite believable.Doesn’t take much guessing.
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What? No you cant do this to us!!
I love listening to Beacon its the only radio station i will have on in my car.
Leave our radio station alone!!!!
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So the Beacon Radio that effectively closed down its own Shropshire output now say they want to take on a station that puts the county first each and every day?
If BBC Radio Shropshire listeners wanted what Beacon are offering they would retune to get a mix of tunes and adverts and waffle and adverts. They dont …
And if Beacon think they can do EXACTLY what the BBC does with fewer people they are wrong and they know it.
Good publicity stunt …. maximum points …. but that is all it is.
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nice 1.. love beacon and especially like that u can have a banter with the DJ’s on facebook
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Similarly take a look at Twitter for the conversations that take place between the presenters of BBC Radio Shropshire and their audience
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I think the plan is that Beacon might be, theoretically, paid by the BBC to do the sorts of programming the BBC does (not the programming than Beacon does), so it would not take advertising. But – at least the station would survive at all! It just would cost us licence fee payers a lot less.
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Thats exactly what i was thinking, i’m surprised so many people think a BBC station can have adverts!!
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Well done Con-Dems
You are trying to wreck the whole country so you are not going to leave BBC Radio Shropshire alone,Beacon Radio is not on a par with the dedicated Shropshire service.
The sooner we vote this lot out the better.
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Radio Shropshire has a large and loyal audience – leave it alone!
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Ha ha ha.. Pause for air.. Ha ha ha.. Are beacon serious? You honestly think the BBC would hand over BBC Shropshire to them? It’s a worry these people are in charge of anything let alone a radio station. The owners of beacon were so strapped for cash they closed down their studio actually in the county, and swapped most of their remaining programmes to shared programming. A good (but utterly transparent) publicity stunt from beacon. Is that the best they can come up with? Come on guys! You can do better than that!! Where is this money coming from they are planning to take BBC Shropshire over with? Considering they don’t have any at the moment? A magical tree in the yard of their Wolverhampton studios?
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Would someone like to show me the “plan” or “proposal” from the BBC?
There is none. There *is* a discussion going on about what a BBC that’s 20 per cent smaller might look like, and one suggestion is indeed apparently cutting about 60 per cent of hours of local weekday output. That was tweeted by an attendee at a staff meeting and splattered on the front of the Telegraph.
Beacon’s point, I’d imagine, is that there are ways of cutting more than 20 per cent of costs while cutting less than 60 per cent of programmes. It’s a fair point (though it certainly would mean some obvious cuts on-air).
It will come down to the BBC deciding where its priorities lie, and whether they include providing the public service information for Shropshire which stations like Beacon have cut back on in recent years. We’ll see.
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The BBC has for many years been a bit of a bloater, successive attempts to slim it down have failed, usually because of the power of the NUJ et al.
When the government says we’re all in this together perhaps someone will at last take notice within the corporation.
There are some fine talents held locally which are keeping a lot of the rest afloat, time for some pruning before all that new-season energy is wasted on all the show and no-go
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I made the mistake of listening to Beacon for a while then started listening to BBC Radio Shropshire, without doubt one of the best local radio stations I’ve experienced. Proper local coverage, interesting interviews, presenters with personality, airtime for music that’s not just popular with 16-24 year olds (folk, jazz, Trunk of Funk etc) and unlike Beacon, they actually broadcast from the county, not Wolverhampton! Worth every penny of the Licence Fee.
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Does it matter that the studio is outside the county, it doesn’t matter a jot. I’ve regularly heard presenters on Shropshire mispronounce placenames, does it really matter? No.
People should stop be so parochial.
If they want to start saving money why not look at Midlands Today, who else would pay a weather presenter to read the news and then employ another to do the weather?
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In response to your question, yes.
My view is nothing to do with parochialism, but more to do with the presenters and the programmes having some honest connection with their audience. I drive for a living and listen from 7am to 7pm. The traffic updates are much more accurate and up to date and the level of interactivity between presenters and audience is great. Try it, you’ll be surprised. By contrast, I wince at the sham of Beacon presenters pretending to be broadcasting from somewhere other than where they are.
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Several of the presenters have Beacon and/or commercial radio backgrounds, so would anybody really notice if they staff were changed, after all it is only presenting style dictated by the heirarchy.
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People have short memories and quickly get used to new faces/voices, no person or persons are bigger than the radio station, it is what is decided upon high that matters, they after all are the one that hold the cheque book, that is why the presenters won’t say boo to a goose, they know they’re getting very good money (and presumably top-notch pension) for a few hours each week chatting about any old tat and then throwing another record on the dansette.
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judging by the dross on beacon i would prefer this to stay in house run by professionals without all the noise and advertising and utter rubbish which is reported on those mainstream chav stations
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PS – Gotta love Phil Riley referring to “this” county :)
Do you think he was in his office in Birmingham or Nottingham as he jabbed at the map :)
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So Beacon has an acomplished and creditable news and sports team. Since when? The station is mainly complete dross and cannot in any way compare to the quality of BBC Radio Sropshire. This story has to be a joke.
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Reading all these comment it looks like some people need to read the story first.
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That’s because we were commenting on the part of the story that was on here yesterday – the first five paragraphs of what’s there now.
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Until I saw this item I thought Beacon Radio had gone out of business a while back.
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In the article above it says:
Phil Riley, chief executive of Orion Media – parent company of Beacon – said
“it was “unthinkable” that the Shropshire region should not have a fully operational news talk service.
The suggestion is outrageous. This county creates a mass of news and sport stories every day,”
That to me does not suggest a Beacon replica (Thank you, thank you, thank you!) it suggests a news / sport station with a local focus! Throw in some calls from local people perhaps & then it’s happy days.
Having said that however, I guess ultimately it will be a ‘wait & see’ scenario. Wait & see if Mr Hill is true to his word should he be granted the option.
Whatever, I hope they don’t use hosts from the same gene pool as Beacon & majority of other local commercial radio stations.
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I am often bemused by the number of people that pop up to do a 30 second snippet on the news bulletins, what do they do the rest of the time? I also have to agree with the comments of Edward @ 8,there is frequently a real under current of the holier than thou attitude that comes across. That’s why I moved from a regular to infrequent listener.
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I listen to Today,The world at one and PM on radio 4 all news and current affairs and factual information.
There are some local reports on radio Shropshire that are OK and traffic news.
But often i find the presenters talk incessantly about them selves,no interest to me at all.
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..and not forgetting their children, pets, cars,garden.
I have a life of my own to lead and I do not need to live my life through them.
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id rather have the BBC and pay more for quality personally…
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I would too, but what at any price? Let’s get the BBC proving its worth before we start throwing more money into the pit.
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Most of the Radio Shropshire programmes are nothing to write home about, same old subjects interrupted by the same old music, and when they get something remotely entertaining they then play it to death.
I caught the programme this morning where the presenter read out a message sent from a mobile phone at a petrol station forecourt, not the most responsible bit of broadcasting I’d heard in ages, there was me thinking the BBC was big into health and safety.
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I can’t understand how the BBC has become so short of cash that these cuts are needed.
As well as the closure of BBC Radio Shropshire, there are also proposals to shut down BBC2 during the daytime, as well as the shut down of all BBC TV output after midnight.
The licence fee previously covered the cost of running all of these services and much more.
If cuts are needed today, then it’s because of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement.
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Or because the BBC has been told there’ll be no rise in the licence fee until (at least) 2017. It will also have to pay for the World Service (currently funded from tax) and S4C (Welsh telly). And inflation is running at 4+ per cent right now.
That’s why the licence fee won’t cover all that stuff in the future.
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maybe the ridiculous salaries they (sorry we)pay to their ‘top’ tv/radio presenters might have something to do with it!!
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“I caught the programme this morning where the presenter read out a message sent from a mobile phone at a petrol station forecourt, not the most responsible bit of broadcasting I’d heard in ages, there was me thinking the BBC was big into health and safety.”
Eh!!!What on earth has that got to do with health and safety?
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I dont know either but Ill hazard a guess that its a bit like when they ask for traffic information and add but only if its safe and legal to do so.Does any organisation not have a duty of care not to encourage or likely put people at risk? Sticking a live electrical device where there are plentiful petrol vapours would certainly put me off.
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What do you think petrol pumps run on…steam, clockwork or electricity?…answers on a postcard please.
The mobile phone myth came out ages ago when they thought that phone signals could upset the pumps pricing display but modern pumps don’t suffer from this anymore, it’s just an urban myth/scare story.
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East-peasy, you shouldn’t mix electrics and petrol unless it’s in the combustion chamber of an engine. By accepting the circumstances without advising of the danger have they not condoned the situation, perhaps a don’t try this at home warning wouldn’t go amiss?
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…except that there has never been one fire or explosion at a petrol station as the result of mobile phone use, and attempts to ignite petrol vapour using mobiles under test conditions have been 100% unsuccessful.
On the other hand, static electricity discharge from vehicles and passengers has been shown to be one of the more common causes of these accidents.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4366337.stm
This also suggests that a lit cigarette is not hot enough to ignite petrol, I for one will not be testing whether it is true or not.
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I have just had my licence bill come through for £145. I ould be very happy not to pay this amount any more, scrap all of the BBC I say. The charter harks back to when there was only the BBC. Now we have a multiutde of tv channels along with local and national radio stations. quality broadcasting would continue as the commercial stations would seek to attract the die hard BBC viewers/listeners. So PLEASE GIVE ME MY £145 BACK
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It always makes me smile to think that people object to paying the licence fee for what is largely quality programming from the BBC, the envy of the world and yet happily pay a fortune for the dross served up by Sky for American shows, non-stop sports where a 90 minute match gets spread over 5 hours and endless repeats of the same few films you can get by walking to the video shop 6 months earlier and at reasonable cost. The BBC performs a public service role no other broadcaster does, has priceless and celebrated archives and comes free of adverts, which are enough to make anyone switch off. Yes, sometimes it loses it’s way but I can think of more worthy targets for cuts – 24 hour rolling news, BBC Parliament, and some of the high price ‘stars’ for starters. ITV has never been able to match the output in comedy or sports such as football or Formula 1, concentrating on poor light entertainment and reality shows – is this really what you would want for a national institution? Radio Shropshire performs a duty, and well. Maybe overnight when listeners are few a combined (say) Shropshire, Staffordshire and Herefordshire station could save money, but replace with Beacon style output? No way.
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The BBC is being forced to pay for the digital switchover, previously scheduled to come from the government. As a result we have cuts like this.
I must remember to put this on the website for the list of cuts affecting Shropshire people.
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You really must get out more
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The taxpayer should turn a profit from the digital switchover. The radio frequency bands released when analogue TV is turned off will be sold at auction to mobile operators, etc.
Elsewhere in the Saturday papers it is reported that the new BBC boss was told “you will struggle to spend your £1.4bn budget” before he gave Jonathan Ross an £18m contract!
How things have changed. TV celebrities used to find their fame on BBC before moving to ITV where salaries were not constrained by the public purse. The complete reverse is true now.
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I’m sure a lot of folk would much rather lose local radio stations than some of the other cuts affecting people like libraries, schools etc being closed down. The only time I ever tune into local radio is when it snows, to hear which schools are closed. It offers absolutely nothing else of any use or interest. You can get local news from the Shropshire Star, weather from the television or online, and music from countless other radio services. If it’s really the ‘banter’ you’d miss, there are probably more amusing people in your local pub.
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Don’t you dare touch my favourite radio station, it’s local, it’s informative and it is part of the lives of many Shropshire residents and beyond, and I mean world wide.
We are so lucky to have a team of dedicated local presenters working on our behalf and my hat is off to all of them.
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sorry beacon but you may go down well in telford and wolve but this is shropshire, we like proper music and intelligent conversation im afraid beacon is not of sufficient quality and i value the public service element of BBCs work
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