RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

SOHE CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF LOCAL RADIO A ) There's little encouragement of local muslc on local radio Radio is well suited to this , anđ national systems long have been patrons of the arts and archivists . Not only are most local stations reluctant to play a role in that process , but some even are reluctant to provide air play for local artists who already have recorded and have begun to attain a reputation. The well-known U.S. rock music star Prince got almost no air play over stations in his native Minneapolis before his recordings earned him a national reputation . There are exceptions, of course ; U.K. ILR station Веасоп Rađio (Wolverhampton) had an engineer in the late 1970 sand early 80s who scouted out promising local groups , brought them to Beacon-'s studio , and recorded them or put them on air live . Several of Swedish LRAB stations have encouraged local folk , choral or jazz groups; Radio Upland (Uppsala) again had an ambitious engineer who went out of his way to đo so . And several of the Australian public stations had sound studios in -which they recorded, broadcast and distributed on tape the performances of f eminist, Aboriginal and other vocal and rock soloists and groups . But those experiences are not typical. B ) Lack of local roots on the part of local rađio staff is guite common , especially for many of the commercial ventures . That may not matter so much where a local radio does little but play 'national'’ music , but it can make it difficult to cover community issues if that's part of the station's schedule . On the other hand , local stations certainly can profit from an outsider's perspective , which can help to free staff from the bias of "That's just the way things аге here." The trick is to get a good balance between broad and đeep knowledge of the community and the fresh perspective of someone who knows that things can be done in other ways . A newly-appointed manager of BBC Radio Tweed (Selkirk , Scotland) ran into an 'outsider-lnsider' problem when he elected to саггу reports on the Borders Regional Council's agenda items in ađvance of Council meetings - somethmg that the local newspapers in the area hadn't done previously because of a 'gentleman's agreement' with the Council. The manager was within his legal rights to broađcast the agenda , but the chief power brokers on the Council deeply resented his action , and quickly withdrew Council cooperation with the station . Furthermore, they managed to get a number of other leading figures in the region to 'boycott' the station by refusing to be mterviewed. Other station staff members and more-or-less neutral parties in the community felt that a better unđerstandmg of the local power structure and of local sensibilities , plus a bit morfe tact and patience , would have enabled the manager to

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