How To Set Up A Community Radio Station

First Steps

In that location is a lot in this department and if yous are new to the sector we would recommend that you read it all. If you need to jump almost the section this is a clickable list;

Getting a Group Together
Key Partners
Resource
Legal Matters
Towards Your Offset RSL
On Air At Concluding
After The Storm

When yous are new to customs radio, the idea of running a total-time, licensed station with its own bounds, paid staff, hundreds of volunteers and a financial turnover of up to vi figures will seem like an incommunicable dream.

The success of the original pilot stations in the customs radio sector prove that it can be done. Indeed the chances are that a station similar the 1 yous dream of has already has been created by someone very like you lot. It doesn't need huge sums of money to get started. If you are good at what you do, you can observe the money to do it and brand that money work for you.

Over the next iv chapters nosotros will talk you through the processes involved in establishing a community radio station, pretty much from scratch. Remember at that place will be support and funding bachelor from somewhere at every stage, if you find the right partners. Actually this is all in that location is to it:

Establish your community radio group, and be prepared to formalise/incorporate it into a social enterprise or charity
Equip yourself with premises, resource and technical equipment.
Conduct grooming, run temporary 'RSL' broadcasts, and begin to demonstrate your competence and worth.
Convince OFCOM that you lot are the all-time-placed customs radio group to broadcast in your area earlier anyone else does .

Doesn't sound so difficult at present, does it?

Getting a group together

A customs radio station has to come up from somewhere. While sometimes it will be the brainchild of an existing community group, very oftentimes it is dragged into being by the vision, bulldoze and stubborn persistence of one or two enthusiasts (see box on correct).

'The Drivers'

In his official evaluation of the 16 Admission Radio pilots, Prof. Anthony Everitt noted that the stations were oftentimes founded or led by ane charismatic and knowledgeable effigy. Some of the characters he highlighted included:

Wood of Dean Radio (FODR). ' Roger Drury is the project's founding effigy. A community creative person, with skills in circus, drama, writing, video/picture show and local history. He came to the Forest in 1986 and in the early on 1990s heard nigh and researched RSLs. FODR ran the first of a series of RSLs in 1995 and,before the arrival of Access Radio, prepared a iii-twelvemonth business plan in the 'vague promise' that a long term community radio licence would somewhen be achievable.

Angel Radio. 'Tony Smith, one of the founders of Affections Radio, built his showtime transmitter at schoolhouse: he went home during tiffin and broadcast records to his fellow students. Later… he and his married woman, Lorna Adlam, lived in a land surface area where there was no local radio service and set themselves up as pirate broadcasters. 'Everyone knew we were pirates. The Department of Trade and Industry people merely raided us on complaint. We used to leave a key in the front door for them.'

Sound Radio. 'Lol Gellor was a song-writer, producer and musician, who later on became interested in motion-picture show and video. In the mid-1990s he worked for the multicultural arts promotion bureau, Cultural Partnerships, for whom he produced his first RSL for the Clapton Park estate in Hackney in 1995. 'Not coming from a radio background, I discovered what radio tin can exist – a goad for the customs.'

New Voices, OFCOM 2003.

As with whatever such venture, a community radio station is unlikely to ever go off the footing without at least one enthusiastic 'driver.' Simply a station that leans likewise heavily on one private is asking for trouble. Community radio is a grouping activity by its very nature. Unless the station is planted and embedded into the customs by many, many roots it will get little more an exercise in ego. Worse still, if the driving forcefulness is suddenly taken ill or is forced to withdraw from the projection for other reasons, where does that leave the project?

So ask yourself about the community you are hoping to represent. Is it large enough and potent enough to sustain a radio station? Is it small-scale enough that you can promise to serve information technology all? Typically, some single villages would be too pocket-sized for a station, while most cities are likewise large and diverse to represented and helped effectively with one community station. Tin your radio group merits to represent it all? Are you lot attempting to? What is your mission argument? Your group needs to broadly agree on these questions before you lot keep any further.

In the early on months or years your group may be fiddling more than than an informal association, with no more responsibilities than the local postage stamp collectors' club.

Very quickly however you lot will wish to enter financial contracts with customs partners, attract grant money, make binding promises to OFCOM and employ staff. To do and then your group will take to formalise itself into some form of non-turn a profit distributing visitor or charity, with named directors and a legally binding constitution (see Accountability).

The structure yous choose needs to guarantee 2 protections:

That the station will be managed competently, honestly and finer.
That the station truly represents the customs information technology claims to represent.

Some stations volition cull to combine these ii functions into a single lath. At others at that place will be some form of sectionalization into representative and operational groups. At ALL FM, for example, the representational functions are held by the Steering Grouping, who fix the overall policies and directions of the station, while the Board of Directors take responsibility for supporting day-to-day determination making, supervision of staff and other operational matters. Different structures will accommodate different groups. Balancing a truly autonomous structure with a truly operationally constructive 1 is a delicate functioning (see Accountability). Almost inevitably the more truly democratic and representative you are, the harder you will find information technology to make the type of sudden or brave decisions which are oft needed to run a customs radio station. Remainder is all.

Running a community radio station requires many skills. Ideally your group will attract people with experience in the voluntary sector; project management; finance and accounting; company law; technical engineering; fundraising and perchance – just perchance – radio.

CRIB SHEET

Your community radio grouping:

Is essential – community radio cannot be made past individuals;
Will need to requite itself a legal construction;
Needs to be representative of your community;
Needs to ensure practiced management.

Of course some of these skills volition (and must) exist learned on your journeying, simply you volition give yourself a huge caput start if you can enthuse and involve members of your community who already have some of that knowledge. If you haven't already got such people around (due east.thou. as volunteers or regular guests on your RSL'south), make a real attempt to leave and find them.

Your group should also be broadly representative of your customs. If you are in an ethnically diverse community this should be represented within your grouping. Try to become equally adept a mix as possible of ethnic backgrounds, social classes, faiths, and lifestyles. Even if your community is more homogenous, make sure you accept a skilful spread of ages, gender, orientations, and disabilities – endeavour non to forget anyone. Once again, information technology is your responsibility to ensure they are involved, rather than their responsibility to detect you.

Simply don't get also carried away with the demographics, you lot don't need 27% Ruritanians on the Board because there are 27% of them in the customs – 'due representation' needn't be mathematically right.

Key partners

Every bit a community radio station, very few of your activities volition be entirely self-independent. Y'all will exist at your most useful when yous are working jointly with other groups, and other agencies and services. They may besides accept much to offer you, from premises or technical resource to specialist skills. The relationships you course may involve financial transactions (for example, wellness agencies which might pay you to broadcast their bulletin) or they may be mutually benign arrangements (eg. the local theatre grouping with whom y'all can co-produce radio drama). These groups, institutions and services are what we phone call your 'partners.'

How you arroyo them and get them involved will depend entirely on the circumstances, but oft it volition start off with something as simple as a phone call, explaining whom you lot are and what you want to exercise. You may be astonished at how picayune persuasion is required. After all, you have as much to offer them as they have to offer you. (see Dealing With Different Agencies) The other sure-fire fashion to get a grouping involved is to invite them in for an interview – in that location'due south aught similar seeing, hearing and feeling community radio to make converts.

The nature of your partners will go a long way towards shaping the eventual nature of your radio station. In detail they will be the key factors in determining what forms your social gain will take – that is, how y'all will enable your customs to improve itself. For example, if your radio station has committed itself to working with the elderly, you volition want and need a lot of agencies, services and community groups who work with the elderly to get involved.

Any the nature of your community, peak of the list of the partners y'all demand is likely to be an education and grooming partner, typically a farther teaching college. Ideally information technology should be an establishment that can access funds from the Skills Funding Agency, which will enable your station to earn payments for the accredited training you will do (meet Training).

High on your listing should also be statutory/ mainstream services. Many of these are under the control of your local say-so. Become the quango on your side and doors will open. Fail to do and then and you might be in for a very rough ride. Except in the most unlikely circumstances, you should not run across any quango opposition. As a community radio station you have then much to offer them, your trouble is more likely to be keeping them at bay and maintaining your independence. You lot must convince your service providers that they need you and that they don't need to command you. (see Selling Services).

Precisely which statutory agencies you bring on board will depend on your customs, but you should remember of contacting teaching authorities; housing providers; health authorities, hospitals, wellness centres and health campaigns; community police service; schools, colleges, youth services and of course local regeneration and evolution committees. And don't forget the less usual suspects – east.g. local utilities need to be able to communicate with their customers, chambers of commerce want an 'in' to members and would-be members and the business community might desire to work with you to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility.

VOXBOX

"When nosotros start got involved in Wythenshawe FM I thought it might be a great way of letting people know what's going on in the schoolhouse, and what a busy active schoolhouse we are. You lot might recollect that nobody listens to small customs radio stations but then our children went over in that location and did a short show made upward of interviews with local people, people from the schoolhouse and then on. The side by side day I went to the bank and I met someone who'd been listening to it, and so I met a parent who works in a local factory and they'd had information technology on in there. You reach a lot more people than you think.

The children were writing downward scripts, having to do a lot of research, devising interview questions, information technology is all good for their communications skills. And information technology makes a huge departure to their confidence to confront a different world of ICT and mass communications."

John Gretton, Head teacher, St Anthony'south RC Primary Schoolhouse, Wythenshawe.

You may likewise want to call up near involving the great and the expert of your community. This may include MPs, councillors, indigenous and religious community leaders, and the other big players in local borough life. Simply be very careful whom you are involving yourself with. You should know your community well plenty to find out the local political and personal rivalries. Avert finding yourself becoming a political football or battlefield. In some circumstances it may be wiser to avoid the traditional 'gatekeepers of the community', find your own alternative routes and go to the movers and shakers when you lot have something to offer them – such equally a 10km wide soap-box.. Politicians tin can likewise be held at bay, if need be, by the OFCOM rules about interest of political parties in running stations

Be prepared for some complex community politics. In areas of large and complex cultural and ethnic diversity, be gear up for fragile political and cultural rivalries betwixt, and even within detail ethnic or religious groups. Within ALL FM's area for example, there is a population of some 24,000 people purely of Pakistani origin. Only within that community there are many smaller social groups based on religious, course, political or geographical bonds, and these groups won't always agree.

Faith representation in your community group is a controversial issue. Some radio groups are based almost entirely upon religious faith. Others forbid religious involvement altogether. There is no right or wrong approach. However, working relationships with churches, mosques, synagogues and temples can form powerful bonds with large sections of the community, both every bit listeners and volunteers. They can be a valuable resource for even the most secularly-minded project. A happy medium may be to allow faith groups to participate, merely with a firm 'no preaching' rule (see Working With Religious Communities)

Local business concern should exist considered and represented, although the nature of your station will probably determine whether that is in the shape of the local shopkeeper or the Bedroom of Commerce. Think about relationships with the major local employers. Local trades union branches are likely to be very supportive, and can exist financially generous. Tenants groups are another of import link to the community.

Perhaps the most useful partners for any community radio station are local schools. Not merely tin you lot offer them enormous benefits, which are reflected in your social gain achievements just too they are an enormously satisfying way to use customs radio. The benefits are fast and obvious to run into. Moreover they are a fantastic way to achieve new listeners. For every schoolhouse with its own radio bear witness, that is hundreds of children urging their parents to tune the family radio to your frequency.

And the benefits are common. Schools are at present obliged to pursue broader community development. A customs radio station makes a perfect arena for them to do so.

With so many agencies wishing to become involved in your station, there is a danger you might lose your own identity. This is yet another balancing human activity you need to perform. In all dealings with potential partners, y'all accept to be articulate that they are entering into a partnership to brand customs radio; they are not simply ownership your airtime or resource equally a platform for their propaganda. If they wish to buy advertizement or airtime, that is i thing, but if they are to be true partners it is much better that they bring together in with the piece of work and the fun.

CRIB Sheet

Your key partners:

Should include a training partner such as college;
May likewise include council departments, public service providers, support agencies, community groups, schools, businesses and anyone else with whom you can class a important working relationships;
Should play an active part in your station;
Must recognise that your forcefulness is in existence you and and then must not try to take over.

They should become their hands muddied at the station, just like every other participant. If the local community constabulary officers want a radio show, for example, they should use it as an loonshit for community discussion and debate, not just for public information – 'CommunityFM' non 'CopFM'. If they need persuading, ask them to consider which show would get more response. . They should likewise railroad train, prepare and work hard to make it the all-time radio show they tin, exactly as would be expected of any other volunteer.

And in item beware of becoming overwhelmed by statutory services. You could easily find yourself becoming 'Town Hall FM', which would exist in no one's interest. 1 of the best pieces of communication nosotros ever received was from a senior council officer, a good friend and supporter of Radio Regen, who is too known for his sharp mind as he is for is his bawdy vocabulary. Every bit we were preparing to go on air with a project he commissioned, he said this:

'Whatever you do, don't make it sound similar the #^%ing council.'

He, like anyone with common sense, knew that such a station sound would accept listeners tuning out in droves.

Resources

Equally you progress, you volition increasingly find yourself in need of resources. While you may be able to brainstorm your training using the facilities of your partner college, for example, sooner or after you are going to need your own material resources. These include bones radio equipment which can be used to conduct your own training and which you tin use on your first temporary stations or RSLs (see Your First RSL).

Eventually you lot will desire to be the proud possessor of an Aladdin's Cavern of technology (run across Technical Matters). Merely for now y'all volition probably have to scrabble your equipment together. Exist shameless, ask local schools, colleges, recording studios, audio shops, musicians, professional DJs etc for spare equipment they accept lying around, and you could soon find yourself with a

CRIB Sheet

Your group will need:

shameless blagging skills;
studio and manual equipment;
bounds, office equipment and a kettle.

basic set up of mixer, turntables, CD players and microphones, enough for your initial training and your first RSL. Sooner or later you will also have to buy your own transmitter. Other studio equipment can be cobbled together, but a transmitter must exist dependable and not put y'all in danger of inadvertently breaching the OFCOM engineering code. (see Regulation) It is a worthwhile investment.

The bigger challenge is finding bounds. You lot need an office, and if possible a training studio besides. Preferably information technology should exist somewhere volunteers can come up and go at will, so definitely non in someone'due south private residence. If you tin find somewhere suitable to concord a circulate studio, then and so much the amend, only that shouldn't be your priority all the same. Y'all will also need some basic role equipment – computer, phone and don't forget the kettle.

Legal matters

Every bit a voluntary organisation, whether or not you lot are employing staff, you lot accept a number of legal obligations that must exist met. The laws are generally there to protect your volunteers and staff, then y'all have not only legal obligations but moral ones too. Your well-nigh immediate concerns should be:

Equal Opportunities in employment practices (including recruiting volunteers)
Equal opportunities in provision of services
Employment police force
Wellness and safety
Insurance (especially public liability and employer'south liability insurance)

We are non legal experts, and information technology would be irresponsible of us to offering legal advice here. Nosotros strongly recommend seeking professional legal advice on every attribute of your start-up procedures. At the very least study the splendid communication in Sandy Adirondack'south Voluntary Sector Legal Handbook and the other references provided at the stop of this section.

With the caveat that this is non legal but applied advice , nosotros will however pay passing regard to peradventure the almost important of these issues: health and prophylactic.

Health and Safety

As soon as y'all have premises, whether temporary or permanent, you lot demand to instigate a health and safety policy. This is not dry pedantry, information technology's about stopping people getting injure and suing you. The correct procedure to institute such a policy is as follows:

CRIB Canvas

Your legal obligations:

Are wide-ranging and must never be overlooked
Should exist explained to you by a lawyer, not by usa.
Include your wellness and rubber practices.

Acquit out a risk cess to identify risks to employees, volunteers, members of the public and anyone else who may enter your bounds
Use the results of your assessment to pattern a strategy to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety.
Formalise this strategy into a wellness and prophylactic policy
If there are employees or volunteers below the historic period of xviii, a specific chance assessment must be conducted.
Display a Health and Safe Data poster in a prominent place.
Annals your organisation with the local potency ecology health department.

The Wellness and Safety Executive publishes a vast number of pamphlets and other sources of guidance towards good health and safe practices.

Please likewise look at our section on Police force, Regulation & Policies

Towards your first RSL

Planning, preparation and organisation are all necessary, but let'due south remember why nosotros are doing this. Getting your community broadcasting to your community is what it is all about.

Getting on air is surprisingly easy. All you need to do is go to OFCOM'southward website, download an awarding form for a Restricted Service Licence and you are away. RSLs are a close relative of community radio licences. They are granted to organisations to broadcast for up to 28 days with very localised transmissions, and are often used for special events – eg cultural festivals. Their other specific purpose is to allow groups who may wish to use for another type of licence (either commercial or community) to accept a trial period, either for training or market research purposes. In other words, RSLs are meant for people simply similar you. They tin be booked upward to a yr in advance, and except at rare decorated times (notably Ramadan) they are allocated on the basis of commencement-come up first-served.

The fees involved in all the necessary licences will vary from broadcast to circulate, but including copyright payments, they are unremarkably somewhere in excess of £4,200 for the full 28 days. A shorter broadcast menstruation is proportionately less expensive, so the toll is somewhere in the region of £150 per 24-hour interval. As we shall explain afterward in this chapter, RSLs are exhausting, and we would strongly propose that your commencement RSL periods should only be for 3 or four days. Every bit your skills, conviction and experience abound, gradually build upwardly the length of your licences.

VOXBOX

"We had then many mad moments doing RSLs. I retrieve we had an MC-type presenter who swore all the fourth dimension when he spoke. I kept saying to him look, when you become out on air, yous cannot swear, and he promised me over and over that he'd exist all right.

And then when we go along air, we give him the mic, and he says:

'Yo this is MC Sugar, welcome to Wythenshawe FM community radio on 87 point XXXXing ix.'

And although apparently you tin't take the swearing, information technology'southward those kinds of personalities who make community radio what it is. If you endeavour to make your station audio like another commercial station information technology will lose that, those personalities that you lot won't find anywhere else."

Christine Brennan, Project Director, Wythenshawe FM

One unfortunate consequence of the granting of community licences is that there will now be fewer frequencies available for RSLs. That said OFCOM are committed to the principle of RSLs however, and promise to continue offering as many as they tin can. Availability will differ from area to area and on the time of twelvemonth.

Your RSL broadcasts will serve three chief purposes:

To raise the contour of your station and attract more partners and volunteers;
To give your group experience on and off air;
To give your group motivation and achievements.

You will need to find a suitable location to circulate from. While you may have space in your function, it is highly advisable for y'all to be as visible as possible. The ideal studio for a community group's RSL is in the biggest store window on the busiest street corner of your community. You want thousands of passers-by to see you are there, meet what you are doing, and blitz home to tune in their radios. Even better, you desire them to rush in off the street and ask how they join in.

Make certain the venue you lot choose is not but visible but also accessible (especially for those with disabilities – you lot might be legally obliged to make provision). It must also have splendid public transport links. In multicultural communities it should exist culturally sensitive – maybe non above a butcher'south shop, betting store, massage parlour or pub, for example. Radio Regen's many RSL broadcasts have been held with varying success in very different locations. Among the lessons we have learned are that:

charity shops and cafes may let you lot sit in their windows;
theatre foyers are skilful;
libraries are peachy until the shushing starts;
leisure centres tin can be good;
leisure centres with a bar and snooker table tin can be bad.

Currently, a group can hold an RSL twice in whatsoever i twelvemonth, plus a 3rd time if it is to cover a specific outcome and doesn't sound like your other two stations . So you could in theory be broadcasting for three months of the year before you need to even call up most applying for your community radio licence.

CRIB SHEET

To organise an RSL y'all need:

To become through a simple application process and pay 'the human being';
To find suitable premises to broadcast from;
Lots of accelerate publicity.

Make sure your broadcasts are well publicised. If y'all are only on air for a few days you can't hope people will merely notice you on the dial. Organise leaflets and flyers. Aim for coverage in your local newspapers (and make sure they write about you earlier you broadcast, not simply after). Utilize all the marketing and public relation skills yous tin muster. (see Managing Your Station)

Also, recall, please, that this is non just most radio. To become a full time licence y'all have to exist able to prove that you tin can deliver social proceeds. Your first RSL might deliver stacks of it but if you've neglected to gather the evidence that yous trained twelve refugees, three chief schools and a ball room dancing team, then y'all might besides have not bothered. The regulator and the funders can only support what yous can proveyou accept done so design those monitoring forms and ensure that someone is at that place to become them filled in and signed from Day 1.

On air at last

Maybe your first RSL broadcast will be the very model of project management. Perhaps it volition be planned to the finest particular, weeks in accelerate, rehearsed to perfection and pulled off without a hitch. Mayhap all your organisers and volunteers will drift through the days on air in a state of Zen-like calm. Peradventure. But we dubiousness information technology.

In our feel the weeks leading up to your first RSL broadcast will exist marked by a state of rise excitement every bit contributors frantically program, carelessness and totally redesign their output. Community partners will be pestering you lot nearly their shows and pre-recorded messages. The agencies which ignored your letters 6 months ago volition begin to realise what they are missing out on and suddenly start phoning and demanding airtime. Civic dignitaries are sniffing around with a combination of curiosity and suspicion. Equally the adrenaline begins pumping you'll be sleeping as well little and drinking as well much, while your friends and family haven't seen y'all for and then long they've sent out a St Bernard.

In the few days before the broadcast, tempers will begin to fray and panic ready in equally fuses blow in equipment and personnel alike. Someone will driblet a CD actor while taking information technology out of the van. Two of your most valuable group members will accept an enormous statement about who ate the last Jaffa Cake and ane will storm out in a barrage of obscenity only as the vicar drops by to say hello.

And so right at the point when you lot recall information technology can't get any worse, the clock ticks downwards to the big moment, the carmine light switches on, and the words ON AIR light up your studio. At which point things commencement to get really hairy.

CRIB Canvas

Your RSL should:

involve as much of the community as possible
be exhausting, exhilarating and inspiring
cease with you handing out anti-depressants to the team to cope with the 'downer'

The speech communication and music you are broadcasting will of grade depend on your community, only await for programming that volition requite y'all maximum contact with the largest chunk of your community. Become schools involved. Conduct vocalisation pop interviews on the street, making yourself as visible as possible. Hold debates near controversial community bug. Go a local celebrity forth if you lot tin. Exist as aggressive every bit your imaginations, resources and budgets allow. When you are but on air for a short time, you will find your schedules fill up up amazingly easily. Use every possible gap between records to mention your station name and tell people what you exercise. Your RSL is your showcase to your community. Use it every bit finer every bit you can.

All the fourth dimension you lot are on air volition flash by in a blur. You lot volition exist surrounded by enthusiastic, energetic characters who are all bubbling with excitement, and yous will observe it hard to leave the studio. You may well stop up sleeping on the floor of the studio, if y'all sleep at all. Yous will experience moments of wild elation and a sense of rare accomplishment.

Subsequently the storm

Most community radio veterans volition concord that RSLs offer more laughter, fun and sheer thrills than whatsoever other part of the customs radio experience. The fourth dimension limits focus everyone's attending and knowing that it will soon terminate makes it feel extra special while it is happening. The almost hard part of running an RSL broadcast is maintaining that excitement and enthusiasm in the days and weeks after.

It is well worth belongings a de-briefing session a week or then after y'all go off air. You'll probably exist feeling the post-RSL slump, a combination of exhaustion and anti-climax. It may be difficult to desire to call up about going to another meeting. So make it fun. Lay on cakes. Indulge in some rampant backslapping. Tell everyone how brilliant they were. Take stock of your achievements and congratulate yourselves.

If need be you should review what went incorrect, just ensure information technology is done without any finger pointing or arraign. If there's been some kind of disaster, attempt to piece of work out where your systems went wrong, not the individuals.

Ask yourself how well your RSL reflected and represented your community. How well did you involve the community? Did you lot read out an announcement about the Women's Institute 'Bring & Buy' Sale, or did you get the ladies from the WI to acquire how to edit their own report? Did y'all report on the community, from the community or every bit the customs?

And most chiefly, y'all demand to remind yourself of your targets as a group. What are you going to do next? Are y'all going to plan for your total fourth dimension licence or run another RSL? You don't desire to dally likewise long or you lot might miss your chance. Let everyone discuss it. In the meantime you tin can programme other activities that the volunteers can undertake with their new skills. They could set up audio newsletter on CD every calendar month, for example. Away from the studio there is fundraising, promotional events, assistants, preparation, professional person development for staff or potential staff – there is no shortage of tasks for your grouping to be getting on with.

CRIB SHEET

Subsequently your successful RSL you should:

go some sleep
accept stock, congratulate yourselves, plan your next move;
offer your volunteers continuing support and evolution;
keep decorated;
brainstorm to operate equally if you are a full time station.

One popular option is to run an Internet radio station. While y'all may not catch many listeners, information technology does have the huge reward that your station will run more or less exactly as it would if it were broadcasting on an FM frequency, allowing you to set up the perfect structures for a successful customs radio station. Ryedale and Drystone Radio are two skilful examples.

Any you lot do, y'all should have more than one-half an eye on the OFCOM regulations for a total-fourth dimension community radio station. When you come to apply for your full fourth dimension licence they will want to see your track record. Then if you are going to claim you will create social proceeds, then you'll demand to have started making that happen. If you desire to be a community radio station and then you'll demand to carry like ane. In other words look at the mandatory obligations for social gain (p **), work out how y'all can fulfil them and show that you have done so.

Some community radio groups will be happy to run an occasional RSL, and have no groovy wish to expand beyond that. We wish them luck,.. Only our feel is that groups which outset every bit the pet project of a single enthusiast tin shortly gather their own momentum. As volunteers selection up experience and enthusiasm, as they see the benefits a station could bring to their communities. Persuading the genie to become back in the canteen is never an easy task.