BBC may launch Dorset breakfast radio show
THE BBC has pledged to start a breakfast radio show just for Dorset – IF it won’t badly affect Wessex FM – and IF the idea is supported by the BBC Trust.
The BBC has moved in response to pressure from the Dorset Broadcasting Action Group (DorBAG), which has been striving for six years to get improved BBC coverage of Dorset.
DorBAG leader Ken Pett, who lives in Burton Bradstock, said: “We’d welcome a new daily Dorset programme broadcast from Dorchester, but we’re furious at BBC back-pedalling.”
The BBC’s proposals don’t include new transmitters for the west and north of Dorset.
DorBAG’s understanding is that a new breakfast programme would only be broadcast, to begin with, from the Bincombe Hill transmitter between Dorchester and Weymouth.
This doesn’t reach large parts of Dorset, including, for example, Lyme Regis, Bridport, Beaminster, Sherborne, Blandford Forum, Sturminster Newton, Shaftesbury, Gillingham, Wimborne Minster, Lulworth, Corfe Castle and Swanage.
Mr Pett said: “This is not acceptable. We want something for the whole county.”
The Bincombe Hill transmitter. Photograph by Tim Marshall, reused under Creative Commons Licence.
You can see where the Bincombe Hill transmitter does reach by clicking on this link and scrolling down until you see the classic-style Ordnance Survey map of Dorset. NB This coverage map used to be a BBC secret.
The BBC’s own presentation of its plans for Dorset can be seen by clicking on this link.
It’s worth looking at the presentation, firstly to enjoy such statements as: “We will be asking our current affairs Editors in the South and South West to work together in commissioning more impactful journalism rooted in Dorset.”
Secondly, because it includes some original market research.
Last August and September, the BBC commissioned a company called Dipsticks to interview just over 1,000 people in Weymouth, Bridport and Dorchester.
Dipsticks found that 33% of those surveyed said they were very or extremely likely to listen to a breakfast show broadcast from Dorchester; 32% said they were quite likely.
Both the head of BBC South, Jason Horton, and the Head of BBC South West, Leo Devine, told a recent meeting of DorBAG that they supported the proposal.
Big problems
However, there are several big problems.
Let’s look at just a couple.
ONE: Biggest of all is the BBC’s “Never more local” pledge, made last year in the strategic review called Putting Quality First, and emphasised by the Conservative-Lib Dem government as part of its Comprehensive Spending Review last Autumn.
“Never more local” is supposed to mean what it says; that the BBC will never launch any more services more local than the ones it’s got already.
Could that rule out a new breakfast radio show for Dorset? No one knows.
The BBC Trust may require a Public Value Test to be carried out later this year, to assess any possible impact on Wessex FM and other independent radio stations in Dorset.
Might it also consider effects on the Dorset Echo, which is now a morning, rather than an evening, paper? It might, given the fact that newspaper groups like Newquest, publishers of the Echo, are among the Conservatives’ favoured candidates for launching Local TV services in future. And the Conservatives want to relax cross-media ownership restrictions, so that – theoretically – Wessex FM and the Dorset Echo and the Bridport News and the Lyme Regis News could all, one day, be owned by the same company.
TWO: The BBC is supposed to be cutting back by 20%, so where will the money come from?
It’s worth noting that Ken Pett doesn’t see this as a problem. He points out that the BBC still has an income of at least £3 billion.
“Somehow or other,” he says, “we’ve got to make Dorset a priority for the BBC, and then improvements will happen.”
Know – Don’t Know
Editor’s Note: How do I know the Dorset coverage map used to be a secret? Because I used to work for the BBC, and we had one in the office with a label saying that it shouldn’t be shown to the public. So it never was.
But it always struck me as being a bit daft.
I mean, anyone with a pair of ears can work out where signals reach – and where they don’t.
Drive along the A35 towards Bridport, down the hill near Askerswell, and you can hear programmes on Bincombe’s frequency of 103.8FM splutter and die.
Some things we don’t know
The BBC’s presentation of its market research says “it is being proposed that BBC Radio Devon, and BBC Radio Solent, would broadcast a BBC Radio Dorset breakfast show specifically for the Dorset area.”
At the moment, there is no such entity as BBC Radio Dorset. There hasn’t been since 1996. Would a breakfast show be branded as coming from that?
How exactly would BBC Radio Devon be involved? Dorset’s BBC radio station used to be an offshoot of Devon, not Solent.
The presentation talks about groups of radio stations in Yorkshire and the South East sharing output in the afternoons “to release resources for peak time audiences at Breakfast.” Could there eventually be an afternon programme covering Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Is that the plan?
4 Responses to “BBC may launch Dorset breakfast radio show”
We could do with a whole radio station for Dorset but a breakfast show might be the start? It would need to reach the whole county though.
We are into Wildlife Matters for the whole county but BBC Radio Solent only covers as far as Weymouth, so what about everybody else. We’ve got a new blog called Wildlife Matters which is ranging across the whole subject and the whole county over our 50th year.http://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-matters-blog.html
I don’t really know what a “breakfast radio show” is. Some sort of serial I presume?
I am sick of hearing presenters on tv telling us to tune in to our local radio station for more information. I always shout at them “yes! If we had one!” Is Dorset the only county without its own local station?
I must admit I am really glad to learn that I am not the only one. Mind you, I take it a step further and shout at the, entirely innocent, television set when the subject is mentioned – it’s one of the few pleasures I get these days!
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