The impact of local radio news in England

 I have written a bunch about the chaining up of local radio and how the stations have been standardized with little in the way of local music or personalities.  I haven't mentioned this in terms of "local news" or "local content" in commercial radio, because it's been so long since the average station has offered any, with the exception of the usually one station in each market that maintains an exclusive focus on news, like WTOP in the Washington DC area.

Of course, public radio is an exception.

- "Culture planning and radio: local music, local content vs. delivery nodes for a national network," 2019
-- "Thinking anew about supporting community radio," 2019
-- "Revisiting community radio," 2020
-- "Local music used to define communities: today with radio chains and national music distribution systems, not so much,"  2021
-- "Newspapers, community media, and knowledge about and engagement in civic affairs," 2020
-- "Newspapers as public media: WBEZ, radio, an NPR affiliate, to merge with the Chicago Sun-Times," 2022

The founder of Clear Channel Communications died recently ("L. Lowry Mays, builder of radio empire, dies at 87," Washington Post).  His entry into the radio business led to the massive consolidation in the industry that we see today.

This was complemented by massive deregulation of the industry and the elimination of much in the way of local content and news requirements. 

The UK is in financial meltdown because of bad fiscal decision making, and there, the BBC's local news radio outlets very occasionally get time with the UK Prime Minister.  This week there was one of those go-arounds, and apparently the local journalists got in some good questions that weren't mediated by deference ("Disastrous Liz Truss interviews show BBC local radio still packs a punch," Guardian).

From the article:

When it was announced that Liz Truss would break her silence on the collapse of the pound by appearing on local radio stations, there was mockery from some London-based journalists who felt she should have given an interview to a national news outlet.

Instead, it was BBC Leeds’s breakfast show that helped shift the price of UK government debt, as traders tuned in and realised the prime minister was sticking to her economic plan. As presenter Rima Ahmed put it to the prime minister: “Where’ve you been?”

Radio Kent put it in more stark terms, with one listener asking Truss: “Are you ashamed of what you have done? ...

The prime minister’s rapid-fire set of eight short interviews with BBC radio stations in an hour produced more news than often emerges from a single slot on Radio 4’s Today programme.

One benefit that local radio journalists have over reporters who deal with Downing Street on a daily basis is that they have no incentive to hold back. They are unlikely to have the prime minister on their programme as a regular guest and there is no need to have the complicated ongoing relationships with Downing Street communications staff. Instead they have the chance to ask a handful of questions and try to make their name – and represent the views of their listeners.

It's a pretty rare practice.  I can't imagine top elected officials in the US deigning to spend much time, even five minutes, with a local NPR affiliate, unscripted--leaving themselves vulnerable to real questioning.

Professor Robert McChesney's writings focus on how to insert democracy into American media.

-- Telecommunications, Mass Media, & Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935