JOHN MYERS DRAFT SPEECH TO RADIO FESTIVAL, 30 JUNE 2009

Good afternoon everyone. Nice to be here! As you heard in the introduction, I have just arrived back in the UK from a three-month trip around the world. Although it was meant to be a holiday, much to the delight of my wife, everywhere I went I found time to listen to the radio in each country. What I heard was really interesting and at times amazing, lots of ideas and a variety of voices. everywhere. It was a gratifying experience and it confirmed my long held belief that there is always something new that can be attempted in radio, which is what makes it such a rewarding industry to work in. However, it is only when you have been outside the UK for as long as I have that, when you come back, you realise what you have been missing. As an industry, we seem to spend so much of our time navel-gazing, we tend to forget we are actually quite good at this radio lark. Yes, we have lots of problems that need to be solved and yes, we are grappling with a future that looks uncertain in so many ways. But that should not take anything away from the great radio we produce here in this country, both commercially and at the BBC. regard. Incidentally, I heard about the tragic death of Michael Jackson when I was in Canada. All stations there have a 40% Canadian music policy for their formats and therefore none were able to play MJ We are still very much the envy of the world in this Creativity seems to be

songs all day. Over in the US, a lot of stations were in automation mode when the news broke and some were caught out and found it very difficult to respond, but those who were live and networked responded very well indeed. There is an idea here for a great session about live versus automation that could go on for hours! However, I am here to talk about my radio review and I should state that my comments today are in my personal capacity and NOT that of GMG. Nottingham has some great memories for me. It was here that I was caught on film for the BBC TV show Trouble At The Top sacking a religious advisor. history... It is here also that I appeared in the dock at the Crown Court, defending a claim from a presenter who insisted he had been verbally offered a one-year contract. When such a contract was not forthcoming, he took me to court. He lied and, because of that, I was determined to defend it to the bitter end. We were in the right, he was in the wrong, and the judge agreed with me - he was an idiot. The third thing about Nottingham is that this is where I often used to listen to my long-time colleague and friend John Simons when he worked on BBC Radio Nottingham. He used to ring me around 6.15 each night for a chat, while he played out some boring, prerecorded interview with some unknown celebrity. enthralled with those interviews, oblivious to He had good the private listening figures for this segment, so his listeners were probably conversation going on between the two of us as we schemed about a future in commercial radio land. After that, the rest, as they say, is

And the fourth thing about Nottingham is, of course, that it is home to Smooth Radio, one of GMGs radio stations and obviously close to my heart. ---------------Most people here know that my entire working life has been about local radio. I started at the BBC over 25 years ago, working my way up from reading out lists of lost lambs, to editing and joining up spools of recycled quarter-inch tape for future use, to the days when you were trusted to use a razorblade without having to fill in pages of health and safety documents, from being on-air, to running, winning, launching and managing successful stations. Along the way, I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of people who shared the same love of local radio that I had, and let me emphasise, that I still have today. Local radio has been very good to me and I would like to think that I have returned the favour over time. I should say at this point how much I appreciated my award for services to commercial radio at the Arqiva awards last month. Even though I was in New Zealand at the time, I recorded a special thank you via video very rock and roll! But this award was, and is, something that I will treasure for a long time and I am deeply grateful. During my time in radio, I have seen and witnessed a lot of changes. I have lived through the BBC, the IBA, the Radio Authority and lately the vision of Ofcom although, to be honest, at times it sometimes appears that they have as much vision as Stevie Wonder! When I was asked by Lord Carter to undertake the review of local radio for Digital Britain, I asked him why me? There was a long pause! He kindly replied that I had a good track record, I would not be tempted to agree with everyone, and that he very much wanted

a personal review, and he believed I could tackle some of the more problematic areas that other executives might wish to avoid. He was right, of course. I have never consciously evaded a good fight, and neither am I too bothered if I put a few noses out of joint along the way. This is just the way I am! But equally, its because I care! So, if my speech upsets anyone today, please be assured that I am trying to do it in a caring, sharing sort of way. I was given only 6 weeks to undertake the review. I thought it best to start with a clean slate, so I launched into a schedule of meetings, going right across the country, whenever possible meeting people in the places where they actually broadcast from, as well as having many chats with Ofcom, RadioCentre and other important stakeholders (I knew that, once I started saying things like stakeholders, these were worrying signs that I was turning into a radio consultant). I was asked to pull together a small council of people from across the BBC, Community Radio, RadioCentre, the Newspaper Society, Government and Ofcom who met with me twice collectively to provide feedback on what I was going to say. In the end, though, the detail and the recommendations in the report were my decision. I have to say that it was the most challenging 6 weeks I have experienced for some years, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and I learned a lot. I say quite openly that I learned a lot, because I did. I learned that local radio is important. I learned about the real

issues, what mattered most and what any future plan needed to have in it to be useful. But more than that, I also became aware of the poor relationships between the operators and the regulator. I found significant tension existed because the operators feel that Ofcom is behind the game radio-wise and lacks a stable plan for the future of radio; they are frustrated by so many reviews in so

many successive years, they are annoyed by petty regulation which they feel is holding the industry back but, importantly, the regulator is losing the trust of those they regulate. These are not my words, so dont shoot the messenger! These are the words of the people who run our radio stations. A common viewpoint is that the radio side of the regulator is just not up to the job Right Now! One executive told me that, during some 20 years in radio, he had never witnessed such a profound level of disrespect for the regulator, and they suspect the feeling is mutual. I wondered if this was just the industry being unkind to Ofcom, as it is an easy target to kick when so many people in radio are losing their jobs, so many stations are closing, and the economy is as difficult as it has been in recent months. But, in reality, I think it is much more than that, and so I wanted to be sure that, whatever I wrote in my report, it was based around facts, while telling the story of exactly what has been happening to commercial radio. In my view, it is very difficult to really come up with a realistic plan for the future if we, as an industry, dont really understand how we got to our present position. I thought I already knew these things, but even I was surprised by the harsh realities. commercial radio come about? the way they were? What did we learn? How did Why were licences handed out in What must we NOT do

again and, importantly, what must we keep doing, and why? Therefore, I make no apologies whatsoever for my own Local Radio document being 102 pages long because, if I was going to criticise or offer a viewpoint, then I knew I had better get my facts right as best I could. And I say as best I could because sometimes it was not particularly easy to get all the facts, but I think we got most of them right in the end. So how did radio get to this point?

[SLIDE 1] To recap the main points in my report, the number of commercial radio licences issued by the regulator multiplied several times during the 90s, and then continued to grow in the new millennium. That growth is shown by the grey bars in this graph. stations. This is shown by the red line on the graph. During the However, 90s, revenues grew at a rate that kept up with the launch of new after 2004, you can see that revenues started to fall in real terms. The result too many stations, too little revenue to support them. [SLIDE 2] This next slide shows why that happened. Listening to commercial radio grew during the 90s and was initially keeping up with the increase in radio stations. The red line shows listening, and the But, grey bars are still the number of commercial stations.

eventually that growth in listening fizzled out and then went into slow decline in the new millennium. The result too many stations, no increase in listening to grow their revenues. [SLIDE 3] So, listening and revenues did not keep pace with the growth in the number of commercial stations, but did these new stations at least manage to take audience away from the BBC? After all, this was one of the main criteria against which new licences were awarded. Well, in the early 90s, commercial radio performed really well against the BBC after Radio One had been changed almost beyond recognition. The red line shows commercial radios share of radio listening. Unfortunately, since then, it has been all downhill. A gentle downhill slope, true, but in no way has it been keeping up with the growth in radio station numbers. [SLIDE 4]
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Lets look more closely at all these new commercial stations that were licensed. The red line on this slide shows how much of the UK was covered by commercial radio. During the 70s and 80s, new stations licensed by the regulator reached parts of the UK that had not enjoyed commercial radio until then. However, by the early 90s, the whole of the country was covered by commercial radio. After that, the number of stations was more than doubled, but most new stations were merely taking listening away from existing commercial stations. The result the cake was no longer getting bigger, but it had to be cut into more and more slices, and the slices were getting thinner and thinner every year. [SLIDE 5] This last slide shows the size of the local commercial stations licensed by the regulator. The light grey top parts of each column are the number of big stations serving areas of more than half a million adults. The dark bits at the bottom of each column are the number of small stations serving less than 250,000 adults. You can see that, at the beginning of the 90s, the vast majority of local commercial stations were large in size. But, after that, the regulator advertised a massive number of new small stations. So, today, we have been transformed from an industry that was dominated by large stations to one that is now dominated by small stations. The result every one of those 100+ new small stations has added another set of fixed costs to the industry, costs that have become increasingly difficult to cover with revenues. So, (and I admit its always easier with hindsight) the way that our licences were handed out, and the way in which those licence winners decided to launch their stations, did not work as well as we thought they would. The plan simply did not grow commercial radio either in terms of audience, revenue or its share of the listening

cake.

But this knowledge is not new, so why did radio licences

continue to be awarded when it should have been clear that it was not good for commercial radio overall? A large part of the problem was that the local radio licensing process was demand led. It seems that the regulator made the decision to offer a new radio licence for a particular area according to the volume or intensity of correspondence from local agitators or prospective applicants. If the local MP became involved in campaigning for a new station in their constituency, it was almost guaranteed that a licence would be offered if a frequency was available. At no point did the regulator try to determine whether the local economy could support a new station with sufficient advertising, or whether the coverage area was big enough to make a new station profitable. Remember also that every new licence advertised by the regulator attracted one or more bidders whose applications demonstrated that their proposed station would make a profit, usually within the first three years of its operation. The startling fact is that of the 80 new radio stations awarded a licence in the late 90s, only a third actually hit the business plan they had set out in their application. This is an amazing figure! Unfortunately, these new licences were seen by some applicants as desirable in themselves, regardless of whether they could be turned into successful local businesses. This is where WE as an industry seemed to lose sight of what our core skills were we had been employed because we were radio professionals who could create successful radio stations. But some among us seemed to imagine we were a kind of commodity broker who could make money not from doing radio, but from wheeling and dealing in scarce radio

licences, making profits from winning or buying licences, many of which never stood a chance of ever being profitable businesses. Eventually, some of these wizards of radio have been shown not to possess magic powers at all, but to be merely practicing skills they had learnt playing the game of Monopoly. The result local stations that, not so long ago, were being purchased for millions of pounds are now being closed down after a lifetime of losses. So, in some way, probably all of us are to blame for either trying, or for letting others succeed, in turning parts of local commercial radio into some kind of real estate business. Unfortunately, nobody likes estate agents, and our listeners were savvy enough to recognise when the owners of their local radio station werent really interested in local radio or worse - THEM. The problem faced by the industry now is that, in radio, it is a lot easier to turn wine into water than it is to turn water back into wine. So, we are where we are and the simple fact is there are too many stations in too many markets. Some will fail, some will succeed, but there will have to be a period of re-engineering first. I stated in my review that I believe some 50 stations will go bust or their licences will simply be handed back over the next 18 months. Sadly, I seem to be on track with that figure. This is why my review sought to explain how local commercial radio arrived where it is today, and to provide some ideas as to how we could regulate it going forward. I was delighted that Lord Carter agreed and that most of my recommendations were then uplifted into his Digital Britain report. Some of these ideas will undoubtedly end up on the floor in a forthcoming Ofcom consultation, or become slightly different than my original thoughts, or will be developed more than I had first imagined them, which can only be a good thing. As long as the end results are positive for the industry as a

whole, I dont have a problem.

However, we all know that doing

the same thing over and over again, and then expecting the same result every time, is the definition of stupidity. Ofcom is now due to consult on a wide range of ideas related to local radio. They have done this in the past and they have just not gone far enough. Four reviews in four years does not shout we got it right! This meant that further reviews in quick succession were needed to bring their regulations up to date. baby steps fashion of yester-year. I would urge them now not to fall into the same trap this time of going along in the They must think bolder and They must outline their bigger than they ever have done before.

vision for the next 5 years, not the next few months, and they must take the industry along with them. So much can be achieved now if we are prepared to take giant leaps forward. I believe strongly that local radio is important for communities up and down the country, and I believe it should have some regulation attached to it. I am NOT in favour of those who say the market should be the only deciding factor because, in every industry, in every market, in every generation, there will always be owners or operators who think they know best and want to push the boundaries, and someone has to say enough is enough! Some people were surprised I said there was not enough local news on local radio. There isnt, and a minimum number of bulletins should be plainly laid out for each station so that confusion on this particular point does not arise. Interestingly, on my travels, I came across Radio Twizzel in New Zealand - a small, local town station that is on the air 24 hours a day. It plays back-to-back music all day and night, with the exception of occasional local information inserted into its output. Sometimes there might be no local content for hours on end, but

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the station promises its listeners that if anything of interest breaks in their area, they will hear about it first as someone will effectively jump in their car, go on-air and tell them about it. This station seemed popular in my personal mini-research programme, as I went from shop to shop to hear what they were listening to. It was on the radio in a local pub and I asked a couple of guys at the bar about it. They said they liked it, it was OK, and it was local. It was their local station, they knew what it was, they knew when it was very local and they knew it was for them. I said to one guy that it sounded a little err well shite! They said yes, but its OUR shite. There is something in that! In my view, local radio must broadcast some sort of local information, it must offer a service for the market it broadcasts to and importantly, for me anyway, it would be good if it was valued by the people of that local area at the same time. Is it really too difficult to find a way in which we can monitor peoples appreciation of a local radio station? The BBC has been doing it since 1936, using market research to produce an Appreciation Index for individual programmes. I understand that Ofcom is saying its just too difficult to do, but just because it is in the difficult box does not mean it should automatically fall into the cant be done box. The regulator has said that one of the areas they are concerned about is that they are not sure what would be a pass and what would be a fail under this system. This is the very same question we have all been asking them about the current regulatory rules for years! So what is new? Within the scope of my review, I spoke to just about every radio group in the UK and they all believed, like I do, that the current way of regulating localness is ridiculous, and even Ofcom now accepts this. The current rule that a local radio station has to produce

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programmes locally for 10 hours a day merely keeps it the right side of the regulator. However, it is perfectly clear to everyone that I could sit in that same local radio studio and just play out music and adverts all day without ever mentioning the stations area whatsoever. Under the present system, Ofcom would say that falls within the rules. It may do so, but IT IS NOT LOCAL RADIO. I have long debated whether or not local radio has to be broadcast from the area it serves, and I have even argued with myself that surely it must have to because how can you really serve listeners in the area if you are not broadcasting from that area. The truth is that, at the end of the day, local radio is about what comes out of the speakers, not where it comes from, and I have gradually come to understand and reluctantly accept that it is very possible to air local information without you having to be in that local market and, if you can only survive as a station at all by co-locating, then that must be a sensible way forward. It might not be great local radio but, as they say in Radio Twizzle land, its good local shite! The size of our industry, the reduction in revenues, the way licences were awarded and the way some dumb management have run them means we are left with very little choice. So a big step towards co-location must be achieved but, at the same time, local output must be protected and it must be news led. I would urge the regulator not to be pedantic in this area. When you ask a listener what is most important to them, they will always say the output first and, yes, they would prefer it if their local station was based somewhere in their locality. But if we have to agree to changes to save the very existence of local stations, then it must be sensible to say yes to co-location and this should be allowed as widely as possible.

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I was delighted to learn that Ofcom recently came out and said that they agree with a number of aspects of my review, and I am grateful for that, but they do not agree with my proposal to introduce the Local Impact Test. To be fair to Peter Davies, he told me so before I published my report, not because he disagreed with the ambition, but because he thought it was unworkable in practice. I didnt agree with him and said so, but the ambition I think is worth fighting for, which is why I put it in. It is also the reason why Lord Carter, in his Digital Britain report, also believes there is merit in this approach and why his report proposed that we should test the possibility that some sort of Local Impact Test can be achieved. I just dont believe that sensible people from all sides of our industry cannot come up with a workable formula that can measure listener satisfaction in some way that achieves everyones aims. I hope that Ofcom and RadioCentre will work closely together on this idea and make the test work effectively. Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that the regulator simply doesnt want to do it and will find a way to kill it. I am fine with that, but I would rather they just said we dont want to do it and instead we want to achieve it anther way. There is no need to find reasons why it doesnt work, just say you dont like it. Im an adult, I can take it. Its a noble ambition that is not realistic to achieve in these times, but I did say quite clearly in my report that the Local Impact Test was just the germ of an idea. What is far more important is to make the move from input to output regulation. So Ofcom came up with three ideas in their own recent consultation to achieve that. The first Ofcom proposal is that all local stations would be required to broadcast local news hourly during daytime. In addition, travel and weather information would be required at peak times. Ofcom suggests that enforcement of this would be achieved by, I quote,

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regular monitoring and a new formal, two-yearly assessment of content across commercial radio. Lets do the maths. There are 300 local stations and it might take someone at Ofcom seven hours to analyse and write up the news content of a single days output of a single station. That would create 52 weeks of full-time work And this is a proposal that simply to sample each station once.

Ofcom describes as simple to implement? More importantly, its just another box-ticking exercise which doesnt guarantee that the local news being broadcast is actually of any use to the audience. I have heard of stations that record one local news bulletin early in the morning and play it out every hour for the rest of the day. Does that really serve a local audience? So what does this proposal achieve? Well, it creates one more job at Ofcom, but it fails to make any distinction between a station that is investing in a proper local news operation, and another station that is merely paying lip service to local news. Worse, it seems to ignore the demands of the citizen/consumer, as Ofcom likes to call our listeners. Ofcoms second proposal is to require local stations to agree to a new Localness Charter that would be added to their licences. Ofcom would require stations to publicise this Charter and would invite listeners to complain to Ofcom if they felt a station was falling short of its commitments. To me, this sounds suspiciously like the regulator adding yet another layer of requirements on top of all the existing things that stations already have to do. Doesnt the legislation in the Broadcasting Act 1990 already require local stations to, and I quote here, cater for the tastes and interests of persons living in the area? cannot do? Doesnt each stations Ofcom licence already set out the contractual basis for what it legally can and Doesnt each stations Format already set out what content a station has to broadcast, when it has to be broadcast, and where its programmes have to be made? It seems to me as if this

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proposal just wants to add a further layer of bureaucracy because the regulator realises that all the existing layers of regulation still do not achieve the required results. My response is fix the current rules and regulations that plainly are not working! make everything better. The final Ofcom proposal is to allow programme sharing and colocation of stations in newly created mini-regions. In Ofcoms example, four stations owned by Global in Devon could merge into a single station serving the whole county (maybe a bit like BBC Radio Devon on speed). Ofcom proposes that FM stations would have to produce local programmes for at least 7 hours a day during weekday daytimes, and at least 4 hours a day during weekend daytimes. In addition, local news would be required at least hourly during weekday daytimes and weekend peak times. I hope youre keeping up with this there will be a test afterwards. For small stations serving populations less than 250,000, if there is no other local station for them to merge with, they would be required to produce at least 4 hours a day of local programming. Ofcom says that this proposal, and I quote, ensures provision of both hard informational content and softer community content as audiences demand. For me, this proposal accepts the need for more colocation which I had suggested, but it still sticks to the old boxticking system of inputs to try and ensure localness. As I explained earlier, simply putting a presenter in a local studio with a music playlist in no way guarantees that the stations output has anything to do with LOCAL RADIO. And, as Ofcom itself admits, this proposal once again fails to include any measure of audience opinion. So those are Ofcoms three proposed options and it would appear that they are going for a mixture of the first and the last an increased emphasis on news, combined with greater co-location and Dont try and stick a plaster over a festering wound and expect it to magically

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shared programming. Ed Richards has said, and I quote, that both place the focus on measurable and sustainable ways of securing of a future for local radio. Lets examine those proposals. In reality, instead of moving us towards output regulation, both of Ofcoms preferred options would require us to tick more boxes than ever before. According to Ofcoms submission, both options offer the regulator a high level of legal robustness. However, according to Ofcom, both options offer only low or medium accountability to audiences. So which do we consider to be more important making radio regulation easy for Ofcom to do, or making sure that commercial radio regulation meets the needs of its listeners? I am asking this not as a rhetorical question. Furthermore, Ofcoms submission explains that both of its preferred options depend upon, I quote, reactive monitoring, only after complaints. I think this is probably what the Radio Authority used to call light touch regulation. Now I am beginning to wonder if Ofcom has upgraded this idea to turn a blind eye regulation. Our regulators sit in their modern building, surrounded by glass on all sides, with a perfect view of the world, yet they will only notice that something is wrong in that outside world they are regulating once a member of the public has taken the time and effort to write and tell them. Is this what we call regulation? Do we regulate our schools by employing a team of people to sit in a cosy London office, waiting for some angry parent in Sunderland to write them a letter complaining that their local school has no teachers? I might have more confidence in Ofcoms proposals if I were convinced that Ofcom would go the extra mile to make sure that all of the extra box ticking we are expected to do would somehow be meticulously checked to make sure it was happening in reality. Now, who is going to monitor all this radio output? Dont believe for

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a moment that Ofcom will, because they simply do NOT. I cannot find evidence that Ofcom monitored more than 10 local stations during 2008. At that rate of productivity, it will take 30 years to I have come to the conclusion that the listen to every station.

regulator does not want to, or even like to, regulate. One of the areas I looked at in detail in my research was how yellow cards are handed out. I was astonished to learn that, of all the yellow cards issued by Ofcom to date, not one has been given out because the regulator listened to a station without an external prompt to do so. As I understand it (and I could be wrong here by a factor of one!), each and every yellow card was issued because a competitor or a listener had complained. respond by listening. Only then did Ofcom Only then was the station fined, or yellow

carded or some other action was taken, but am I the only one on the planet who believes that it is mad for any regulator to be regulating via complaints alone? It is a crazy system. So, for this new system of Ofcoms to work effectively, you have to believe that the regulator is going to spend some of its valuable time (which we pay for in our licence fees) effectively measuring and monitoring radio stations across the UK without anyone asking it to. If they are not going to do that, and I believe they wont because they cant as they simply do not have enough time or staff to do it, they are going to have to continue to regulate by complaints. Without a clear acknowledgement from them, we are left to assume that when their proposal goes through, Ofcom is going to spend more time listening to the output of radio stations than ever before. No they wont. What they will do is offer up the same complaints regulatory system. You complain and we will take it up. If that is the system, and I think this is what they want to do but without spelling it out clearly, then lets just say this is the system. It is a system after all. Local radio stations should

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therefore have to broadcast at regular intervals adverts or promos in peak time that tell listeners how to complain, and each station website must include full accountability of what it is supposed to broadcast. However, if it is decided to go ahead with this idea, I have a counter-proposal for everyone in this room. Go home tonight and complain about five things on your local radio station to Ofcom! It doesnt matter what they are, just go into complaint overdrive. And then, every week, complain about another five. I tell you, within three months, the whole of the radio regulatory system will have some 500 complaints to work through and the whole of the radio department at Ofcom will grind to a halt. No one will be able to do anything at Ofcom, complaints will take months, even years to get to the discussion stage and, in the meantime, local radio stations will be able to do whatever they like. To be more reasonable for a moment, it is important that local radio is regulated. But it is just as important that local radio is allowed the freedom to operate more efficiently, more openly and be local at the times when the local management feels their audience needs local information. But someone needs to ensure that the local information they are putting out is information that is appreciated and valued. A local station that is not valued by the community it is there to serve is not a local station at all. It is just noise on the dial. By all means go complaints-led, but I tell you, we will be back with another review within two years because we will have found out that there are too many complaints to deal with. Finally, let me come back to my earlier comments about the industry feeling that Ofcom is not performing, at least radio-wise. I have thought about this issue a lot in recent months and have talked to many colleagues about it. I actually quite like the people

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in the radio division at Ofcom. There is not one person there that I do not get on with, and I realise it must be a tough job being a regulator, but that is their choice. I am sorry if my comments might mean I will no longer be given coffee or a chocolate biscuit when I am next there, but the reality is stark and I will summarise for ease as I really feel we need to understand this important point: Over the past few years, we have all had to deal with significant change. Bernard Every CEO of every major radio group has gone. at GCap gone, Phil Riley at Chrysalis gone, Ralph Tim

Schoonmaker at EMAP gone, Kelvin McKenzie at The Wireless Group gone, John Myers at GMG gone, Virgin is now absolutely gone, UKRD has gobbled up The Local Radio Company, Scottish Radio now talks with a German accent, and even the BBC has changed. Jenny Abramsky has gone, Lesley has legged it to Universal, and even BBC local radio has seen significant management changes along the way. In media agencies, there is also widespread change, jobs lost, new ideas coming in, a fresh look and a new approach. I constantly tell my team never to stand still, as they will be crushed by the stampede of change. Radio groups have re-engineered their sales teams, sales directors think differently, marketing directors are younger and new, and with new agencies in tow. The RadioCentre is a very different beast to what it once was. It is now smaller, All of leaner and thinks differently. It has had to adapt to change more than most because its members have changed so much. these companies and organisations have restructured and now reflect the times we are all in because new times demand new ideas. However, over at Ofcom towers, there is very little obvious change for anyone to see. The same people with the same ideas are still there. This is not to say there are no good people at the regulator, because there are many. But how come the whole world has

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changed around them and they have not? You have to move the furniture around to get interest going, and this is being done everywhere you look. Experts in their fields are being brought in, more information is required, and more time is spent on the things that matter. In Peter Davies, who I respect and have worked closely with at times, we have someone who has absolutely zero experience of working at the sharp end of commercial radio. Does this matter? The feeling in the industry is that, right now, it very much does. My own view is that we just need a leader and a regulator who is ready to really outline the vision for the future and be ready to really work with the industry to get it right. If we can achieve that, the regulator will have taken the industry to the Promised Land. Peter could then change his name to Moses and walk around the UK, parting the seas as he took the applause from radios grateful executives, not to mention listeners. Of course you have to work within the system and within the current Broadcasting and Communication Acts, but new people bring new ideas and a fresh impetus to the job. What I would ask Ofcom to do is surround themselves with people who have a great deal of radio experience, and mix them up with new and younger people so that you get a better music mix of knowledge, industry experience and ideas. Of course they can make the final decision as is their remit, but I advise that this would be a wise move. This is by no means meant to be a slight on those who work at Ofcom now, it is just that we desperately need to have change, and new ideas will come from new people. Every company in the world is doing it, except the regulator and that cannot be right! To conclude, I want to share with you my belief that we are on the cusp of some great steps forward for the radio industry. licences to some of those small stations anyway. Colocation is a necessity because we should never have awarded Those who

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submitted applications for those licences, and the system we had for advertising and awarding those licences was wrong, and therefore we simply need to do what we can now to protect the livelihoods of as many local stations as possible. so. The bigger stations should continue to be local, as most of them produce brilliant radio and will continue to be brilliant at what they do. that. Local radio is great radio and millions of listeners agree with Regional stations will move towards more nationallyBut make no mistake, But we have to recognise that some will go bust, and they must be allowed to do

orientated output, because that is what those frequencies should have been awarded for in the first place. Local Radio is important. It is so important that we need to be clear about what is required to ensure it continues to be successful, and news and relevant local output must sit at the heart of that ambition. It needs to broadcast material that local audiences want and then, together, we can all achieve that goal. It may be painful to walk this road, it may be uncomfortable and it might mean we have to work a little harder but, with these changes, I hope that commercial radio will be able to move towards a more secure future in these uncertain times, and be able to offer more effective competition towards the BBC. But make no mistake, the future for radio is going to be your stations Unique Selling Point. If you are local, you better be very good at it and do as much as you can. If you are national, you have to be prepared to mix it with the best, not only across the UK but in my view, where your audience can be connected around the world at the touch of a button, you will have to be the best globally. Local radio is not dead, it is just being re-engineered. The Digital Britain Report was full of things we could do, but short of things we

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are going to do. This has been left to Ofcom and they in turn must take the opportunity of clearly setting out the path for the future. They must drive the industry forward, and we must very much believe and want to go along that road with them. Thank you.

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