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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

This amendment pursues further the issue about retaining the use of the FM band for local and community radio services. I invite your Lordships to put yourselves in the shoes of someone running a small FM radio station, serving a population of 100,000 people in and around, let us say, King's Lynn. As it stands, that station’s future seems to be to bid for a space on a local multiplex. That would mean that it would begin broadcasting to almost 600,000 people. Such a shift would significantly change the character of that station. Listeners from a much wider area would start to phone in to programmes and would, for instance, start to demand their own slice of news output. The station manager would be forgiven for wishing to stay on the FM band as long as possible, until a better solution was found for smaller stations to find a home on the digital spectrum. Consider then the prospect of the only way of going digital to be to join an even larger regional multiplex which covers the whole of East Anglia and serves well over 1 million listeners. That is the kind of situation that is faced by a number of small commercial radio stations if digital rollout continues as planned. Their pathway towards a digital future seems shrouded in a kind of fog, partly because of the large size of DAB multiplex areas and the lack of capacity on some multiplexes. Forcing those small-scale stations to broadcast to much larger areas than their current coverage would alter their feel and alter their connection with their audience. It would undermine the integrity that they hold as local broadcasters and potentially damage their ability to service platforms which stimulate and reflect local democracy and social action. There is also a danger that counter-intuitively such stations would struggle to attract advertising spend from local businesses which do not wish to market themselves to audiences up to 100 miles away. So, socially and commercially, beaming local stations to regional audiences is, frankly, not in anyone's interests. As for the lack of space on DAB in some areas of the country, take, for example, the multiplexes currently covering Humberside or, in my own area, of Manchester where there is virtually no space available. Even with just the larger stations currently on board, capacity is running out in some areas. I understand that some stations that gain access are broadcasting in mono rather than in stereo in order to preserve bandwidth. The limitations of DAB for local and community stations are well acknowledged by Ofcom. Indeed, it is already planning for small-scale commercial and community stations to stay on FM in the medium term as the most appropriate technology for those stations in terms of both coverage and cost. The vacation of FM band space by the removal of national and large local stations would free up more capacity for smaller stations. Ofcom sees this as a natural staging post in radio’s digital evolution. Nowhere, however, is this halfway house given a firm legal footing. In case my amendment is misinterpreted as a luddite attempt to hold back the march of progress, let me make clear that it is intended as a temporary but crucial platform to support the transition to digital of small-scale local stations, which not only serve geographically defined areas, but also identity-defined and interest-defined groups. Your Lordships may remember the furore caused when in 1992, BBC Radio 4 proposed to transfer use of its long-wave frequency to a rolling news service. The BBC reckoned that FM reception was good enough and the vast majority of the country could pick it up without a problem. But those living in remote parts of the United Kingdom, and even in exceptionally hilly inland parts, knew different. The determination to push ahead with cutting Radio 4 from the long wave was met with purposeful if well-mannered resistance, as one might expect from Radio 4 listeners. In fact, I am told that the sight of 200 protestors in tweed and twinsets marching down Upper Regent Street was enough to help the BBC to see the error of its ways. Let us not make a similar mistake. After all, FM had at that point been around for almost 40 years. We have had DAB for less than a decade. The future of local radio—which is so crucial to forging community cohesion and identity, and promoting local social action and democracy— should not be left to chance. That must mean embracing a multi-platform ecology which creates a pathway towards digital broadcasting for local radio, retaining space for them on FM until such time as a digital platform offers them the right environment to continue what they do best. I beg to move.