A song has been written about the changes currently taking place around the BBC local radio network in England, endorsed by The NUJ.
Beldon Haigh was inspired to write Need My Local Radio after discovering the intended cuts to jobs and programming at BBC Radio Humberside.
He explains: “I was born in Hull and go back often, we’ve got a lot of family in the area. I’ve always felt great affinity with Hull, but that’s me anyway, I have always connected more with towns and smaller cities, communities and local regions rather than the big smoke.”
“It saddens me deeply when I see more and more decisions and creative work and content and jobs being sucked back to a metropolis, migrating into the hands of fewer people.
“Need My Local Radio speaks to that. It speaks to a trend of moving power, creative decisions and voices away from regions, communities and local places and into the metropolis, run by small powerful groups. These small powerful groups end up with tremendous control and influence, but they have less connection and less investment with and in local communities.
“They’ve often never lived in a small town or smaller city, so how can they say they understand them and make decisions on their behalf. It doesn’t just happen in radio. I’m sure that many people in all sorts of jobs and industries have witnessed something similar.
‘When this type of thing happens in local radio, it can be a huge blow to local confidence. Developing and possessing strong local media amplifies that local voice gives a community pride and confidence. It helps that community to grow, express itself and be more ambitious and strive to be more successful in the future.
“Limiting, dulling, silencing that voice by cutting back investment in that local creative content production achieves the reverse. It will surely make people feel more isolated , less important, less valued and less like the place that they call home, matters.
“The people in these small powerful groups have a phrase they like to use a lot. “In the grand scheme of things” they say that when they think we’re obsessing too much about the detail. Because “the grand scheme” doesn’t really value that small local detail. However, a country, a nation, is made of the local shires and regions and where most of the people live, we are all interconnected, but sadly it seems, we are not all represented.”
Need My Local Radio should be in all online stores by Friday 19th May.
Beldon Haigh plans to release an album in September with a regional supporting tour of small venues and local record shops.
Any radio station looking for more details of interviews should contact Jeff Chegwin National Radio & TV PR – jeffchegwin@hotmail.com or mike.grocott@hotmail.com
Posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2023 at 5:10 pm by Roy Martin