**Cuts to Radio Solent**
Radio Solent might not be your cup of tea, but the team there provide a vital service for our area.
So, I wanted to make you aware of potential changes to BBC local radio services in Hampshire which will affect us all.
THE PLAN
The proposals are to save £19m by moving local radio budget to digital, specifically more effort into posting on the BBC website, social media and the BBC Sounds app. There will also be a new regional investigations unit (based in Oxford for the South)
The BBC’s press release: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/local-services-update
LOCAL EFFECT
Currently Radio Solent broadcasts locally 6am-10pm on weekdays and 6am – 6pm weekends – a regional programme from 10pm-1am serves Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, IOW, Oxfordshire, Berkshire.
The effect on the output for listeners will be
LOCAL (Hampshire, Dorset, IOW) broadcast 6am-2pm on weekdays only.
REGIONAL (as above and shared with Oxford and Berkshire) from 2pm weekdays and 6am-2pm weekends.
NATIONAL (pan England) from 6pm weekdays and 2pm weekends.
The BBC has put all presenters, producers and most reporters at risk of redundancy because the new model requires different skills.
Across England, BBC Local Radio currently reaches 5.7 million people every week. Many of these listeners are not “digitally
affluent” – and may not have easy access to high speed broadband or smart phones. They stand to lose a significant part of their service from the BBC.
What’s more, regional programmes may struggle to juggle priorities for competing demands for news. What happens, for instance, if two major stories happen within one region – which one will a regional programme choose to cover?
BBC management claims that these changes will future proof BBC Local, because traditional linear audiences are declining. But what they’re throwing away is vast swathes of local output on the radio, highly valued by audiences from all walks of life, but especially the most vulnerable and marginalised in society.
The majority of listeners pay the BBC Licence Fee – they rightly deserve better.
Radio Solent is a vital service for what is a unique area. You might have seen from the wider regionalisation of ITV Meridian news that basing services in Berkshire and Oxfordshire inevitably focusses their output on the Thames Valley.
Radio Solent provides a service tailored to our area which simply can’t be replicated across a much wider region. The voice of our coastal cities and communities and particularly the Isle of Wight will be lost.
WHAT WE CAN DO
We can email our MPs (I know Caroline Nokes is already on the case). More importantly, we can email the following people at the BBC to let them know how concerned we are:
The BBC Director General :
Director of BBC Nations :
Acting Director of BBC England :
Please emphasise both the unique nature of our area, the vulnerability of losing a discreet service for the coastal communities and Isle of Wight and most importantly the loss of a vital local link for our most vulnerable, isolated and marginalised residents.
Please do let the BBC know what you think and share this with others. Once our local services are gone we are never going to get them back.