North West Radio is the latest popular rural radio station to be shut down by the broadcasting regulator. What drives its decisions, asks Kathy Sheridan
Your average right-on, south Co Dublin type would probably dislike Paul Claffey on sight. He was born and bred in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, and still lives there; sounds a lot like Albert Reynolds and exudes the same kind of energy; drives a shiny, fat 04 Mercedes; and is chief executive of, and high-profile presenter on, a couple of local radio stations that not only tolerate country music but encourage the stuff.
The radio stations - Mid West Radio (MWR) and its sister, North West Radio (NWR) - are successful and worth a packet. Fourteen years ago, the original franchise holders handed the licence back to the broadcasting authorities without even going on air, claiming that the catchment area was not large enough to sustain a licence. NWR took up the baton and by 2003, when the licence came up for renewal, its "yesterday listenership" (i.e. percentage of its 77,000 audience that tuned in yesterday), stood at a whopping 70 per cent according to JNLR/MRBI figures, while its stand-alone value was estimated at €4 million.
So, nowhere to go but up? Not quite. A new company trading as Ocean FM Radio decided to bid for the licence. This is a 20-strong consortium led by Sligo-born Tim Collins, a PR man with Drury Communications and former advisor to Mary Harney and Brendan Howlin, and chaired by Pat Clifford of Clifford Electrical. The group also includes ex-soccer international Packie Bonner, Sunday World journalist Paul Williams, a host of business people and some men with experience of local radio in other parts of Ireland.
Clearly, the stakes were high. Assembling a submission costs upwards of €80,000. But come decision day for the north-west on April 28th, 2003, members of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) board were unable to form a quorum. Only eight of the 10-person board, chaired by Conor J. Maguire SC, turned up, and two withdrew immediately because of a possible conflict of interest and another two said they could not participate because they had not participated in previous phases of the process.
The meeting adjourned to the following day, when the six voting members duly appeared and were briefed by the BCI's chief executive, Michael O'Keeffe. He gave the existing licence-holder, NWR, sparkling references, noting that "it has enjoyed a very successful listenership from the outset and has demonstrated a consistently good performance in JNLR surveys . . . Has been generally compliant in programming terms . . . Has delivered in respect of all of its programme policy obligations . . . Has provided a good range of programming and, in particular, has had a strong commitment to drama and writing in the franchise area . . . transmission coverage was generally good . . ." On the negative side, he stated that there had been "ongoing difficulties with regard to breaches of the statutory provisions in respect of advertising minuteage and the statutory code on advertising and sponsorship" and mentioned a lack of full disabled access to its main studios in Sligo while noting that it had given a commitment to do so in its new application.
There was no criticism of professionalism, nor of the fact that NWR shared a significant percentage of its programming with MWR. On track record - which the Act requires to be taken into consideration - NWR seemed a shoe-in.
But then along came Ocean FM, with a proposal for a dedicated, stand-alone service and local news all week. Ocean supplied its own market research, producing listenership figures for NWR that diverged substantially from the JNLR results but were challenged and discounted by the BCI. Nonetheless, this survey produced the most controversial aspect of the Ocean application.
According to the company's submission, "these analyses show clearly that NWR does not meet the needs of younger, upwardly mobile, better educated people. The current market for local radio belongs to the older, conventional, less educated members of the population". In clinical research-speak, this translated into "those who claim Junior and Leaving Cert levels . . . of lower educational attainment and C2, C1 . . . retired, unemployed and unskilled people".
It based its pitch (as did the other applicants) on the presumption that the population would be growing younger. CSO figures produced since then show the opposite, but Collins vigorously defends Ocean's analysis, pointing out that there are two third-level colleges in the region and "over €400 million worth of new build in progress. We are confident that the demographic shift is there".
Its ambitious revenue projections have also raised eyebrows in the industry. Ocean's application stated that it expects to bring in €2.37 million in year three while Tipp FM, for example, with an additional 14,000 people in its area, confines itself to €1.6 million; NWR's projection was €1.5 million in year three. Ocean won the licence by a whisker. The six members were split, with the chairman, Conor Maguire, getting the casting vote to give Ocean the prize. According to NWR, its value fell from €4 million to €129,000.
Six months later, in a competition co-sponsored by the BCI, NWR was named the top local radio station of 2003. In the absence of an appeals procedure, it has fought a case through judicial review and the High Court and is awaiting a Supreme Court hearing. Either way, it goes off the air on October 1st. The fall-out for NWR and its sister company, MWR, will probably see total job losses of 20 full-time and 20 part-time positions.
MEANWHILE, NWR IS working through its final days in the region. On Thursday, its outside broadcasting unit pitched up at the Castle Arms Hotel in Enniscrone, Co Sligo, for the last in a series of Young at Heart programmes, in which Claffey was the star turn. Well before the 11 a.m. kick-off, some 220 bright-eyed men and women from day centres and active-retirement groups all over the region were sitting down to tea and biscuits and preparing for some country music, fun with Claffey, ready to sing songs, tell stories and get starring roles on local radio.
Are these the unemployed, unskilled and the uneducated referred to in Ocean's research? Tim Collins is profoundly apologetic and seems shocked that such a description made it into his company's application. "Yes, I read the report," he concedes. "The words got in. I was horrified. We have apologised, I would say, about 10 times". He blames the media for dwelling on those few sentences in an extensive, licence-winning submission, but the fact is that they go to the heart of the controversy.
Claffey believes this is a Dublin versus rural debate. "We're almost an embarrassment to the fellows up in Dublin. They feel we're past our sell-by date because of programmes like Young at Heart - but 68 per cent of the population [NWR's current listenership] can't all be over 34".
"It's the most vulnerable who are hit every time", says Catherine Finnerty, the well-before-retirement-aged, day centre organiser in Skreen, Co Sligo. "Social isolation is the new poverty. It's an epidemic. There are people here who have no television, no car, who live four miles from the nearest public transport and to whom local radio is their lifeline. My 17-year-old son who has special needs met a radio presenter a while ago and ever since she gives him a mention every Sunday morning on her programme. Who's going to replace that?"
Mary Lynch is a widow who can no longer drive, read or use the telephone due to failing sight. She also has a disabled son. "The radio means everything . . . everything, to me. Probably a lot of the young don't listen to NWR but they have plenty of stations to listen to. Old people aren't wanted anymore. They're in the way".
Breege Finnerty, a 59-year-old who marched to join the campaign to save NWR last year, says: "You heard everything on the radio . . . and you always heard someone you knew".
Thatmarch was attended by up to 7,000 people, and local politicians from almost every party were there, says Labour councillor and mayor of Sligo, Declan Bree. The sole exceptions, "remarkably", were the TDs and senators of Fianna Fáil. "There are four Fianna Fáil senators and two Fianna Fáil TDs in Sligo/Leitrim alone and not one of them was on that march", he says.
One of the startling aspects of the BCI board's decision-making is that none of the members is obliged to listen to a station's output. Its chief executive, Michael O'Keeffe, says procedures have been changed so the executive gives an evaluation of all aspects of a licence application to the board - except for programming, which is "subjective".
So how many programmes does a board member listen to? "They listen to them as much as any of us listens to them." Which, for most people living outside the franchise areas, means almost never. O'Keeffe repeats that the point about new licence applications is that they are about the next 10 years. He couldn't say how track record impacts on licensing decisions, merely asking if "automatic roll-over" is what people are looking for. Claffey is adamant it is not.
O'Keeffe points out that each case is different. For example, Midlands Radio 3, which he admits "was not the most successful station" and which stated plainly in its application that it intended to sell the new licence on to the English group, Tindle, was nonetheless given a new licence. In other words, an under-performing local station was rewarded with a State licence worth around €5 million in the knowledge it would be sold to a foreign company at the earliest opportunity.
JOE REIDY, CHAIRMAN of the former Radio Kilkenny, which also lost its licence in controversial circumstances, has exhausted all legal avenues (at a cost of €350,000 in fees) but is pursuing discovery of a "confidential annexe" contained in the licence-winner's application, under the Freedom of Information Act. Radio Kilkenny, with its 4,000 shareholders, was the top-performing local radio station in Leinster when it lost its licence to KCLR. The BCI says this case is different to NWR's in that the franchise area was extended to include Carlow and KCLR's application won out in that respect. "But we did give cognisance to Carlow, and had the listenership figures to prove it. Yet we were beaten four to three by the BCI board, with the chairman, Conor Maguire, voting against us," says a deeply disillusioned Reidy.
Meanwhile, the radio station has paid out €250,000 in redundancies (plus, notes Reidy, the Exchequer's contribution to those redundancy payments) and sees its premises lying idle.
For all that local radio is regarded as "a licence to print money" (a premise with which Reidy agrees), no Radio Kilkenny shareholder "took a penny out of it . . . All the profits were ploughed back to pay better staff salaries ", he says. He reckons Radio Kilkenny would have been worth €7 million to €10 million.
Corporate interest in Irish local radio is gathering momentum. Already Denis O'Brien's vehicle, Communicorp, has an interest in four stations and UTV has been very active. The BCI's policy is to allow no-one to gain more than 15 per cent of total ownership, although O'Keeffe notes these two companies are just under that figure.
The consultation process by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources based on the Ox Report (which was triggered by the Sligo march and general concerns on the part of the Minister, Dermot Ahern) will close for public submissions on September 30th (www.dcmnr.gov.ie). For all that NWR failed to win its battle on transparency of the decision-making process, the Ox consultants clearly indicated unease with previous procedures, and recommends change in how cases are put to the board, how to increase transparency and introduce an appeals mechanism.
But Joe Reidy, a Fianna Fáil borough councillor, believes it is too late. "Local radio is now in the hands of too few people. The biggest players will take out the local players and local radio will no longer be local," he says. "Our party in Inchydoney was talking about waking up to listening to the people. They didn't listen to us in Kilkenny".