Radio Plymouth - Ofcom Licensing

RADIO PLYMOUTH
Although Pirate FM had a minute’s less commercial airtime than Plymouth Sound at breakfast, it
used that time to chat to the audience rather than play music.
Even a station unburdened by the economic requirement to run advertising fails to capitalise on its
advantage by producing the music output so demanded by the audience. Commercial broadcasters
should not bemoan the approach of BBC Radio Devon, which is attempting to fulfil its public service
obligations by running more expensive journalism and other speech broadcasting. Instead, we
believe that ILR should capitalize on it, by meeting audience needs.
Notably, the station with fewer resources than Pirate FM and Plymouth Sound, South Hams Radio
spends as much time on DJ banter, 11 minutes between 7 and 8 am, but plays the most music of
any station in the region: almost two-thirds of airtime. Of the independent stations, it runs fewer
commercials, just 7 minutes in this peak breakfast hour.
The largest amount of time given to presenter banter comes in the evenings on Classic Gold, with
34 minutes of speech between 9 and 10 pm, twice as much as its next chattier rival, BBC Radio
Devon. The locally-produced commercial stations are all running about 70% music at this time.
Music
Both of the commercial stations most identified by our research, Plymouth Sound and Pirate FM,
played the same amount of music at breakfast. Music is the single largest item of content on both
Plymouth Sound and Pirate FM, but at just 24 minutes, its less than the audience craves, if the other
elements of our research are indicative of demand.
Plymouth Sound plays much more music in the evenings, but most of Plymouth Sound’s music is
chart or recent chart music. Oldies tend to come from the past 15 years. That Plymouth Sound is
primarily a youth music station, influenced by what is being played in the clubs, is evidenced by the
26 hours a week of music branded “Ministry of Sound”. Although this output fell outside our
monitoring hours, dance music is also an important part of their daytime output.
At drivetime, only two stations, Plymouth Sound and South Hams Radio have more than 50% of
output as music. Although this is a time when traditionally more information: news and travel, are
provided, we believe there is an opportunity to cut down on extraneous presenter chat to deliver a
brisker, more business-like approach, to allow more music.
For the three stations that we are concentrating on for Plymouth, and taking breakfast as an
example, the output comparisons illustrate the main difference between what they offered listeners
during this monitoring exercise compared with what Radio Plymouth plans to deliver.
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