Commercial vs Community Radio

Commercial Radio vs. Community Radio: The Differences.

In this piece I am going to talk about the differences between Community Radio and Commerical Radio, the information I gathered on the subject was all found whilst working on my placement, working closley with proffesional radio presenter Dave Fewster.

Commercial Radio is a radiostation that produces programmes for the masses. An example of a commercial radiostation would be BBC1 Radio, whilst the BBC does have various substations which are much more community based such as BBC Humberside or BBC Lincoln, BBC1 is a national radiostation whose signal reaches across the country. A Commercial station is much more likely to have a stronger signal because the stations programmes are designed to appeal to the masses, rather than just a small area or region. This is why Radio 1 (Based in London) will have a strong enough signal to reach much more nothern cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow, because the station doesnt advertise solely local news, rather news which appeals to the masses. The music played aswell will often be chart music, again to use Radio 1 as an example, has programmes dedicated the the chart music with its ‘Big Top 40’ – a show which counts up through the 40 songs in the charts, this is something a smaller Community based station is unlikely to do.

Commercial Radio doesn’t nessecarily have to be part of a huge organization, such as Radio 1 to the BBC, Hulls ‘Viking FM’ is an independent station which began in 1984, the station is Independent however whilst it remains a Commercial Station it is much more Regional, operating within East Yorkshire. The station will still have programmes such as ‘Big Top 40’ and will also talk about events happening in the world however the news it tells will be much more national than local. Viking FM however also does promote events happening locally, mainly within the East Yorkshire region, in the Hull,Beverly,Cottingham regions. Such as small concerts within the vicinity of its broadcasting range.

Community Radios largest difference with Commercial is that all the work done on the station is volunteer work. None of the presenters on the station are paid for their time on air, which means that a lot of the Community stations have numerous presenters which maybe do 2 hours a day, 2-3 days a week, the money these presenters make is often work they do outside of the station, a second job for instance, or selling advertisements  for the Community station. An example of this being WHCR FM, based within Hull, this station is owned by Goodwin, a much larger organization which has sectors based within over areas. To get into Commercial radio, many presenters will have to work freely in Community Radio for a significant amount of time and maybe scouted by listeners or after sending demos of their work into the bigger Commercial stations. As mentioned some presenters make money selling advertisements, for a Community station to run it needs the advertisements to run aswell as the donations from the public and events held by the station to make money. The money cannot solely come from advertisements and is set at a limit of 50% which means, for example if a station were to cost £5000 a year to run, the station could make £2500 off of advertising and then must make the other half from donations to the station and events/fundraisers the station does.

When talking about Commercial radio I spoke about how the news told on the station would be much more national, well on a Community radio the news told will be about local news, this could include roadworks in the area of small events going on, often found by reading the local paper or looking at local news on the internet and reporting it to the public. Commercial radio are very interested to hear about problems within the area and the peoples views on certain matters effecting the country, an example of this would be, using reporters to go out and do VoxPops or ‘Voice of the People’ which is essentially a gathering of small interviews spliced together all answering the same question. In this way its much easier to see how a national story is effecting a local community, such as peoples views on leaving the EU, jobs could be much more scarce in a certain area which is why a city like Hull could get a much different response than maybe somewhere like London.

The music played on such stations would include a small amount of popular chart music, however it wouldn’t appear on the station nearly as much as it would on a Commercial one, an example of such being Daft Punk’s – Get Lucky, a song like this (number 1 in the charts) may only be aired once or twice a day on a Community Station whilst airing 3-4 times a day on a Commercial station. Community stations like to promote a lot of local bands aswell providing them an opportunity to have their music aired on the radio free of charge. Other types of music may also include much older songs which would range from the 50s to the present, providing a vaster more diverse selection.

Commercial radio as previously stated is a place for aspiring presenters to start off, this means that the stations willingly train up amateurs and volunteers to a more proffesional standard often for free so that they can go onto working in a more proffesional enviroment. In the past an aspiring presenter would work in ‘Hospital Radio’, a type of station that is designed for the patients of a Hospital, again another form of the Commercial station. However when these types of stations were around, a station like WHCR would have been much more unlikely to exist and the presenter on the Hospitals station would have to be scouted and provided with experience from there.