Juice Radio in trouble with Ofcom over lack of localness

A community radio station is appealing for volunteers to contribute to its news and sports coverage after being censured by Ofcom.

Juice Radio was investigated by the regulator after a complaint that it was failing its key commitments as required under its broadcasting licence. Ofcom requested recordings from the station across a one week period in February along with a schedule, music logs and an explanation of how the station was meeting its requirements.

Based on all of this, it concluded Juice – which was previously known as Preston FM, Beat Radio and Beat 103 – failed to meet that its key commitment that “the main types of speech output broadcast over the course of each week are news and sports programmes, local and community news and information, interviews, magazine programmes and community of interest programming”

It said: “Reflecting our duties to ensure a diverse range of local radio services, community radio licensees are required to provide the licensed service specified in their Key Commitments. This is a fundamental purpose for which a community licence is granted.”

In response, Juice’s licence holder Preston Community Radio 23 (PCR23) said that while it struggles to recruit volunteers to report on news and sports, it asks presenters to include local and community news and information on shows broadcast weekly.

It also highlighted that 95 per cent of its presenters are from Preston and are “involved with and represent the local community in the programming and output of the shows they produce”. It also said that it encourages new presenters to produce new types of shows and was making changes to include more Preston-focused content.

This latter point came after Ofsted disputed some of its What’s On content – namely stories about a Dizzee Rascal performance in Liverpool, Steven Sanchez performing at Manchester New Century and Taylor Swift performing at the Manchester O2 – counted as being relevant.

In a bid to address the changes, the station is actively encouraging people from the community to volunteer towards its coverage. A spokesperson told Blog Preston: “If anyone is interested in volunteering to be part of our local news and sport elements of the station they can contact Studio@juiceradio.co.uk”.

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