Manufacturing Authenticity in a Small Nation: The Case of Independent Local Radio in Wales

Abstract

Unlike in the USA and Australia where commercial radio began in the 1920s, it was not until the early 1970s that it was introduced in Britain (Baron, 1975; Johnson, 1988; Briggs and Burke, 2002). Rather than simply describing the new sector as commercial radio, it became known as Independent Local Radio (ILR). ILR ended a BBC radio monopoly only previously interrupted by offshore pirate stations during the 1960s and intermittent incursions over a number of years from mainland Europe by Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandie (Crisell, 1986). With spectrum space for radio in short supply the decision to introduce ILR curtailed the expansion of BBC local radio services that began in Leicester in 1967 (Crisell, 1997),1 and further delayed the introduction of a specific community radio sector.2 However, the quid pro quo for allocating scarce and publicly owned spectrum space to the new sector required ILR services to broadcast in the ‘public interest’ (Hooper, 2001a, p. 2). As a result, after nearly 50 years of public service radio defined and delivered by the BBC to predominantly national and regional listeners, communities throughout Britain — rural and urban, small and large — would now have access to an independent and local radio service. Or would they?