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Banbury FM was born in 2001 from a vision of bringing a truly local radio
station to our area.
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During those broadcasts we said wanted a local radio station, "not from
Oxford, not from Birmingham and not from London - but from Banbury".
Thousands of individuals, businesses and organisations agreed with us and
showed their support in writing.
Back in 2001 local radio in our area was provided by Fox FM and BBC Oxford,
both based in Oxford. Whilst both stations did to some extent
cover our area editorially they also had remits that covered areas miles
away from us. In addition Fox FM in the latter years as part of
the Capital Radio Group had also changed to become a more music focussed
station.
The campaign we started was successful. The Radio Authority (and
later Ofcom) agreed that the Banbury area was somewhere that deserved its
own station, and importantly our trial broadcasts proved it was financially
viable.
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Dave Boxer
commentates on a Banbury United match
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But
when the licence was awarded none of the local groups were successful.
As "outsiders" the winning group found it difficult to be accepted by the local
community; indeed they took so long to launch letters even appeared in the
Banbury Guardian asking what was happening.
Banbury FM was
an integral part of the local community
Today
Fox FM is no more and has become
Heart. Heart
broadcasts programmes weekdays from 6-10am and from 4-7pm covering the Thames
Valley from studios in Reading; all other weekday programmes come from London.
Heart is undeniably a music and entertainment led station and is having success
with this format.
The
truly local licence we campaigned for is now owned by Quidem Ltd, broadcasting
as
Banbury Sound. They are based on a site housing
several radio stations near Kenilworth. Initially under Quidem's ownership
Banbury Sound shared programmes with several other stations for all but six
hours each weekday. Since the summer of 2011 that changed so all the
weekday programmes between 6am and 7pm are specific to Banbury Sound.
However, of these programmes only the breakfast show between 6 and 9am is live -
the rest are automated (pre-recorded).
You can find out more about Banbury Sound's commitment to local news and local
information by reading their
public file.
So in
2011 the only local radio station broadcasting to Banbury and North Oxfordshire
from within our own county is
BBC Radio Oxford.
So
what radio stations do people listen to in 2011? These are the
latest audience figures produced independently through RAJAR/IPSOS (Q2/2011).
The graph shows the most popular radio stations in our area over the last couple
of years. Audience listening figures are produced four times a year,
covering 82,900 people from Banbury, Brackley and the surrounding area.
BBC Radio 2 is by far the most popular radio station in our area.
Radio 1 comes second after a jump in listening this time. Radio 4
with its stable audience is now third.. Heart is the most
popular local station in fourth place. Interestingly whilst
Heart has lost listeners elsewhere in the county they have made a slight
gain in our area. Banbury
Sound comes fifth (second in the local market behind Heart), followed by BBC 5 Live in sixth place. BBC
Radio Oxford are in seventh place with BBC Radio 3 eighth. No
other stations have enough listeners to be registered on the graph.
We believe for a truly local station to be considered successful it needs
to have a good proportion of the local community listening.
Without this social action will be ineffective and advertisers will
receive little response to their campaigns. Indeed we are
proud that our independent research showed a listenership of over half the
population during our first broadcast, making us the most successful
station in the area (albeit from data produced by a different method to
RAJAR).
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