This document discusses community radio stations, focusing on Oldham Community Radio (OCR) in Oldham, England. It provides context on OCR's licensing and funding, outlines its various programming strands which target different audiences throughout the day, and explains how news is sourced from Sky rather than produced in-house. The document also evaluates how a sample school and college-focused radio bulletin would fit into OCR's 7am-9am programming slot for that audience and compares it to OCR's actual output. While the bulletin aligns with the targeted age group, its length and news focus could be tiring for listeners.

1. Discussion of the role of local and community radio stations
Ofcom states The Community Radio Order in 2004 to define a community as “(a) the persons
who live or work or undergo education or training in a particular area or locality, b. persons
who (whether or not they fall within paragraph (a)) have one or more interests or
characteristics in common".
The role of a community radio station is to involve the people working, living or are educated
in the area with community activities, news and entertainment. They can only broadcast to
people in the specific area and so the broadcasters must know there audience very well.
Producers must consider - age, ethnicity, religion, and any interests to do with the area.
Outline of other community stations in our area – e.g. how many/where/types/audiences
The ofcom website states 6 community radios that surround our area. However, 5 of these
are in Manchester, one being in central Manchester. Oldham Community Radio is the only
Community Radio station in Oldham making it easier for them in terms of competition.
All 6 of these stations are ALL FM (Manchester), Gaydio (Central Manchester), North
Manchester FM (Manchester), Unity Radio (Manchester), Peace FM (Manchester) and
Oldham Community Radio (Oldham).
Ofcom state the roles and audiences of all of the stations -
All FM is in the “culturally diverse area of south Manchester.”
“Gaydio will provide a service for the LGBT people of Manchester.”
“North Manchester FM (NMFM) will provide a service for the people of North Manchester.”
Unity Radio “will provide a service for young people aged 15-25 in central Manchester and
surrounding areas.”
“Peace FM will serve primarily the African and Caribbean community, but also those who
enjoy contemporary black music.”
“Oldham Community Radio will provide a service for the diverse communities living in the
area.”
Discussion of the aims/mission/values of OCR and its programming strands
Oldham Community Radio now have a license that was applied for via Ofcom. They met
specific needs that they needed to gain a license with and so were able to broadcast on air.
Their aim is to entertain and inform news to the diverse area of the borough of Oldham.
The programming strand is almost identical from Monday to Friday; from 12am to 7am is the
overnight repeats of afternoon programmes, 7am-9am is the schools and colleges strand,
9am-1pm is the Oldham wide strand, 1pm-3pm is the over 60’s strand, 3pm-5pm is the
multilingual strand, again at 5-6pm is the Oldham wide strand and from 9pm to 12pm are
specialist music and interest strand with debates and discussions.
The 9pm-12pm strand never changes. However, on a Saturday and Sunday, there is a
specialist music and interest strand from 12am-12am and a sport strand from 12pm-6pm.
This diversity of strands meets the needs of the diversity of the Oldham Borough.
Where the money comes from for community radio and OCR specifically and how it is
staffed
Oldham Council, sport relief and Zen internet limited are the three companies that fund
Oldham Community Radio. The money that they get lets them broadcast and they do not
need to pay the presenters as all of them are volunteers.
The ‘Voluntary Action Oldham’ organises who can volunteer to become staff at Oldham
Community Radio. Voluntary Action Oldham is the area’s development agency and
represents the voluntary and community part of Oldham. It currently has 500 organisations.
Oldham Community Radio provide in-house training to individual community radio volunteer
staff at the station. These can be students that are training to become presenters or any
other job within radio. The radio shows depend on the availability of volunteers.

2. Outline of where OCR sources its news from and why it may not do it ’inhouse’
Sky is an international network that sources their news to niche networks such as Oldham
Community Radio. The ‘in-house’ presenters don’t collect the news themselves as this would
be time consuming and cost them more than simply buying the news from Sky.
Buying the news from Sky also means that it is very accurate and reaches a mass audience.
Explanation of the programming strands and how your bulletin fits into this
The over 60’s strand, Oldham wide strand, school and colleges strand, overnight repeats of
afternoon programmes, multilingual strand, specialist music and interest strand and debates
and discussions are 7 strands that feature daily and nightly.
Our bulletin is aimed at schools and colleges and so would fit in the school and colleges
strand airing from 7am-9am. Our broadcast is upbeat and involves information that is
interesting and relatable to this age group.
Discussion about an actual broadcast of your show on OCR – if it was broadcast are there
issues/problems/strengths/weaknesses/would it belong in their news slot and attract the
audience you identified? Comparison with actual OCR output.
Apart from the schools and colleges strand and possibly the music interests, most of the
strands are suitable to a more mature listener and can be quite repetitive.
There are some strengths of our bulletin if it was to be aired on Oldham Community Radio.
One of these is that it is very upbeat and entertaining and the news that is involved suits the
audience strand that we are aiming at. Another strength is that we are broadcasters fall into
the strand ourselves. From this we know what our age group would find interesting and so
our bulletin would be valid.
However, there are also issues and weaknesses that fall into our bulletin. One is that it
involves a lot of speaking when concerning news. It is quite long and tiring. Because we fall
into the audience strand ourselves, we would make sure that if airing a bulletin it would be
entertaining and upbeat.