River FM
rasbo
Posts: 1,606 Forum Member
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Brilliant station, sadly missed. The up & coming city of Livingston now has to rely on Forth one, which is mostly adverts and Kate Perry on a loop :mad:
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rasbo
Posts: 1,606 rasbo
Posts: 1,606
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Not exactly short of choice in Livingston albeit nothing being broadcast from West Lothian, to West Lothian.
If River FM was broadcasting to the Forth Valley (you could receive it here) it would have done far better in the radio ratings.
Darren
I don't think it really stood a chance because of the amount of competition and good quality competition. Along with the heritage stations which have always been strong in the central belt there's also Capital (and what it was before) which was regional and going head to head for exactly the same audience was Real Radio.
River had nowhere to go and it's not as if it's in an area with a huge amount of local pride that you can shout about. It was in Livingston and most of it's listeners would be from there. They either look to Edinburgh or Glasgow naturally and let's face it Livingston is a toilet so there's little to shout about locally anyway.
I get the impression that radio people see the world through different eyes, and their enthusiasm for the medium makes them impute that enthusiasm on to their local area. The 'demand-led' form of commercial licence advertising meant in practice a 'demand' from radio enthusiasts who happened to live in places.......not any 'demand' from the places themselves.
I'm sure if I went out into the street in my bit of urban Glasgow with a clipboard survey I could come back with a '50% significantly lightly to listen to a station for this area' result. But that's just consequence of people being nice to your face and a big bias built into the sample- the type of person curious enough to stop and participate in such surveys may be the type of person more likely to listen to small scale local radio!
Community stations make this model work because what they generally get funding for is engagement with client groups, and it is often the very fact that the services are sometimes only liable to be listened to by a small (often disadvantaged) minority that justifies the funding.
The original people behind River FM must therefore be kicking themselves. Had they known that community radio would have been legislated a year or two later then they could have just gone for a CR licence in which case chances are 'River FM' would still be there today years on, just as Pulse 98.4 in Barrhead ,Sunny Govan Radio etc are.
Or, perhaps River FM should have stayed out of RAJAR. It's interesting that small Scottish ILRs like YOURradio, NECR, Waves FM etc not in RAJAR also keep going, wheras ones like Clan FM and River that did didn't.
River Fm actually had a lot going for it with a solid lineup and decent signal but it just didn't happen for them.
If River FM was on DAB and/or had a alternative format (Dance, Rock etc) would it still be on air today waddling alongside XFM Scotland? (which was Q96 back then)
I agree with your comments but Livingston a city? I think not! ;-)