Radio bosses call for less interference

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell will this week come under pressure to make sweeping changes to the draft Communications Bill to increase competition in commercial radio.

At the same time, the Commercial Radio Companies Association will announce it is co- operating with specialist retailers to import £99 digital radios for sale next month. The CRCA will urge Ms Jowell to change the draft Bill to enable companies to own more than one commercial station in an area so that bigger radio companies can be created to compete with the BBC.

Ms Jowell, who will be the keynote speaker at a CRCA lunch, will be told Britain's 254 commercial stations face a 15 per cent fall in advertising revenues.

Paul Brown, chief executive of the CRCA, said the Communications Bill was not even-handed in its deregulation, leaving radio subject to tight restrictions on ownership of stations, and relaxing regulations on television, including lifting the ban on foreign ownership of TV.

The Bill, as drafted, would retain rules barring companies from owning several radio stations. This has led to a network of single-company commercial radio stations across Britain, some successful, such as Classic FM and Jazz FM. But the CRCA will urge Ms Jowell to change the draft Bill to allow a single operator to own several local radio stations in the same area and ownership to be controlled only by normal competition rules.

Some in the CRCA believe the Government ignored appeals for light-touch regulation on commercial radio because it focused on television. It is pressing for changes to the legislation before this is introduced in the next Queen's Speech in the autumn.