No ifs, no buts… DJs say no to cuts!

In our world especially, there’s been some interesting developments in the past 24 hours.

The broadcaster, BBC, has recently announced that its 39 stations will share more shows in afternoons, evenings and at weekends. In response to this, radio staff at local BBC stations have now voted to strike against proposed job cuts to local services.

Taking a quick snapshot look into this, from a PR perspective, it is already really challenging to secure client news coverage in local media outlets following the decline of regional print publications.

In recent years, there’s been a greater shift in utilising regional non-commercial radio stations to help put out local messaging. More importantly (taking out the agency bias), this raises questions about how people can learn about reliable, local news now that radio is following print into decentralisation of news coverage.

The argument will be social media, but with the increase in ‘fake news’ and misinformation (you only have to look at some recent high profile police cases where social media was unhelpfully used to disseminate incorrect news), is this yet further evidence of a decline in reliable local news reporting?

And if this is a challenge to seasoned, PR professionals, how much of a problem will this be for businesses who do not have dedicated resource to help publicise important information to people who rely locally on their services?

What are your thoughts?

Does this raise questions to your marketing plans? Drop us a message if you’d like to discuss how this could potentially impact your communication messaging to local audiences.