Penistone FM - Beginnings and Milestones

Community Radio
Community Radio was introduced in 2004 as a new class of broadcast licence. It has allowed small towns like Penistone to have their own radio station, provided that they can deliver on their 'Social Gain Objectives', especially to give people a voice on those issues that concern them. These stations are operated, owned, and driven by people from those communities. They are not-for-profit and can cover niche material that might be overlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters. The renewable licence lasts for five years. For more information on this class of licence, download a 'Plain English Summary of Community Radio' (146kB pdf) and read some interesting research in 'The Future of Small Scale Radio' (848 kB pdf), both from Ofcom.

PFM Beginnings
Let's look at the four years up to the launch of Penistone FM, which was officially formed only in May 2005. A couple of months later on Penistone Parade & Gala Day, my old mate Ian pointed me to an interesting phenomenon in a windswept and largely ignored corner of the Showground, roughly where Tesco is now. Like myself, Ian had always been interested in radio, so I followed his knobbly finger towards a stout fellow on his 'Community Radio' stand, with not many visitors. Darren Holmes was that man. There wasn't much on view at the stand either, which made me somewhat suspicious. Just a few flyers and bit and bobs.

His great idea was to set up a local radio station in Penistone. In all honesty, it sounded fairly 'far-fetched' as ideas go. What I didn't know was that Darren had a bunch of other people in on the grand plan. Many of them were already working at Barnsley hospital radio and were enthusiastic to get on-air with a 'real' radio station. Some had already been involved with local radio. Penistone residents Cllr Millner and Dominic Musgrave also added to an already strong team, providing more local input.

Hospital radio must be frustrating. They have a captive audience but must be bright and jolly with people who might be too ill to care. That's if the bedside earphones worked anyway. Being a wee bit cynical, I could imagine a phone call from the hospital administration - "We don't have enough beds free, could you put The Smiths on please?" No, the music would have to be aspirational, uplifting, feel-good material. Some music would not be allowed or patients might drop like flies, in insufferable despair. These would definitely be barred: Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door', Leonard Cohen's 'Avalanche' or anything at all by Morrisey (which is exactly how it should be for any audience).

A 'proper' radio station is a big idea, with a lot to get right: funding, suitable premises, equipment, transmitter mast site with power (line-of-site for a studio radio link), mast planning permission or access to an existing mast, technical know-how and support, programme material (not just music), news feeds, presenters with good qualities, more money, spare time and much more than I could list here. Also, a knowledge of Ofcom's 97-page Broadcast Code to avoid them landing in hot and expensive water. Plus they would have to find ways of interacting with the community and that must have presented its own challenges. The application form for a licence was a really big job to fill in and very particular about facilities, funding, technical points and what they intended to broadcast.

I told Darren about my Penistone website (which he was aware of) and we swapped email addresses. He was serious about it. In that moment, I committed this website to support his plan and have continued in varying levels of enthusiasm to do so ever since. As time went on, he sent me updates about their progress and the next thing I knew a trial 'RSL' broadcast licence was heading his way.

RSL Trial Broadcasts
The time arrived and Darren now had the title of Station Manager. In September 2006, their 'Restricted Service Licence' FM transmissions came on-air for three weeks from a studio near Cubley Hall and it went out on 87.7MHz FM. That was a fantastic moment and I was very excited about it. The transmitter was on a hilltop at Hoylandswaine, as it is now. This website helped by raising their profile when it mattered most and they were kind enough to acknowledge this. A new logo was emailed my way and it looked like just the one above.

There was a big set-back right at the start. A hard disc failure meant that thousands of music files had been lost and needed to be re-installed PDQ before the first broadcast. Without at least some music there would be no station. Other snags fell in the way. A flat tyre at 11pm prevented one presenter from getting in but it carried on regardless. All in all, there were a few minor glitches but the presenters got on with the job and did it very well. I was off work with an eyesight problem and could not read or watch telly. I sat there listening to radio and drinking mugs of strong tea with dunking biscuits. Not much else to do if I couldn't be out and about. I wanted to give this new radio station a fair chance and they needed listeners. So I did my duty, listened and plugged them on this website.

Penistone FM quickly became very popular. I can assure my patient reader that our grapevine works very well. It was alive and twitching with news about the radio station. You could hear PFM playing in local shops and passing cars. Customers in Bernice's hairdressers were thrilled to hear my record request to PFM (at their urging). PP Arnold's 'The First Cut is the Deepest' was on in seconds.

Listener habits are difficult to dislodge and many were loyal to other stations. There were also some grumblings about the team being from outside of our area but most people appreciated what they were trying to do. It was sometimes comical when a presenter discovered something new about Penistone and told us as though we didn't know already. Oh, and the odd pronunciations. Nobody could pronounce Ingbirchworth or Oughtibridge properly, including some of the adverts. That doesn't sell things. Some long 'ahs' floated in from the south. 'Brahss Bahnd' sounded slightly absurd for a northern phenomenon but all of that was unimportant in the scheme of things. It did not detract from the enjoyment.

The RSL period included Penistone Show weekend. Dearne FM had better connections with the Show people, a better location and a bigger stand, while the PFM's gazebo was in a backwater pitch. In fact, PFM's publicity was actually being sabotaged just before Show Day. Someone was taking down PFM posters as fast as the team could put them up. Fingers were pointed but nothing was proved. It didn't matter anyway. PFM was the talk on the street and the sabotage was futile. In fact, it probably gained some sympathy and suggested that somebody was troubled by the arrival of this new phenomenon. They say that all publicity is good publicity.

The 2006 Cubley Studio
I was privileged to visit the spacious Cubley studio which was situated above Lancaster's property agents and only a short walk from Cubley Hall. Apparently it had been vacated by Kate Rusby as her own studio and Penistone FM were very lucky to be able to move in for the three weeks.

My interest was mainly on the technical side. The pictures above show the desk layout and Darren at the controls in the studio. You can see the coloured stripes of 'Myriad' software on the monitors and there were text and email messages on the top monitor. There was also a 'live room', just visible in the picture background. Just off the picture were chairs for guests with a microphone angled towards them. Looking at the equipment, there was a link transmitter, an RDS data injection (which puts the station name on your radio) and an 'Optimod' unit at the bottom, to add some gentle compression to the sounds and encode the stereo. The studio had a UHF radio link beaming the complete signal to a tower on top of a local hill, where it was re-transmitted on a frequency that is reserved for RSLs. This was on 87.7 MHz, right at the edge of the FM radio dial, and very good for scan type radios that would find it as the very first station.

This New Phenomenon
Penistone FM had a few particular things in its favour. Firstly it was new and secondly it sort-of belonged to us, unlike Barnsley's Dearne FM. There was plenty of good content and not just music. There was involvement with the local community and we heard local or familiar voices saying relevant things. A few interviews were squeezed in and I was interviewed by Darren about this website. Nicolette of Cubley Hall was also interviewed, about the 'Titty Trek' charity run for breast cancer. A lot was crammed into those three weeks. There were job adverts, interviews and visits to local businesses and schools. Musicians and local people were encouraged to be involved. On one occasion, they used their affiliations with Barnsley Hospital Broadcasting to set up a link. Requests came in for and from the captive audience in Barnsley but I don't know if it helped their health or not.

Presenters went to a great deal of trouble and did a great job. I listened for long hours and enjoyed it all. It was a sad moment when it came an end. There was a lump in Ken David's throat when he was saying his farewells. It was very touching but you could tell that there was some sort of party in the studio. I would have loved to be there. The last record played was Take That's 'Back for Good' but there was an unspoken question lingering in the air: 'Would that be it?' We know the answer now but it was much less certain in 2006. Listeners were urged to support PFM's application for a full licence and a lot of people wrote supporting letters, including myself.

The TV screen capture shown above-right is from an ITV teletext page that was aired on analogue TV in 2006. The news item was about Penistone FM asking for public support in their bid for a full licence. That was very generous of ITV. This website gave them "Copious free publicity", as it was described, and might have helped at a time when it was most needed. Here is a pertinent remark from their assessment of the RSL period, as noted in their licence application of 2006 which followed on from the trial period:

'One area that did come out strong in our research was that we engendered a positive community spirit, people are proud to be "Penistonians" and they appreciated that the station was genuinely local and community-biased, they enjoyed and responded to hearing about local events, local people and issues that affected them'

Bad and Good News
After the successful 2006 trial, the team tried but initially failed to secure a scarce FM licence. There were not many FM frequencies to go around. One of my spies said that the rival YMCA Radio Barnsley team had been angry about Penistone Community Radio's application as it reduced their own chances of success. Some of the PFM people had originally been connected with YMCA Radio Barnsley but links were severed in 1995. That connection might have 'rubbed salt in the wound'.

If you had heard Penistone FM towards the end of their RSL, it is clear that they had hoped to be back with a full licence in Feb. 2007. But that was not to happen so quickly. They might have been able to apply earlier for the full licence but the application itself was a big job to get right. A 2007 message from Darren said that "... the application process is a very time consuming affair, a 46-page application form needing detailed financial, programming and social gain elements as well as a lot of local support to gather, so we thought our 100% attention should be on that." He continued: "I would appreciate it if you could update your website to state this is the case, with a reassurance that the reason for the delay is to concentrate on putting the best possible application into Ofcom." This I promptly did. On the plus side, they had started an automated music service on the internet as a taster with some local news and information.

By mid-2008, Ofcom had finally granted a five-year Community Radio broadcast licence and Barnsley Council had granted planning permission for a mast. Unfortunately, the licence was for 1476kHz on medium wave, not VHF FM. This was disappointing to all concerned. It wasn't on a band that many people listened to. I wanted to be enthusiastic but technology moves on and you have to move along with it. I had long abandoned vinyl records, cassette tapes and AM radio.

At home I was listening to radio on FM, DAB and even on satellite but very rarely AM, which often had a backdrop of interference or fading and wasn't even in stereo. Some car radios did not even have AM. The logo was forced to transmogrify, first as Penistone Community Radio, then as Penistone AM.

The original FM transmitter could not work for AM as the two types of transmitters are completely different. They work on completely different frequency bands. The extra costs of a new mf transmitter and transmitting aerial would have been heavy. And yet all was not lost. Towards the end of 2008 the position turned around completely, with the possibility of FM. Later, a five-year FM licence was allocated and announced on the Penistone Community Radio website, as it was then called, in January 2009. It was great news and a flying start to the new year. The new studio build started early in 2009.

How the FM Licence Happened
Someone (SJ of Barnsley Radio) applied to Ofcom under the Freedom of Information Act to discover how PFM's frequency allocation had changed from AM to FM and to discover why Barnsley's own RSL effort had been thrown out. I researched into this.

The answer was simple: the original Penistone application was for FM but with AM as a second choice, with contingency funding for either mode (this was important). An FM frequency was not available at the time but there was an AM frequency and a licence was duly granted for medium wave. A former hospital radio, Trust FM in Chesterfield had won a Community Radio licence in April 2006 but it was unable to fulfill its commitment to start broadcasting. There's a time-out and the licence expires if they can't meet their promises. Its licence was withdrawn by Ofcom in November 2008. Our astute PFM man spotted it and applied for the 95.7 MHz frequency that they could not use, for Penistone. Ofcom replied in December 2008 to give a qualified 'Yes', subject to further approval.

The proper approval came along early 2009 and Penistone Community Radio was now able to go on FM, as originally planned. The name changed back to Penistone FM and all was back on course. PDCP backing probably made all the difference in supporting the application but all the letters of support might have helped. If I understand it right, the Barnsley application was rejected because their financial projections did not look realistic and would have demanded far too much air time for advertising. If you compare applications, you can see that PFM went into much more detail and was by far a more professional effort.

Come midnight 9th May 2009, test transmissions started in Penistone with a programme of continuous music interspersed with launch announcements. Darren was kind enough to send me the new logo and, as soon as I had permission to use it, it went on this website. The moment of glory finally arrived on Saturday 6th June 2009 and we can only guess at the popping of champagne bottles. There was certainly a party atmosphere at the countdown and more than a little tremor or 'lump in the throat' was evident. The rest, as they say...

.. is history. The radio displays above say 'Peniston' but you won't see that ident message again. It was changed to 'PEN FM' very soon after the launch in 2009.