Let’s begin this week with a bit of small but significant radio news. Back in 2019, Salisbury’s local radio station, Spire FM, was bought by Bauer, a German based media conglomerate.

Spire was popular locally: more people used to tune into it than Radios 2 or 4 in the city. It did a good job in supporting the local community and won national awards, including for Station of the Year.

When Spire was bought, along with a number of local stations, I contacted Bauer for that week’s column about the rumours they were planning to stitch these local stations together into a national station.

They gave a non-committal ‘too early to comment’ answer.

What happened next, of course, was that they stitched these local stations into a national one – Greatest Hits Radio. Under the conditions issued by Ofcom, Bauer had to broadcast three hours of regional programming a day and an ‘enhanced local news service’ from 6am to 7pm.

Back in the Spring, Bauer tried to wriggle out of its local news requirement. Complaining that news bulletins about Salisbury ‘sounded jarring and parochial against industry-leading shows such as Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo’, it decided that Salisbury would be better served with the bulletins about (presumably less parochial) Portsmouth instead. Following complaints and an Ofcom investigation, the station decided to end its ‘experiment’ and reinstate the local news coverage.

In one of Rishi Sunak’s last acts as PM, the then Conservative government rushed through its Media Act in the ‘wash-up’ period before the general election. As part of the bill, the requirement for the likes of Greatest Hits Radio to continue with regional programming was relaxed. The act came into force on October 17.

On October 23, guess what? Bauer announced it was axing all its remaining regional programming on Greatest Hits Radio, which it then did within the fortnight.

There’s several ways you can read this particular story. One might argue that’s just how capitalism works: the little fish get eaten by the bigger ones, end of. Alternatively, that this proves why markets need proper regulators, rather than ones not worth their initials.

Like Ofwat and the water companies, Ofcom’s response to all this has been, well, off.

It’s always a little hard to dissect radio listening figures, but if I’m reading the Rajar numbers right, while Bauer boasts of rising figures nationally, here in Salisbury Greatest Hits Radio’s numbers are in steady decline: a weekly reach of 42,000 in 2017 as Spire, 38,000 after the takeover in 2020, and 33,000 in 2024.

It’s almost as if once the station stopped being local, local people stopped listening. It’s a sad outcome best summed up in a single word: uninspiring.