Publicado
Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 17:52
- Commercial radio body Radiocentre and the All-Party Parliamentary Group believe the stream doesn't pass the BBC's Public Value Test.
BBC's Radio 1 Dance was under scrutiny in London's high court yesterday, March 23rd, Complete Music Update (CMU) reports.
The court session comes as a result of pressure from commercial radio body Radiocentre, which, since October 2020, has argued that the 24-hour dedicated dance music stream is in direct competition with commercial stations that have a dance-focused music policy.
Radio 1 Dance was launched within the BBC Sounds app on October 9th, 2020. A launch statement from BBC's media centre described the service as the BBC's first 24-hour stream, saying it was "designed to give young audiences even more flexibility to listen to their favourite BBC content outside of the more traditional linear schedules."
On September 17th, the same day that Radio 1 Dance was announced, Radio Today wrote that Radiocentre and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) were demanding an "urgent review" of BBC Sounds.
For context, any proposed new service run by the BBC must pass a Public Value Test—an official way of weighing public value against market impact—which determines if the service is a unique offering to the public, that, if launched, would not risk damaging existing commercial services by reducing the number of consumers and therefore their advertising income.
"It is disappointing… to see this announcement of a new 24-hour dance stream," Siobhan Kenny, CEO of Radiocentre, told Radio Today. "It is really difficult to understand what qualifies as distinctive in this offering."
APPG MP Andy Carter called for OfCom to investigate the legitimacy of Radio 1 Dance in line with a Public Value Test, with OfCom determining that because the streaming channel is only available online and contains material originally broadcast via other BBC stations, it is not deemed a "new" service and so a public service test wasn't required.
As CMU reports (via Law360), Radiocentre rejected OfCom's conclusions and proceeded to launch a legal review. In high court yesterday, Radiocentre's legal representatives asked that the review of Radio 1 Dance "should be expanded to examine whether there was 'procedural fairness' in the way the BBC went about interacting with the commercial radio sector when preparing for the launch."
At the time of writing, OfCom and the BBC retain that Radio 1 Dance wasn't a new service and Radiocentre and APPG's dispute is therefore unfounded.