This is a personal appeal to please help out our local community radio station down here in the Welsh valleys, GTFM, who are a big supporter of Rugby League.
GTFM celebrated its tenth anniversary this week as Wales’ first community radio station. They are purely a charitable not for profit station who exist to help others in the community.
They primarily exist to support people living in some of the most under-privileged communities in Wales. They therefore prioritise coverage of initiatives like regeneration, community safety, improved health/well-being, re-training/adult education, the environment sustainability and the significant contribution made to local life by volunteers.
In fact just about all of their programmes are presented by volunteers like myself, who rightly take pride in the professional standard of their work.
In turn this has led to good local listener loyalty and response, so although GTFM is not primarily about chasing ratings, they've found having lots of local people listening helps them make a difference in the communities they serve.
One of GTFM’s flagship shows is “The Season Ticket” on a Saturday afternoon. That show and “Y Clwb Cymraeg” on a Tuesday night have been the only station to have consistently cover Rugby League in Wales for the last seven or eight seasons and have treated the sport as an equal. They have volunteer reporters at Welsh Conference matches, Super League, Championships and at internationals and have given the sport respect. Basically, they have given us a chance.
They were the first station, other than the BBC, in Wales to cover a full Rugby League match live on the radio when they broadcast an under 18 international between Wales and Australia from Caerphilly. This was listened to all around the UK and the world.
They have also given individuals like myself their first opportunity to broadcast both in the studio and out on the field. Many people who started with them have gone on to professional jobs with media organisations.
Now they are facing a crisis. They have lost £25,000 of their annual funding due to loss of advertising from the Welsh Assembly Government.
The reason is due to the disbanded COI in London that closed its doors on March 31st. This was the government office who placed all government advertising UK wide. They used to advertise on every community station and had the budget to do so. Because the COI was disbanded, the advertising devolved to agencies and as a community station is not on RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) which records audience listening figures, the name of GTFM is not on list when targeting advertising.
Because of this in the main, this fantastic station could be forced to close within weeks. The two paid staff there are going without their wages to keep the station afloat and that can’t last long.
I am appealing to Rugby League fans to please give a donation to GTFM and help keep the station alive. While always not having the funding to put into local Rugby League, they have helped by giving the game the coverage that others haven’t in the past.
Please donate by going to
www.gtfm.co.uk/GTFMFundingandSupport.htm and clicking the Paypal link. Even if everyone gives around £25 each for example, it will certainly help them in the interim while they look for more sponsors and continue talks with local councils. But please, do a Bradford Bulls and donate.
