Britain’s radio stations have a new audience: the rest of the world
The rise of the Internet has spelled trouble for many in the media. Social media and free news and video services have resulted in newspapers and television stations’ profits plummeting as they lose access to the market.
Yet for one medium — radio — the Internet has potentially been a godsend. Once limited to the reach of their FM or AM frequency, radio stations are now suddenly able to be heard by a global audience, all from a familiar .uk address.
“We just hit 400,000 downloads,” explains Peter Beeston, the founder and manager of Cornucopia Radio. That’s pretty impressive for one man who started a small community radio show only seven years ago.
In 2008 Beeston saw a problem. He loves spoken word on the radio but in today’s modern world fewer places were providing a space for this form of art
In 2008 Beeston saw a problem. He loves spoken word on the radio but in today’s modern world fewer places were providing a space for this form of art. Radio stations are focusing more than ever on playing the top hits of the day, with the BBC being the only real avenue in the United Kingdom for spoken word programs. Even their time slots are highly limited.
So Beeston went to his local community radio station and started a program. He accepted scripts from writers around the country, hired actors and production teams and put on a weekly show of spoken form. The response was huge.
“I got more and more people coming towards me to ask for my help to produce their work,” he told me. “After a while I got so many people come towards me I began to put them out as podcasts. Then it became even more popular and eventually I realised I had enough material come towards me to start my own mini station.”
He began Cornucopia Radio, launching the station on a .uk domain. Cornucopia exists entirely online and has developed a unique international audience.
“I was just looking at the stats on my website and watching two people listening live, one in the US and one in Canada,” Beeston explains. “Using the website as a background tool I can see where they’re on the website and what they’re watching and what they’re streaming.”
“A lot of community stations, particularly in the United States and Canada, will pick up one of my shows and ask ‘can we broadcast that on our own station’?”
And people don’t just listen through downloading directly from Beeston’s site.
“A lot of community stations, particularly in the United States and Canada, will pick up one of my shows and ask ‘can we broadcast that on our own station’? The website becomes a platform to see what else we’re doing and to pick up our shows and broadcast them themselves.”
This has allowed Beeston to make his work truly international, but still with a British flavour.
“It started mainly with drama and comedy. Over time it began to expand more than this. Recently a group of people from across the UK came together — an improv comedy group — and they wanted to do a comedy panel show together. Eventually I worked out how that would be created and I did that as a six-part series and then a second eight-part series and I’m now on the website launching different individual podcasts. I recently began up a podcast with an American actress doing her short stories.
Starting from a small community radio station in Sheffield, Beeston now has a global audience
“Now it’s much more than just UK people coming towards me. Because I’m talking to a global audience people across the world will see what I’m doing, and say ‘I’m on the other side of the world but can you help get my script or my podcast going?’”
Starting from a small community radio station in Sheffield, Beeston now has a global audience of hundreds of thousands promoting work from artists around the world. That is what a .uk site can do.
This story is one of 30 celebrating the launch of .uk domain names in 1985. To read the others visit our 30 Years of .uk hub. To start your own .uk story check out www.agreatplacetobe.uk.
