ONE of Scotland’s best-known radio broadcasters has been elected chair of the Scottish branch of a charity “dedicated to the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production” – the Radio Academy.
Jay Crawford is currently programme director of Real Radio in Scotland, plus sister stations, Rock Radio and Glasgow-based Smooth.
He also holds the title of ‘brand programme director’ for all the Real Radio stations throughout the UK: in Wales, the north-west of England, Yorkshire and the north-east of England, plus Scotland. Rock, Smooth and Real are owned by the GMG group.
He said: “The Scottish radio industry needs to develop a strong voice, because there is so much going on, whether it’s the Performing Rights Society considerably increasing its efforts to charge businesses to play their radio or people lobbying to have radio stations play a minimum quota of Scottish content.
“I want to use this role to really get involved in those issues. For the record, I am against both.
“And of course, there’s next week to be recommendations announced by Lord Carter about ‘digital Britain’.
“If it’s being proposed that the analogue radio signal is to be switched off, to be replaced by digital – as is happening with television – that will have huge implications for the industry. For instance, very few cars have digital radio.”
