What's Happened to New Style?
It was a very warm afternoon way back in August 2002 and yours truly had just finished interviewing cricket legend Sir Viv Richards for BBC Midlands Today. As I prepared to do my piece-to-camera, I reckoned that Birmingham was on the brink of something huge.
The subject of the story was New Style Radio, which after years of effort by some seriously committed folks at the old Afro Caribbean Resource Centre in Dudley Road, Winson Green, had just won a broadcasting license to make it the city's first legal Black radio station.
With a potential audience of six million Midlands Today viewers, not to mention the hoards of readers of the numerous column inches the launch wracked up in local and national publications, it seemed as though the stage has been set. Surely now, with experienced presenters and journalists on board, New Style Radio could and would report on the Black community's news and accomplishments without fear of marginalisation or closure by the authorities.
Six years on, those early hopes have not been fulfilled, still don't think that there is a station that has the journalistic integrity and genuine interest in both reflecting and inspiring the Black community like New Style Radio could do.
Do you?
The station has encountered so much controversy in the intervening years. I've got too much class to go into what went wrong or to point the finger - but at least the station is still in existence.
Come on NSR, you know what needs to be done. Do it.
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Veron Graham - telling it like it is.
Yeah, Veron. Big up for what you said, man.
New Style needs to step to the plate. We need a proper station in Birmingham that has a license that is doing it for Black people.
After all, who else is going to do it for us?
I hate it that everytime we seem to have something positive in the community, someone comes along to mess it up.
What's wrong Black peeps? Veron, I reckon they need a straight-talking brother like you in there to sort it all out.
R-Tist
I totally agree with you Veron about New Style Radio. Although the programme presenters are doing a good job filling up the schedule with music and some talk programmes, what has happened to regular local community news? Why do I only hear national news from another source instead of making use of the talented journalists we have in our community. They are at ground level and instant access to what is going. I am one of the six million Midlands Today viewers but this is not accessible every hour - so I end up tuning in to any other local news programme on the radio. I think that those at the helm need to wake up and see what is happening right under their noses or give up and let someone else take charge and move New Style forward in the way it was meant to. It would be so sad to see it crumple because certain bodies won't or can't see what is inevitable before it is too late.
I don't know what's wrong with some of our people. New style is an absolute disgrace. Like Lorna said the people who are killing the station need to go.it was good in the first year or two but now? Come on people.
Thanks for the posts you guys.
It's sad to have to wash our dirty linen in public but the truth has got to be spoken ... or written?
Tell us, what are the solutions?
Dear Graham,
I have just read your column about New Style Radio and am left wondering exactly what you were trying to achieve with an unbalanced and un-informed, journalistically poor article, which panders to exactly what non-black people want to hear.
Why did you fail to mention staff members who've made personal sacrifices so that New Style Radio and the Afro Millennium Centre, in which it's housed, can continue their remit of serving the people of Birmingham? Perhaps you've been blind to how New Style presenters have consistently destroyed the old adage of black people not being able to work together by forming strong bonds of solidarity during the recent trying and uncomfortable times and Veron, if you really believe that we're failing then why were you so anxious to be part of the organisation just a few weeks ago?
No forward steps can be taken at New Style or ACMC until the Charity Commission investigation is concluded, perhaps if you'd waited until such time, you would have submitted a more informed and more intelligently written article which doesn't alienate the community you are/were(?) a part of.
You've used your platform to kick us when we're down, yet in your article you say you have class. It's really not in evidence, Veron.
AM
Dear Graham,
I have just read your column about New Style Radio and am left wondering exactly what you were trying to achieve with an unbalanced and uninformed, journalistically poor article, which panders to exactly what non-black people want to hear.
Why did you fail to mention staff members who've made personal sacrifices so that New Style Radio and the Afro Millennium Centre in which it's housed, can continue their remit of serving the people of Birmingham? Perhaps you've been blind to how New Style presenters have destroyed the old adage of black people not being able to work together by forming strong bonds of solidarity during the recent trying and uncomfortable times and finally Veron, if you really believe that we're failing then why were you so anxious to be part of the organisation a few weeks ago?
No forward steps can be taken at New Style or ACMC until the Charity Commission investigation is concluded, perhaps if you'd been patient and waited until such time, you would have submitted a more informed and more intelligently written article which doesn't alienate the community you are/were(?) a part of.
You've used your platform to kick us when we're down, yet in your article you say you have class. It's really not in evidence, Veron.
AM
Well, Ava!
Phew!
Why not read the blog (it's not a column, dear) again, with more care and less prejudice, you will realise that your rant really misses several points.
What I hope to achieve is that greater impetus is put behind moving NSR to a place where it should be after nearly six years on air. Are you honestly saying that all is well there and things have improved since you joined?
My time with NSR - and its forerunner Community Radio Training - stretches back far longer than yours so please remember that I am privvy to information you have not heard or choose to overlook. I brought my time with NSR to an end and have no interest in coming back (see my note about journalistic sources below) but I still want it to succeed. I'm not so sure it can if your response as a senior staff member is anything to go by.
If you really think that NSR is all it could be now, then you're really not at the place many thought you were. It's one thing trying to make the best of a difficult situation but it's quite another to act as though the situation isn't bad at all.
For starters, ask yourself (and answer it truthfully) why the Charity Commission is in there in the first place? I bet your source didn't tell you that they didn't mention that investigation was ongoing during our meeting! Now that is "unbalanced and uniformed" journalism, using unreliable sources that are easily identifiable.
Please Ava, save your energy for helping make NSR what we both know it can be. From what I’ve just read, you’re going to need every bit of strength you can get.
If I'm so wrong, I'm sure you'll get NSR back on the right road in now time?
To quote Tupac Shakur, "I ain't mad at ya!"
V