Results tagged “community” from Birmingham Mail - Veron Graham

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.