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Radio Sangam rapped for “sponsored” news

An Asian community radio station based in Huddersfield has landed in hot water with Ofcom for broadcasting news with a sponsor tag.

A complainant alerted Ofcom to the station’s sponsored news output, which he considered to be in breach of the Code. The following pre-recorded sponsorship credit (i.e. a commercial reference) was broadcast on Radio Sangam before every clock hour from 28 October to 9 December 2016: “On the hour, every hour, this is Radio Sangam national and international news, in association with Haji Jewellers, [address] – providers of jewellery for all occasions – telephone, [number]”.

This was followed on each clock hour by News, comprising national and international news provided by an independent source.

The radio station in response said it had made a verbal agreement with Haji Jewellers that, in return for the company making a contribution to the cost of acquiring the news from an independent source, the station “would acknowledge their support once an hour” on air. It said that, “having read and fully understood Rule 10.3 of the code, [it] believe[d] that this did not comply with the Rule”. Communities Together added that “this was a genuine oversight of this rule and came about due to misinformation about promos and jingles from a highly regarded broadcasting organisation in the UK who were acting as a consultant to [the station] during [its] first year of broadcasting”. The Licensee said it was “taking this up as a legal matter with this organisation, separately to this investigation”.

Ofcom said that guidance to Section Ten of the Code states that “sponsored programming is programming … that has had some or all of its costs met by a sponsor…”. A formal arrangement for a third party – in this instance, Haji Jewellers – to contribute specifically to the cost of acquiring the news from an independent source meets this definition. News, broadcast hourly on Radio Sangam, was therefore sponsored and a
commercial reference – in this instance, a sponsorship credit – was broadcast before news bulletins. The content was therefore in breach of Rule 10.3 of the Code.