My local radio station (Rother FM)

Name: micksheff

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Product:	Rother FM
Date:	05/04/08 (121 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Local news and local DJ's

Disadvantages: Limited broadcasting area

Rother FM is a local independent radio station in South Yorkshire, which as its name suggests, serves Rotherham and the surrounding area of South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire. Over the past few months this has become my choice of radio station in my workplace.

Launched in the October of 2006 this is the newest radio station in my region and one that I stumbled upon by chance last June. I remember the first time that I tuned into Rother FM very clearly. It was the day that South Yorkshire was deluged by its worst floods in living history. I work in Rotherham but live in Sheffield and desperately needed to find a route between my workplace and home that was still open.

Until a few years ago just two radio stations dominated South Yorkshire, namely BBC Radio Sheffield (established 1967) and the independent Hallam FM (established 1974). On the day of the floods both of these stations were too busy reporting the chaos in Sheffield to bother about what was happening in Rotherham. As rumours quickly spread that the whole region was becoming submerged beneath water a colleague advised me to tune to Rother FM as they had all the latest information on the roads in Rotherham. I later discovered that this same information was also available in a more detailed format on their website.

I am not sure why but after that day the radio in my workplace was never re-tuned back to radio Hallam and so my friendship with Rother FM began.

I have to say that my experience with Rother FM only spans Mondays to Fridays between around 8am and 5pm. I have never tuned in at home. In fact I am not even certain that it reaches as far out to the other side of Sheffield where I live but I am sure that it does. It is not a conscious thing but when I am home, surrounded by TV and Internet I seldom think about putting a radio on.

My Rother FM day begins with Richard Lee. He does their breakfast show and is on from 6am until 10am so I generally catch the latter half of his programme, although often during the day the radio is more or less background noise and my ears only prick up when I hear something that interests me.

At 10am Richard Lee hands over to Joe Sentence. Like many radio stations Rother FM has a news bulletin on the hour throughout the day and this serves to separate the two presenters. If I am honest however there is very little difference between the presenting styles of these two DJ's or the third one, James Marriot, who is on air from 3pm until 7pm. Each of these three presenters has a strong local accent and a nice laid back approach to their shows.

I like the fact that each of the presenters is local and they talk constantly about the local area. It is nice to be familiar with the places that they are talking about. This is also true about the adverts too, which are usually for local well-known businesses. Since Rother FM is a commercial station and makes most of its money through advertising there are regular adverts but these never appear to be too excessive.

Throughout the day in addition to the news bulletins there are also regular traffic reports and weather reports. Last week on the day that Rotherham United Football Club went into administration they had a reporter outside the ground the moment that the news was announced and within minutes they were giving feedback of the news from the listeners. This sort of instant rescheduling is something that would rarely happen with larger radio stations that lack the flexibility of smaller, independent ones like Rother FM.

This flexibility is also evident in the music that they play. In addition to the mainstream chart music that gets played Rother FM also plays a fair selection of older tracks from the 1960's, 70's, 80's and 90's. They also support local bands and regularly play old tracks from the local bands like The Human League, ABC, Thompson Twins, Pulp and Heaven 17. They are currently playing ABC's new "comeback" single, which is not picking up a lot of support elsewhere.

Rother FM also has regular features. These include a feature where listeners have to guess the year from songs played and snippets of news that are read out, this particular feature is entitled "The time of your life" and continues throughout the whole day, with the answer not being revealed until the following morning. Another competition that runs throughout the day is called "The Riddle" where listeners have to guess what is being described.

Overall I like Rother FM and find that its laid back approach appeals to me; maybe I am just getting old. But with over 37,000 regular listeners this is currently one of the fasting growing radio stations in the UK.

Summary: A local independent radio station in South Yorkshire