Hinckley has two radio stations which could be classed as community media, Fosse 107 and Castle Mead Radio. Fosse Radio serves the Hinckley, Nuneaton and Loughborough areas. They have an events diary with events scheduled such as the Earl Shilton Age UK Craft Fair, the Stoke Golding Snowman Festival and many others.

Events Diary

The station is available via a live stream on the TuneIn app on iOS and Android. And there are of course many music slots in their programme. The station is also linked to international topics such as an article where the 60 year old celebrity Dame Emma Thompson gives a gloomy climate forecast at the London Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019. At a rally in front of BBC’s Broadcasting House in central London she told climate change activists that the world is heading for long lasting and irreversible change.

For those of you expecting a habitable future, we have some pretty gloomy projections for you – Dame Emma Thompson

The station’s revenue stems from commercials. They invite the community to get in touch if they want mentioning on air and talk about their events. This aspect is perhaps the most obvious community engagement.

Listener Engagement

Fosse 107 have a mobile friendly, clear and functional website as well as a Twitter presence since 2016 with 655 followers.

Fosse Radio on Twitter

Christmas Price Draw

The station has teamed up with local business who offer prices and surprises throughout the festive season. Participating businesses range from sports massage to a beauty clinic, a domestic and commercial blinds installation service, the Great Central Railway, the Bedworth Civic Hall for entertainment bookings and many others. The to be winners have to listen to the station to retrieve a secret password. The winner for that day is drawn from the pool of registered participants and has to be able to come into the station and receive the hand delivered price on air. I found this to be an excellent way to increase listener participation and involvement.

Fosse 107 have two stations, namely Hinckley and Nuneaton and Loughborough. For the Coffee Break broadcast in the morning listeners can apply to hear three of their favourite, chosen songs. This is another brilliant way of involving listeners and have some interaction with them.

Coffee Break Program

The station has of course also a news service with local as well as national news. The story of Fosse 107 or Fosseway Radio goes back all the way to 1981 when four local lads used an attic space to record programmes for friends and family.

Local News Channel

The station has 13 presenters and runs four shows, with one of them being the Night Shift, which runs from 12am to 6am.

Castle Mead Radio is a Hospital radio station which broadcasts to local hospitals. It provides music, talk and entertainment to staff, patients and visitors of the hospitals. Like Fosse Radio it is also available on the TuneIn mobile app. It was established in 1990 and broadcasts since 2011 on the Internet. In fact Castle Mead Radio was instrumental of helping Fosse Radio to establish itself by renting out its studio facilities in 1996. Paul Gardner describes the history of the station in an article of the Hinckley Times of 2015 entitled ’15 years of the UK’s smallest station’.

“I really hope that the station can win another award this year following on from last year’s silver award for best specialist music programme hosted by Madeline  Langham. It is going down well with the patients who find a bit of background music rather than a TV is more enjoyable.” – Station manager Paul Gardner

Castle Mead Radio is Britain’s smallest hospital radio station. It started in 1981 when a group of friends built a small studio in their loft. Later the station was moved to a medical storeroom within the hospital. The setup was simple with two turntables, a cassette deck and a CD player, all state-of-the-art at the time. With advances of technology Castle Mead Radio Can now be heard all over the world via their internet streaming service, however, their priority is still the patients and staff at the hospital.

The Hinckley Times newspaper was established in 1889. It has a presence on Twitter but has no Wikipedia entry.

The Hinckley Times on Twitter