PCRL Bulletin

We went off the air in 1989 for 6 Months as part of the remit to apply for a legal licence and during that time produced a magazine to keep the listeners informed about what was happening and to thank them for their support, local black businesses advertised in here. (Buzz FM got the licence and failed to get advertisers and was later sold for £1)

(The first of many letters recieved Jan 1989) 

Dear Sir or Madam

As a white member of the Birmingham community and a lover of soul and reggae music, I would like to pledge my support for PCRL and let you know how important it is to me and many people in the Birmingham area.

Many radio stations try to cover a wide breath of musical tastes with little success, they produce hour length shows full of charts or popular tunes, so as to get large audiences and in turn larger grants to keep them going. The DJ's are old, out of touch and totally unrepresentative compared to the audience they serve. The two radio stations in our area which are legal although I sometimes wonder why, BPMB and WM play very little so-called black music if any at all. Therefore as PCRL provides a radio station which fills a gap in the market as well as providing a community service, I am unable to understand why it hasn't yet been given the legal status that it deserves
.
In contrast to other radio stations it caters to a specific audience, and cares little about the rating figures it receives, its appeal now, however, has gone far beyond this. The music it plays vary's from soul to hip hop to ragamuffin and although it covers a large spectrum of music from various origins the shows, usually of two hours are always free, fun packed and perfectly put together with music from the present, past, street level and chart sounds. The variety of sounds never disappoint and unlike other radio stations they know their limits and never try to cover to much ground all in one show. The presenters do a brilliant job, they try to involve their listeners as much as possible, The shows they create are fun, silly, informative, serious and thought provoking . e.g the late night discussion programme.]

The station is community based and it serves its audience the best it can, from letting its listeners know the situation of the buses, to famous events and people in black history, a topic which is not taught at school. Other examples of ways it serves the community is in the parties it organises and inform us of, the recent sponsored walk it organised for the Jamaican hurricane disaster; a disaster which we first heard about via PCRL, and the connections it has with community based projects like the Marcus Garvey Foundation and The Mohammed Ali Centre.

Although everyone will miss PCRL for the time it is of the air, it will be worth it if it recieves the legal status it deserves. So please for me and millions of people in the Midlands, give PCRL the licence it needs to go on broadcasting and so meeting the needs of the community it aims to serve. (Hazel in Solihull)