A WAR of words has broken out between two of the island’s radio stations.
The first salvo was delivered by Juan Turner MLC, founder and engineering director of Energy FM, who accused Manx Radio of being a ‘failing’ operation as it relied on government subvention.
He told the Radio Today website: ‘The Isle of Man Government own Manx Radio and pump almost £1 million pounds a year annual subsidy in to the failing station’.
But Manx Radio boss Anthony Pugh hit back in another article on the same website. He pointed out that Manx Radio has remained within the top five British stations as measured by audience ‘reach’ and has won the Best Station of the Year Award in the North West for three of the last five years.
Mr Turner’s criticism of Manx Radio came as Energy FM completed it move into 3FM’s studio on Victoria Street where the two stations will share news, sales and administration.
He said it was ‘inevitable’ the two stations would share resources. He accused the government of making it deliberately difficult to compete and claimed it was an ‘outrage’ that a BBC licence fee rebate had gone to Manx Radio.
Mr Turner said the Department of Home Affairs provided free of charge transmission, including all site rental, electricity, and hardware renewal, at no cost to Manx Radio. And he told Radio Today that Manx Radio’s headquarters had been refurbished with ‘state of the art studios that Radio 2 would be proud of – again at no cost to Manx Radio.’
But Mr Pugh confirmed that Manx Radio transmits via DHA transmitters. He said the subvention had been cut by the same amount as the BBC refund so that the station had not received financial benefit from the rebate. He said Manx Radio had contributed to the refurbishment of its studios, funded by a government capital grant.