There has been much media fascination recently on the subject of the internal combustion at community radio station, Bute FM.
Whatever the ins and outs of the situation, it seems to focus on a core alienation between Mike Blair, an experienced broadcaster working as a volunteer presenter at the station and Iain Donald, the younger station manager.
It is sad to see a volunteer community service in such disarray.
The Buteman’s reporting has been characteristically sure-footed, with Editor Craig Borland outlining a difficult personal position, where he and his wife have both been, until a few months ago, volunteers at Bute FM.
This is a real loss. There is a natural symbiosis between a community radio station – with most being music-centred – and a local newspaper. The great strength in Bute was the easy relationship between the two, with Craig Borland doing a Thursday slot on Mike Blair’s breakfast show on Bute FM, talking about upcoming news stories in The Buteman – with a friendship built n the process.
This has been a mutually supportive collaboration of an exemplary kind we need to see more of in Argyll.
However, in the current situation, the Borlands felt they had no choice but to walk away from the station. This productive relationship has become a substantial piece of collateral damage of the situation that has become inflamed at the radio station.
Same sort of things are happening at Dunoon FM too apparently!
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For Opinion: We’re aware of some upset there as well.
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Your article on Bute Fm should have included that, “as well as Mike Blair and The Borlands, at least thirteen other presenters, all of whom are volunteers, have resigned in protest at the way the station is being run by the 14.5k per year station manager.” That is, 14.5k of public funding.
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For Chris: You are quite right to note this significant volume of departure. Our reason for focusing as we did was that the general interest in the fact of the schism was blurring an unusually intelligent and developmental partnership between a local newspaper and a local radio station. We have seen this as being much to the credit of The Buteman’s editor, Craig Borland.
Too much of Argyll is still locked in the old-style fortress mentality of doing business. This sees individual businesses operating in isolation behind a defensive mindset that looks at the rest of the world as competition and repel advances as Trojan horses.
The 21st Century game is collaboration not isolation. The more that all players in any field of business work together to raise the profile of the field they play in, the more that field itself becomes the focus of public awareness and interest – and the more each individual player benefits from the shared identity of success.
It’s about the creation of a powerful common brand.
That collaboration harms no one and benefits all concerned is a no-brainer. It is to The Buteman’s credit that its editor led the way in recognising this. We mourn the loss of this initiative as part of the collateral damage of the row at Bute FM – the scale of which you have underlined, Chris, in your addition.
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interesting blog over the whole Bute FM matter – http://whattheheraldarticledidntsay.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-herald-article-didnt-say.html
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I recommend anyone who is interested in the truth of this story to look at the link above. It certainly fits in with what I have been told.
In the Herald article it states that ‘ Ms Haggerty was asked to sign a voluntary agreement…… She chose to resign from her show ‘. What she was asked to sign was Ofcom’s Statutory Voluntary agreement on stardards on Air. She refused on the grounds of freedom of speech so therefore could no longer be a presenter.
I have also heard that one of the people in the Herald photograph will be returning to the station in the next couple of weeks.
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Perhaps the ‘ Schism ‘ isn’t as wide as you would have us believe. The Buteman is still printing Bute Fm’s weeky schedule.
New shows begining….Focus on Folk yesterday afternoon ( Sunday, 1 – 3 pm ) was excellent.
New presenters coming on board in the next few weeks.
The Ofcom regulator satisfied with the way things have been handled.
Mike Blair’s fire seems to have blown itself out. R.I.P.
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The lateset listening figures indicate that the number of people listening to Bute FM on line has greatly increased since the Mike Blair tantrum.
Figures for August were 7240, up from a 6 month average of 3783.
Bute FM now going out, on line to 39 countries.
New heavy metal show started last night.
Keep up the good work !
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It appears that the real reason for Mike Blair’s removal from Bute FM and Craig Borland’s involvement in this matter is starting to filter out.
It seems, in an attempt to force the Station Manger out and therefore take over the running of the station, Mike Blair removed confidential files from the station office and passed them to the Editor of the Buteman, who wrote an article which was to appear on the front page.
Hours before the paper was to got to press the Editor sent a list of questions to the station Manger.
Given the nature of the questions the information could only have come from certain confidential files, which only a very small number of people would have access to.
He contacted the Butemans owner and spoke to a director, also copying the questions to him. This director agreeded that this infomation should not be made public, contacted the Buteman and told the Editor not to print the article.
A few days later Mike Blair was removed and then Craig Borland also left the station.
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For Richard Klein: If we assume that all of this is correct, it is damaging for both sides in this conflict – because the files in question would have been removed improperly by Mr Blair; and would have contained material damaging to the Station Manager.
Since the key thing is the healthy continuation of Bute FM as a worthwhile and valued community service, perhaps the wise response to your interesting information would be the declaration of a dishonourable draw?
Is there any mileage in recruiting the services of a skilled facilitator / arbitrator? Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather, has all the skills, experience and philosophy of multiple truths that could help to resolve the situation for the station. It might be worth asking him if he would be prepared to act in this way.
The important thing is the service the station offers Bute – and that transcends the interest of any individual concerned.
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Newsroom – I, and I know that the station Manger and everyone now at the station, would totally agreed with your comment about a draw of some kind, and that folk should just move on with their lives. But It would seem that Mike Blair and Co are not of the same mind set.
Last Wedensday night they made a One sided presentation to the Bute Community Council and has a result the Secretary of BCC is to write to Ofcom raising concens about the running of the station.
This presentation certainly raises questions in my mind that the CC in being used to further an MB’s agenda for the simple reason that Peter Wallace, one of the 7 presenters who left the station with Mike is also the Secretary of the CC.
Questions…
a) Was Peter Wallace aware that the presentation was going to take place. If so, why was the Station Manger not invited to put his side of the story. It was not listed has an agenda item and I find it very difficult to believe he did not know before hand.
b) Why did Peter Wallace not declare an interest at the start of the presentation.
c) Why did Peter Wallace not inform the CC that he had already written to Ofcom himself and that their reply was that, given ALL the information, they were satisfied with the running of the Station.
I have aslo been told that Mike Blair has recently been sending threating and abusive E-mails to one of the station’s 16 year old presenters. His Mother has kepted the E-mails and has threaten, via Facebook, that if he did not stop they would call the police.
It is sad to say but there is no point in arbitration because Mike Blair and Co do not want to talk. Mike Blair wants to run Bute FM full stop, and Ian Donald does not figure in that plan. They are conducting a campaign ( especially on Facebook ) which appears to have taken over there lives and they seem not to know when to, or more possibily, how to stop.
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For Richard Klein: This is a procedural point, Richard and it may or may not be germane.
Did the Community Council have or seek a presentation from the Station Manager?
If they did not, they cannot be said to be acting properly in the interests of the community.
Raising concerns with Ofcom, the industry regulator, before they have, heard and investigated both sides of the issue would be improper and would show poor judgment.
Also, it is not ipossible that after hearing and investigating both arguments, they would come to a reasoned conclusion which might be better served by not going near Ofcom.
Flagging a local dispute to the regulator is not a smart move unless something extremely serious can be proven to have happened.
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The Community Council did not have a presentation from the Station Manger or have they asked for one before coming to their decsion. I myself spoke to the Station Manger on the Thursday and recomended that he invite the Chair of the Community Council to the station to see its workings, to answer any questions and to address any concerns, which he intends to do.
What disappoints me is that Peter Wallace has already written to the regulator ( has a x presenter ) and recieved an answer which he appears not to be happy with and is trying to use the Community Council to obtain a different answer.
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For Richard Klein: From any perspective, this has been a very foolish sequence of actions and far from being in the wider interests of the community on Bute.
It is also politically naive.
Political reality dictates that it is the official relationship that is protected by the establishment, except in the most serious of cases. So we are not surprised if the response from Ofcom to the complainant was not what he had hoped to see.
It is disappointing that a Community Council should feel it appropriate to externalise this sort of local schemozzle to the level of the regulator and before hearing facts and arguments on both sides of the dispute.
It makes Bute look like a collection of hysterics who cannot solve their own problems. In our book, this is unwise and unhelpful.
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From my perspective the station has tried to mantain a digified silence while the story ran its course but there comes a point when you have to stand up for yourself and give your side of the events, which I have tried to do via your good graces.
I suspect, and hope, this will be Mike Blair and Co’s last throw of the dice and the answer the CC gets from Ofcom will be no different from the answer they gave peter Wallace first time around and everyone can just move on.
Pherhaps you, For Argyll, would consider an inviation to visit the Station to see for yourself now much it is doing for the Commuity. There is a date that comes to mind. On Friday 1st October, Mike Russell MSP, will be on the Talkback show between 2 – 3.45pm, if you could come up about 1 – 1.30.
I would have to get this confrimed by the Station Manger but I am sure that would not be a problem.
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For Richard Klein: We’re going to be completely transparent on this, Richard.
We are touched by the invitation and of course we are interested in Bute FM. Its contribution to its community has been a lively, embedded and welcomed one – and that is a very real achievement.
We have two immediate concerns, one focuses on the station, one on ourselves – and in a way, they relate to each other.
In our view, the most constructive action the station can take at this stage is quietly, with focus and no fuss, to get back to work in serving the community with the great programmes you successfully deliver.
A ‘business as usual’ stance will calm the horses.
If we were to accept your interesting invitation now, it would look as if the station was still in campaign mode and that we were taking sides. Neither of these perspectives would be fair to either of us or helpful to anyone.
We also have real respect for The Buteman and for Craig Borland, its editor, who is a man with real integrity. Were we to visit the station just now it would look like the sort of mischief making we don’t do.
Within a small community, whose commitment to what it does is energetic – and within the much smaller community of a volunteer service like Bute FM, everyone can quickly get drawn into the superheated experience where perspective goes AWOL. This incident seems to have been a bit of a bushfire and the restoration of normal working temperatures will be constructive.
We would love to see as much of this as possible simply put away – to see as many of those who left return to the station, welcomed in a context where everyone looked on the war as an unfortunate piece of increasingly distant history and got on with making Bute FM sing again.
Of course, there will be relationships that cannot be healed and trusts that cannot be restored – but those may be minimal. Where they exist, those involved must accept responsibility for their personal contribution to the bushfire and stay silent, learning what is there to be learned and leaving others in a position to do so to restore the service to normality without delay. Anything other than this would be putting individual ego before the common good.
The big lesson to be learned is never to become factionalised, however comfortable membership of such cliques may be, however delicious the conspiracies may become and however large a threat the elected demons assume.
The balance of life is that we all simultaneously matter and don’t matter. Each of us needs to find our own way along this tightrope – and we all fall off it regularly.
The one security we have is to be good at what we do and to work to be even better. The rest is fluff and distraction.
We will be delighted to focus on the work of Bute FM in its community and will welcome an invitation to do so – but on a future occasion, not far off, when this will all be distant drums.
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Your perfectly valid point regarding the invitation is taken on board and I am sure we will be able to revisit this at a later date.
For the here and now – leassons have been learned from this sad event, changes are being made and new practices for dispute resolutaion are now being put into place.
And has for the station itself – Listening figures are up, on-line to 39 counties, new shows and new presenters, live on air 24 hours a day, the only Commuity Radio Station to do so in the UK.
Looking forward to a poistive future.
Thank you for listening.
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For Richard Klein: Those are fabulously encouraging performances at the station, Richard. Congratulations all round. This means you must have live shows through the night- some stations automate. Great stuff.
And thank you for talking – with the discretion and responsibility you have shown. Speaks volumes.
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My name is Angela Haggerty, and I am the former presenter of the Have Your Say programme.
I have just come across the comments on this website, and feel I must post to correct many innacuracies and defend myself (again) over speculation. What I will post here are facts – it is up to everybody else to make up their own minds.
Firstly, the blog link that has been posted has missed out an extremely large bulk of most of the important information and taken my quotes wildly out of context. I can only speak for my own quotes, but I was quite disappointed to find ‘bits’ of what I’d said at various different times in relation to various different aspects have been either stuck together or applied to the wrong point – not too impressive!
Secondly, I was told to sign the ‘voluntary’ agreement, and was told if I did not it would be taken as a resignation.
I still have the email from Station Manager, Mr Iain Donald, stating this, if newsroom would like to see it.
Also, the document I was asked to sign, was absolutely NOT a standard voluntary Ofcom agreement of any kind.
Again, if newsroom would like to see it, I can email you a copy. Ofcom also have been made aware of this document.
As for the Herald photograph, none of the ex-presenters in that photograph have returned to the station.
Quick note before I go any further, Ofcom are still investigating Bute Fm currently.
On to the next point – Community Council!
I was one of several ex-presenters to attend the meeting in question, and I spoke initially to the council, introducing our concerns. It was then duly discussed, and a copy of the minutes can be found at:
http://www.isle-of-bute.org.uk/council/docs.shtml
Peter Wallace, I can confirm, DID declare an interest and took absolutely no part in the discussion.
Some of the concerns raised at the Community Council meeting were that Bute Fm has so far failed to meet many of the obligations set out in its application to Ofcom.
Iain Donald, Station Manager, was, at my time of resignation certainly, a director of the company, secretary of the company, the only member of the Bute Fm steering group, and the only salaried employee.
Bute Fm is a company that claimed it would have an elected board of directors, by its members. So far, there has been no membership scheme to the company.
After the removal of director Mike Blair, Iain Donald then appointed his father, Mr Alan Donald, on to the board of directors, and a Mrs Mary Carroll, who apparently deals with Bute Fm’s accounts (none of which have been released into the public domain so far).
It is also worth noting that the removal of Mike Blair took place at an AGM that nobody was allowed to attend – no memebers of the public, no media and no volunteers. No explanation has been given for this. There was also no financial report at the AGM.
All of these points raised a number of questions about how successfully the station is being run.
Unfortunately, Bute Fm refused to open any form of dialogue on these points. In those circumstances, it is fairly normal practice to take concerns to other people or bodies of relevance who may be able to help – Ofcom, Local councillors or politicians, Community Council… there is nothing surprising or questionable about any of those forms of action.
From a personal point of view, and I will not speak on behalf of anyone else here, only myelf, the idea that I want to take over or run Bute Fm is absolute nonsense!
I am 24 years old, I am training to be a journalist, I have a whole host of plans for the future (most of which, incidentally, do not involve even being in Scotland never mind on Bute!) and all I ever wanted to do at Bute Fm was do something positive for the Community, learn something in the process and actually have a bit of fun.
There was no conspiracy… 16 people in total have resigned from Bute Fm, and I can speak for them and myself when I say that I know how much every one of us is missing it.
Why any of this had to happen is beyond me. Six months ago I wouldn’t have believed it even could happen.
Bute Fm is a new station, and all new projects take time in getting off the ground and getting everything right and moving in the right direction. What I don’t understand is why Bute Fm completely shut the doors on anybody that asked a question.
On my show, we made an ever so big fuss about transparency and honesty with the Community, it was called ‘Have Your Say’ and it was supposed to be the Community’s opportunity to do just that, on their Community radio station.
After everything that happened, there is no way I could have continued to do that show with a clear conscience or any credibility after finding out that Bute Fm was not only not meeting its obligations, it was refusing point blank to speak with anyone about it (I’m not talking enquiries here, I’m talking simple straight forward questions) and treating people really rather questionably when they expressed concern.
The whole sorry episode has left me a little devastated actually, it’s something I worked very hard for and enjoyed very much, and at one time, it really was bringing everybody together.
As a journalist, I ask questions of things. Just to clarify, I do not want, and never have wanted to, run Bute Fm, or have any position of power at all within it. I was just quite happy just plodding along doing my show, all I did was ask a few questions…
Sorry for the ramble, but I feel it’s important that some of these points be taken on board. And, newsroom, as I say, if you would like to see any of the documents I have mentioned, I will gladly forward them to you.
Richard, the same goes for you, if you’d like to see the evidence for the things I’m saying, I will happily send it.
Angela Haggerty
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For Angela Haggerty: The first thing to be said is that this account has, in it objectivity, its distance from score settling and its patent triuthfulness, real integrity. From where we stand, the loss to the Bute community of ability like this is a painful one to witness.
The next thing to say is that we assume that your distress has not been caused by our article but by the comments appended to it.
In regretting the loss of the relationship between the community newspaper and the community radio station, which was the focus of our article, we were taking no sides in the issue.
It is clear that this has been an equally undisciplined clash of very different personalities where both egos concerned forgot the bigger picture – which is that it is the community that matters.
The cost of that spat is the loss of people like you to the service that Bute FM made available.
We agree unequivocally with you that it is the mature course of action to seek objective external counsel and adjudication in situations like this and it is a great pity that this process was not given a chance by all concerned.
The best mediator we have seen in action is our own MSP, Jim Mather – because he asks people to identify causes and solutions simultaneously, with all parties in the same room at the same time – and his own obvious benevolence sets the tone of the engagement.
We suggest that Bute FM and its community seek his help in this. He will not be able to offer it unless he is invited to do so by both sides of the divide – but each can be confident that he is non-partisan (he is leaving politics at the next election so that he can engage on a non-partisan basis); and that he will simply want to see an equitable and mutually agreed way out of this unnecessary mess.
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I am one of the sixteen volunteers who resigned from ButeFM. I do not belong to any group referred to as “Blair & Co.” I am a retired businessman who used to present a short programme of light classical music on Bute FM. I resigned because I was unhappy about certain aspects of the running of the station. I have never had any personal quarrel with Iain Donald.
When he received my resignation his response was “Duly Noted”. Mr Donald never, at any time, tried to discover what the trouble was. He never contacted me in any way. Like others, I am disillusioned that my contribution to the station which brought me, and many of my listeners, great pleasure was held so cheaply by its management.
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For Peter Hamilton: There are very real management issues here – around key matters like respect for the contribution of the volunteers, each of whom makes the service what it is.
This sounds like what we would describe as ‘siege’ behaviour. Only you will know whether, at the point of your own resignation, there was any reason – self-inflicted or externally generated – for the Station Manager to be in ‘siege’ mode; or whether this is generally his MO.
Did your resignation come in the middle of the others and might a besieged Station manager have had little option but to see it as another of the same?
Is he younger than you? This can make less confident people feel insecure and can produce the sort of unhelpful brusqueness you describe, particularly in the face of a resignation from someone with your business expertise and experience.
There has to be a way out of this impasse and all sides agreeing to an externally moderated meeting is the best way to go.
Everyone would have to go into such a meeting agreeing to leave the past behind – there is absolutely no point in reheating history and none in seeking to apportion blame.
Everyone will privately have learned lessons from what has happened. It is wise to leave those lessons in that private place, so that, in planning for a collective future at a great community radio station, everyone has room to bring those personal lessons to bear in what they do from now on.
What is important is for everyone – on all sides – to be open and objective about the conditions in which they can work and in which they cannot work.
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I very much agree that the whole situation should be examined by an impartial arbitrator. The whole idea of personality conflicts should be completely rejected. It is the public here in Rothesay which should be given prime consideration. The only reason for my note was that so many people have stopped me in the street to say they miss my programme. This applies eqaully, I am sure, to all of the ex-presenters. My gradual disenchantment with the management of ButeFM originated with their somewhat brutal rejection of my suggestion that there should be more transparency regarding funds and their disposal. Subsequently, the failure to pay our prizes for their Lottery left me angry and embarassed. I had sold numbers to a few of my personal friends to help support the station. The whole situation is so sad. I wonder if it is really possible (or desirable) to try to take things back to where they were a year ago. Once trust and enthusiasm have gone, can they ever by replaced?
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For Peter Hamilton: Your doubt that things could be returned to what they were is well found. This is never possible – it’s the myth of the golden age.
What has to be done is to build a new future based on those who want to be part of it, whoever they are – leaving the past behind and with everyone being open about in which they see that new relationships based on trust, collaboration and teamwork might grow.
Good teamwork drives the best of everything and anything delivered through voluntary effort needs good teamwork and mutual respect above all things.
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