ABSTRACT
Since the 1990 Broadcasting Act scores of new radio stations, nearly all of them commercial, have come on air at national, regional and local level. Yet the growth of the medium has masked its uncertain health. The choice of listening is huge and there is a boom in radio advertising, but the audience is spreading ever more thinly – the popularity of the medium is static or even slightly in decline. Moreover only Radio 4 survives as a reminder of the range and plenitude that individual networks once offered, a fine relic of the old Reithian values yet one which, because it is not television, seldom figures in the debate about the BBC and public service broadcasting.
