Local voices, lasting strategies: GTFM radio and the sustainability of UK community media

Recently, the issue of community media sustainability has attracted an increasing amount of attention among media scholars worldwide. The ways in which media sustainability is being discussed in this context have changed markedly, widening the debate to encompass aspects such as participation, diversity, organizational structures, respect for the environment, technological innovation and community service. However, in the United Kingdom the evolution of the community media sector around ambiguous concepts such as ‘access’ and ‘social gain’ has shaped the sector into a neutral, non-specific area, devoid of a clearly recognizable stance in relation to commercial and public media. In turn, sustainability has centred around funding and competition for scarce resources. This article joins recent contributions in UK literature by authors such as Coleman and Padfield in calling for a clear understanding of community media as an alternative to state and market broadcasters and link community engagement and social capital to sustainability as a whole. This article takes as its point of departure an extensive literature review on the topic of community media sustainability, examining the latter as inextricably linked to its social role and proposing a multi-layered approach to the concept that incorporates areas such as technological and environmental sustainability to more traditional takes on the subject. A case-study methodology is used to engage with the experience of Welsh community radio station GTFM over a number of years. Currently covering significant areas of the Rhondda, Cynon and Taf valleys in Wales (RCT), with a potential audience of approximately 165,000 people, the case of GTFM illustrates the ways in which sustainable strategies based on cooperation, such as shared local newsrooms, a clear focus on local volunteers, collaborative approaches to fundraising or pooling technological resources, might play an integral part in the strategies used by community media to achieve sustainability.