less the n less than ten weeks ahead of the elections on the 6th of may. ministers in england launch a campaign to reassure parents it's safe for children to return to the classroom. festival organisers call on the government for more support to ensure events can take place this summer. now on bbc news, the media show. a spat between the australian government and facebook resulted in the silicon valley giant blocking every news organisation from their platform in australia. but what does this display of might from facebook mean for other countries preparing to take on big tech? plus the boss of new station boom radio on whether niche, age—based services are the future of radio.

hello. down with this obsession with youth — how about we obsess over older people instead 7 baby boomers, for instance. after all, they're in the habit of actually watching and listening to linear telly and radio, and some of them even have money to spend after watching or listening to adverts. so goes the thinking behind a new radio station. no, not a digital platform available via smart devices, this is a real, actual radio station on dab. it's called boom radio, it's aimed at boomers, and its founderjoins us live. meanwhile, over the past week there has been a massive beef between australia's government and facebook, leading to the social media giant blocking every news organisation from their platform in australia. but what does this display of might from facebook mean for other countries readying themselves to regulate big tech, including britain? that's all in today's media show.

let me introduce you to our guests. david lloyd is the brains behind boom radio. he's also a presenter on the station and has been in an executive in the commercials sector for years. david, i should say congratulations for getting a radio station off the ground. quite an achievement in a pandemic — how on earth did you manage to do it? 0h, it'sjust crazy, isn't it? i mean, we're running it on a handful of people, and i'm sitting here, you know, the heart of the radio station — this is where my sock drawer used to be. we've got presenters across the country broadcasting from their attics and bedrooms. but we've done it. you know, we've got this new radio station on air serving people who are over 60 — and what's wrong with that? you say sock drawer, so you are in your bedroom right now — this is the beating heart of boom radio? yes. my husband's three rooms away, the cable's dangling over the architraves to get there and we're running this national radio station now. so, how big is a station that you've

got off the ground in a pandemic? well, how big is it... as, i mean, in terms of the audience you're gonna say millions, but in terms of the number of people you've got working on it? we've probably got about 15 presenters and they're all working from their own homes. and, you know, it'sjust been great because some of these presenters were still doing some work. others weren't, you know, 70—, 80—year—olds probably at their finest as authentic communicators, but actually weren't doing any work. and there was one we were trying to get sorted out, we'd installed the kit — they hadn't used any sort of, hadn't had a computer in the house, actually, had a smartphone, no computer. we got them set up, we did a dry run, and i rang them up to say, "that was great." and they burst into tears and said, "you don't know how much that means to me." aw! so, you know, this story is notjust a story about the listeners. it's a story of, you know, us, a group of near—pensioners getting together and doing the sort of great marigold hotel and saying, "come on, we can have our own radio station, surely!" well, good on you. it's quite an achievement. we're going to dig into your strategy but congratulations on getting it off the ground.

that ah that you just heard, that exhalation was from gillian reynolds, a, i think it's fair to say, legendary figure in the world of radio, and with good reason. she spent seven years as the radio critic at the guardian, a mere 42 years at the daily telegraph, and was, not so long ago, poached by the sunday times. what have you been listening to this week, gillian? i've been listening to an awful lot of music radio because david didn't like what i wrote about his radio station. no! so, i thought i will be fair to him, iwill tune around. ituned around. i listen to an awful lot of music radio this week and i'm still pondering it. but i want to congratulate david for having got himself onto dab, because i couldn't hear you on any of the dab radio sets i have all around my house, my flat. i could only get you on my oldest tuner, and today up you came on the radio dial. great. we've been there all the time, gillian. no, you haven't. we have! you haven't. no, i think you must have rushed out and paid the rent. listen, if you guys are going to have an argument, save it for about seven or eight minutes from now because we are

going to talk facebook in australia and will come back to your good—natu red discussion shortly. let's look at the big story this week i mentioned at the top. people around the world have watched on in astonishment as facebook has blocked all news pages in australia, briefly from last thursday until tuesday of this week. facebook users in australia couldn't view or share the pages of the sydney morning herald, the guardian or any other of the sydney morning herald, the guardian, the wall streetjournal, or any other news organisation. that ban or that blackout has now been reversed after a deal was reached. latika is our regular contributor with from the sydney morning herald in the age of australian titles but is based here in london. good to see you again. could you just explain the context, please, for this rather complicated for this rather complicated story? what is it that facebook and the australian government were arguing about? so, the australian government has i been trying to introduce a code. i

it's basically legislation that has gone through the parliament, . it's probaly going to be _ rubber—stamped tomorrow morning. what this code would have done i is allow the australian government to designate a tech company. we are only talking i two companies here — that's google and facebook. what that code would have allowed the australian government to do i is force those companies into negotiation with - the established media companies. for example, my masthead is owned by a television channel called nine. i one of the big players _ in the australian media landscape is rupert murdoch's newscorp. at first google and facebook both threatened to withdraw _ their business entirely, - rather than breach what they said was their business model and the open internet, i google eventually came to the table and struck some one—on—one -

deals with my company, i with newscorp and seven our arrival. and facebook was playing i footsie with the companies. it was negotiating all - the time, up to the minute, where it said, "no, we're - going to pull out of australia." as of this morning, i still can post i on my facebook page and each news links was up, so facebook... i come back to the . government and said, "if you make some minor changesl to this code which is basically more mediation time then we will restore news pages." - and so that is the - situation at play now. i should just trust that under this| code, if the tech companies don't negotiate their own deals i with the media companies it would go to arbitration. so the tech companies will be forced to it notjust pay sums of money, . the actual sum would be specified by an independent arbiter. - so this is huge - interventionist policy. and it is basically trying _ to address the monopoly that google and facebook have had i over advertising revenue. gillian, did ijust hear you exhale briefly over at the thought of latika is saying? i'm very impressed, because it's about time someone took them on. because monopolies in any markets are not a good thing.

it's interesting you should say that because, as you can imagine, this incredible news blackout on facebook has been very closely watched by politicians and regulators around the world. in the uk, the people that take our monopolies, the regulator most likely to do something about this is the competition and markets authority and on tuesday, i asked him what his reaction was to facebook pulling the plug on news from australia. i thought it was a symptom of a number of the problems that myself and others think that they are. in the sense that you kind of need monopoly—like power to feel confident that you can take this kind of approach. first of all, it's important to bear in mind this is a democratically—elected parliament, following due process and trying to introduce specific legislation. so it feels to me the bar for a company to decide to go

against a democratically—elected parliament in this way is pretty high. and certainly, i would be worried if something like this happened in the uk. secondly, i think you need to feel pretty confident that your customers cannot have anywhere else to go. in a sense, there was backlash in australia, we can assume a number of people feel very strongly about it. but, you know, the reality is there are ecosystems today in facebook and instagram that are such it's very difficult for people individually to switch away because all of your friends and family are there, and unilaterally, it's very difficult to see, i'm so unhappy about this particular action that i'm going to take a stand and do something different. for me, it's a signal that it's even more urgent, what we are saying that we need to deal with this economic power.

because in many ways, i think this is now also indicative of the degree of, kind of, political power. tech platforms send people traffic. they also donate to journalism charities. would it be from the competition point of view if tech companies paid publishers much more? yeah. it's notjust a competition argument was obviously there is much more aboutjournalism, democracy, i think some of the things we all witnessed the last 12 months, i have given us pause for thought. i think a number of governments and parliaments in major democracies are struggling with this question, which is that the business model for high—quality independent journalism has been struggling for a number of years and this has worsened in recent years. a number of people argue that the bargaining power of the platforms is extremely

strong against publishers and this is creating a number of distortions. i personally am in favour of mechanisms that try to think about what is the right balance. it's complicated. i think the australian approach is a sensible one, which is try to force the companies into proper commercial negotiations with the backstop of possible intervention by a regulator. that's probably one way of doing it. as you probably know, the french are also dealing with it in a slightly different way — they are using the copyright directive. i think a number of people are struggling with the same problem trying to come up with different solutions. in my view, it's very much that the platforms need to be part of the discussion. and this type of approach, this sort of hardball approach, is clearly not helpful. and certainly symptomatic of why there are problems. just to be really clear because this is complex for most people who don't spend every day thinking about these issues and don't you say the australian

approach is sensible. can you explain what is it about the australian approach that you think is sensible? it's trying basically to create a backstop of mediation and arbitration. if the commercial negotiations fail. it's very much trying to convince the platforms and the publishers to try to find a win—win agreement, it's very much trying to convince the platforms and the publishers to try to find a win—win agreement, where there is a fair exchange of money for what is exchanged between the two, but with the backstop that if one of the two sides is unreasonable in the way they approach the problem, ultimately an arbitrator will decide against that. so he said facebook putting out in the way it did and its behaviour was sort of symptomatic of its monopoly power. the chair of the select committee told the bbc he thought the facebook move was bullying. he said pulling the plug on news overnight represents the worst type of corporate culture. what do you make of that? obviously, there are lots of commercial negotiations

where people threaten to pull content. for instance, in the us, as you know, historically, there have been disputes between content providers and cable operators. and there were what are called blackout periods, or at some point they couldn't agree, and the content provider said, "well, that's it, i'm not going to give you my content for the next month." so this happens in terms of commercial negotiation. i think the problem here is that this is in the context of parliament trying to deal with the problem for democracy and for society. and the approach that facebook decided to take was very much a commercial approach, but in many ways kind of against a democratically—elected parliament, which is personally what i find problematic. well, that was a rather outspoken head of the competition and markets authority. you can hear a much longer version of that pretty newsy interview in the media show podcasts, search in the bbc sound app for that. he suggests that facebook

holds a monopoly position in the ecosystem. i seen a graph of the referrals that publishers were getting for social media after facebook�*s blackout and they drop off a cliff. how reliant are australia's news organisations on facebook? i.e., where does the power actually lie? i know at my publication, we made a concerted effort a couple of years ago when facebook announced after the cambridge analytic scandal that was changing its newsfeeds away from articles and ads and things and back to the original intent of facebook, which was people and their friends, and our traffic fell of the cliff then. so we made a concerted effort at that point in time and it was part of our overall editorial strategy anyway which was that actually what we want our subscribers because subscribers are loyal. they appreciate ourjournalism, they support ourjournalism, they are very engaged.

we have a really engaged readership and that model has served us very well. not just to extend this battle, but also in the pandemic. so subscriber model as a focus for us has been quite a good transition. we are quite happy to see what it's like out there if you don't have facebook. so, having a business model based on lots of referrals from facebook is dangerous because, as you say, mark zuckerberg could turn off the tap anytime you like. what has the public made of this in australia? what side are they on? it's a bit mixed. this legislation is bipartisan supported. there is support from the left and right for this code. in terms of the public, it's really interesting. there are a lot of people when this blackout first occurred saying, "wow, facebook is a better experience,"

it's not so shouty, not so full of comments from people who have clearly not read the article they are commenting on. finally, facebook made a huge binder because it didn'tjust turned off news page, are turned off mps, public health authorities pages, it turned out charities. so it really, really over trees. and it looked to the rest of the world and to australians that a big company and silicon valley was bullying little old australia, which isjust trying to make and even kind of go of supporting journalism. little old australia — the first time australians ever been called little. this story is developing fast because former deputy prime minister and britain facebook�*s vice president of global affairs said in a blog today, and i quote, "facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amount of money to multi—national media conglomerates without even so much as a guarantee that it is used to pay forjournalism, let alone support smaller publishers." what does this episode... i mentioned it in that interview — what does this episode reveal about the power of rupert murdoch in australia today? this is a concern.

so, although this is ordered across the parliament, this legislation, there has been a ventilation that this is just a sop to rupert murdoch. this is a conservative government that is putting this legislation through. and the critics of that to say this is basically two tech giants who've disrupted the traditional media model coming along and being forced by government to hand over money to existing media conglomerates that perhaps in the old days might have seen as monopolies and gatekeepers of information and news. so, there is some disquiet. one of the mp5 who've been critical of this, even though he is a labour supporter, he was very well—informed on this and he makes this point, he says as of today we've got google and facebook handing over tens of millions of dollars to these companies. there is so far no obligation and no transparency requirements on those media companies to state how many journalists they will hire with that, how exactly

they will spend that, whether they will just transfer that back immediately to shareholders or not. this is a lot of criticism in australia for top and it's not the case that everybody thinks this is a good form of regulation, even as facebook has misplayed its own hand. thank you so much for now. david, let's bring you in. this reliance on silicon valley must be something that you thought about as you were getting your business plan togetherfor boom radio. given that you are not on fm, presumably you relied quite heavily on amazon and google to play your radio on their smart speakers. we are on dab in london and several small—scale ones — manchester and glasgow and a few other places. so, dab is the principle way that people consume radio these days, certainly the lion's share of a demographic we are targeting. increasingly, people are going to their smart speakers, laptops, phones for their radio stations. and that's going to be a graph that's only going to go up.

we have had a few problems in getting easy smart speaker access for boom radio. you do feel a bit impotent because you can't phone the person up at the transmitter site and say "turn us on", so it's not as simple as that. it does pose challenges and we are no longer the gatekeepers always do however listeners can hear us. let's talk about boom radio — you launched on valentine's day. you are aimed squarely at baby boomers, there are roughly a0 million in have you got any indication of how many are listening? we can't say really because we don't have any official numbers because nobody has at the moment and they won't come through for some time. i could say certainly when we look at our streaming figures and we look

at the response, we would have had in my a0 years of radio, i have never read such passionate response for a radio station that's barely a week old! responses has blown us out of the water. passionate. passion is one of those funny words. it could be good, it could be bad. the number of complaints probably about half a dozen. the number of people who have written to us — a couple of thousand. it's been phenomenal. i could put this up live but you might be at risk of hearing an advert on the bbc but this is just a random blast from boom radio. that is a very particular sound.

david hamilton — i'm not going to use the word legend again but oops ijust did. you've got a very old—school radiojingles, some close—harmony singers that seem to walk straight out of that golden years. i want to rattle through your business idea very quickly before bringing gillian in. on the ownership structure, who owns boom radio? it's a handful of people who have been in the radio business a long time are actually tempted by this proposition. it's a handful of private individuals — myself and a few others. how much money did you have to raise? about a third of a million. you got news bulletin, how much they cost you? just a few thousand, they're from independent radio. fairly nominal amount. what your unique selling proposition? we are targeted at people age 60 to 75 and they are not addressed by... greatest hits radio, gold, scala,... you heard the songs we played this afternoon. greatest hits is an enormous offering. i was

i've written to listeners saying if you think were a bit old try greatest hits radio for that we go back 60s and 70s where we predominate a sprinkling of 50s and predominant material for the there is nothing quite like the mix we play. thousands of songs, a variety, but set in those key decades of 60s and 70s. i think it's not so much the music because i defer, of course, to david's greater expertise in this. but if you tune around you'll hear quite a lot of the same music on caroline, which is on dab, on greatest hits, a bit there. unionjack, a bit of crossover there. i think it's in the presentation. presentation, it's comfortable, it's radio like it used to be, where people talk to you. they don'tjust do link in, a link out, whip over to the competition, it'sjust more conversational. i think that is in a way what distinguishes, makes it warmer

and people feel at home with it. like they felt, they haven't felt at home with radiojust shouts at you and slots another dead skin. do you think the argument which i hear a lot, this argument that local radio stations even radio 2, are now chasing a younger, more diverse audience and therefore have abandoned the people that david is going after — do you think that's fair? i saw a very interesting letter to the controller radio to about the music series. it said why were the shows on so late? and the reply said, consciously, because we want to drive older listeners to sounds. and it's absolutely astonishing that this would happen. why? not everybody wants

to listen to sounds. to go and find the service. people want to turn the radio on as a friend. the person you have in the kitchen with you, the person you go to bed with, if you don't mind me saying so. it's a different relationship. i think it's odd. and how easy do you think it is, gillian, for a newcomer like david? it's obviously a logistical challenge going in a pandemic and i take my hat off to david, but how easy is it for a newcomer to challenge big radio groups? it's very difficult, i would think. it's three big radio groups have it pretty much sewn up between them. there is global which owns all the capital stations, it's bauer which owns scala and has a great spread across things. and the people i work for, newscorp, now who have their own radio station,

virgin and times radio. it's very difficult to break into a market that has big money behind it and big buying power. and you can tell it by the adverts, actually. i think if david person says maybe they'll come along and ask him to sell to them. but i don't think that's what you sell for. i think he's found an audience that feels under—loved. and, don't forget, these baby boomers have been the dominant demographic ever since the 19605. and they've dominated everything. taste in clothes, in style, in achievement. if you like that kind of music, why not have a radio station for it? for me, it's a bit tame — i'm more of a soul girl. last word to your david. brilliant. i think its programmed brilliantly. i wrote about two years ago they are moving into a particular demographic territory to stop and think it's rather disingenuous to think that you can target where the mainstream music station a 35—year—old and also target people double that age. why is it disingenuous? i'm really into motown, i'm also into hip—hop. i agree, i agree.

well, you know, all the people who programme radio stations will say you actually need a focus. people who programme capital know the exact songs which chime best with their audience. if you look through radio to 65—year—old listener, the array of music that radio 2 plays is not for them any more. and we've got thousands of comments saying that our research as it as well. it's a great plan, but it's not for them any more. the fact that you've researched it it seems that your argument as a gap in the market suggests there are a lot of people who still love radio, which is obviously a good thing. not that this show. thank you very much indeed for your contribution today. really appreciate it. gillian reynolds the radio critic for the sunday times. david, the boss of the new boom radio. earlier we heard from

the head of the competition and markets authority. thank you so much to all of you, to our studio engineers, and thank you to you for listening. goodbye. much of this weather looks sunny and settle thanks to high pressure but there is still a weather front affecting northern part of the country and that is bringing grey, leaden skies and mist and drizzle but a huge contest further south, much of england and wales is bright and plenty of sunshine and after the chilly start that's slightly stronger sunshine is getting to work and it will feel mild out there. the next few days. _ and it will feel mild out there. the next few days, similar, largely dry, nights will soon continue to be chilly. the weather front will continue to serve the soul away as we move through the latter part of the day. high—pressure dominates, strong winds across the board. remnants of that weather front, further south of england and wales, largely clear skies, going to turn cold, could see a bit of low cloud and mistjust rolling into eastern

england and east anglia towards the end of the night but where we have a clear skies and chilly pockets of frost, mist and fog, this a less cold for scotland and northern ireland because here we have more in the way of cloud. we have lost that weather front as well across northern area so i think after some early cloud starts to break up across scotland and northern ireland it should be a sunny day fee through sunday. england and wales, plenty of sunshine abound after a chilly, frosty start. but more cloud affecting eastern england and east anglia, and thatjust the best of it, six or 7 degrees in norwich, elsewhere we will have that fairly strong sunshine, 12—13 will be the high, very mild again. as we head through sunday evening and night, substantial mist and cloud building in of the north sea through tonight so for the north will here it will be cold with a touch of frost then we will see further south and east because there will be more in the way of cloud. it could be that we

start many places across the morning like this rather grey with some mist and mclaren but at least mainly dry. as we run the pressure much at unc see high pressure dominates but this weather front mayjust move northwards and affect south—western parts of the country tuesday into wednesday to be in just a few showers but for most this weather front is looking dry with that area of high pressure influencing the weather. variable amounts of cloud, a little bit of sunshine in northern western areas but then turning to default by the end of the week. this actually for all. —— turning chilly for all.

this is bbc news the headlines at 5pm... tributes are paid to captain sir tom moore at his funeral — family members say his spirit will live on. the chancellor plans new measures to help people buy their own homes as he prepares his budget for next week. anas sarwar has been announced as the new scottish labour leader. he takes charge of the party ahead of the scottish parliament election on the sixth of may. ministers in england launch a campaign to reassure parents it's safe for children to return to the classroom. festival organisers call on the government for more support

to ensure events can take place this summer