Talk:OSCAR Radio

Deletion proposal

It is disappointing to see that this article is up for deletion. But being a newbie I am not totally sure of the procedure. It is a historical view of a successful radio station, granted it is a tiny spec on the grand scheme of things, but means a lot to the people involved. One problem is that current pupils are unable to comment on the page during the broadcasts due to blocking of this page from wiki due to issues with the Oundle School pages. So I hope it can stay up for a bit longer, but you guys know what you are doing. As the person who started the radio station and worked on it for ten years it is factually correct and accurate, so there is no problem with that. David —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.36.139 (talk • contribs)

Thanks for your help on both counts. I am not sure what other references you need to OSCAR Radio. But having been the person running it for the past 10 years, I know all there is to tell, and perhaps you could help me overcome your problem with the article to ensure that it survives. There will be no reference to the BBC comment on the web, although it is a quote, and we did get a brilliant tour of Radio 1 from it. With more to come. Yes Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman of Sony is an OO, but he has put a lot of money into OSCAR Radio. Being a public school it is difficult for us to attract funding from local businesses, although we do advertise them on the station for a fee during the broadcasts. I also note that you are concerned about the short term RSL license as opposed to the long term ones that some schools have. There is a huge difference in these and it may be worth explaining them here. First of all, we could easily go for a MW low power (max 1W) long term radio licence from OFCOM, these are cheap, and only offer a range of the school grounds. However, when we decided on what to go for, we thought we wanted the best quality at the time (FM) and the most power allowed (25W). This is what we have done and achieved over the past 9 years. The investment in fees paid by the school to OFCOM and other licensing bodies is in excess of £10,000 pa or a total so far of £90,000. This as you can imagine is a big investment and the School has been happy to support it. We do operate an FM license (rare in schools) and we do it daily during the broadcast for 24 hours each day for the period (unusual in schools as the kit needed to run it properly is expensive), also the day to day running and monitoring is done by the students who take charge (unique in schools where adults tend to be in the studios monitoring what the students do and say - we do not do this, but have a duty student manager). The internet broadcast is online when we go on air, and an online archive is also available. For the FM frequency RSL we cannot go for longer as OFCOM only offer RSLs to schools and colleges in the UK. So we are at the max. We do get plenty of visits from other schools to see what we do and how we do it. Having been involved in the industry for 10 years, it is interesting to see it beginning to develop in the UK, and there is likely to be an explosion of school radio stations in the near future. In the schools environment we are seen by those who have looked to be an excellent example to those who are interested in joining our ranks. I am away on holiday in Nice for two weeks, but please feel free to comment and help point me in the right direction. This is my first Wikipedia article and I am keen to get it right. Wikipedia is one of my main sources of information, and as a teacher of ICT I do appreciate what you are achieving, also the help you have given and hopefully will give will be passed onto future generations of potential authors.

Dfcf 15:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)