By Tom Bromley

IN between my writing this article and you reading it, Salisbury will have a new radio station. Over the weekend, the first test programmes of Sarum Radio (sarumradio.com) began broadcasting in advance of the station’s full launch at the beginning of February.

Led by station manager Gary Sarum – gardener by day, DJ by night – the station is entirely staffed by volunteers and is being run as a not-for-profit organisation. I met up with him over a coffee last week and his enthusiasm for the project was immediately infectious. The aim of the station, he told me, is to both feed and feed off the local community. As well as an eclectic range of shows ranging from 70s hair metal to classical, northern soul to folk, the station is aiming to include talk shows covering local interests and showcasing the city’s music scene with live broadcasts from local venues.

It got me thinking how radio, like the sale of vinyl records and printed books, has proved remarkably resilient in the face of modern technology. There’s something about the immediacy and intimacy of good radio that helps it to stand the test of time. The late Terry Wogan once described the secret of his success as broadcasting to just one person and it is this relationship, I think, that helps radio to endure.

But while the essentials of good radio have stayed the same, the way we listen to it is constantly evolving. I’m old enough to remember growing up listening to the scratchy medium-wave of Radio One in the early 1980s. From here, radio became all about the crystal-clear quality of FM. Then DAB Digital Radio was the future. Now stations like Sarum can broadcast through a mixture of their website and via apps like TuneIn Radio.

The result is something of a broadcasting sweet spot: The lower costs of setting up makes a local community station a viable possibility, while the latest technology allows it to be broadcast all around the world. Whether you are in Wyoming or Wilton, now anyone can listen live to the latest gig down at the Winnie Gate.

For all the benefits of the evolving technology, radio stations still stand or fall by the people who run them. Like any fledgling outfit, Sarum needs presenters and producers and sponsors and supporters to grow. So if you’re interested in getting into radio, or would like to help Gary get a great-sounding community project off the ground, now’s the time to turn on, tune in and get involved.

To contact Sarum Radio, visit www.sarumradio.com

Follow Tom on Twitter @bromleyesq