Mr. John Purcell:

On how difficult it is to keep the show on the road for local radio stations during the pandemic, in this stage that we are entering into now, anybody with a close contact has to isolate at home for five days. If a station has a news reader, a programme presenter, and a producer, and any of them have young children and one of them is sent home as a close contact, its morning show and news bulletins can be very challenged. To put it into context, in the station where I work, we have three journalists providing 12-hour news during the day, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., one producer and a presenter for a two-hour morning show, and a presenter and a part-time broadcast assistant for another talk show. In that environment, it is very difficult, when holidays or sick leave have to be covered and so on, to do the step change necessary to do environmental coverage. It comes down to extra staff and extra team members. With the strained resources that we operate under at the best of times, it is particularly difficult. In the onslaught of the constant undermining of the business model, it is just getting harder and harder. That is the reality of it.