Pete Mills had long dreamt of launching a community radio station in Hull – but it was to take him years of trying before it finally became a reality.
He had always had a passion for radio and local music, and got his own grounding in presenting at Viking FM, before a stint at KCFM, about 20 years ago. He’d spent years in other jobs before and after that, including in the RAF and at British Aerospace in Brough, nightclub DJ-ing as well as freelancing on radio stations around the UK. But the idea of starting his own station remained on the backburner.
“It’s kind of a process,” he says. “The idea goes back into the drawer, it comes out again and stuff is added to it. It’s a bit like what prolific songwriters do – they have an idea of a song, but it might not be quite right, so they put it away, and bring it back and add the creativity, and then put it away again… Bono does it with his songs, for example – some of them were written years ago.”
Pete first took the idea to Hull Kingston Rovers. “Owner Neil Hudgell sat behind me at school!” he says. “I was in the same class as him for two years, I think. I always got on with Neil. He liked the idea, but it just kind of fizzled out when it got to middle management; in hindsight, it was way off the finished product that has now come to fruition in 107FM.”
A few years later, Pete decided to go the other side of the river and approach Hull City with a view to basing a community station at the KCOM Stadium, as it was then. At the time, says Pete, “everything was rosy in the garden”, and he had a number of positive conversations with then CEO Nick Thompson.
But then came the Allams’ controversial bid to change the name of the club. This would turn out to become a long, protracted and bitterly divisive campaign during which it was clear that engagement with the local community was hardly on the owners’ list of priorities – and Pete’s idea was shelved once more.
Enter one Malcolm Scott.
Malcolm, or Mally, as he was known, died last September, prompting an outpouring of tributes in the worlds of business and culture across the region. In the Winter 2022 edition of BW, we posthumously named him the winner of our Top 20 Most Inspiring Businesspeople feature, and Pete told then how Mally had been responsible for “turning his life around”.
Pete first encountered him when he was a presenter on an established community radio station in Hull. Mally – whose son ran a music studio – rang Pete “out of the blue” because he’d been playing some local bands on his show.
“Basically, there was only my show and Alan Raw’s show on Radio Humberside that perpetually played local music and gave local artists that opportunity of airtime,” says Pete. “The idea for a new station was there, but it wasn’t ready to pitch.”
Then, in 2013, Pete’s wife, Fiona – who is now a presenter on BBC Radio Humberside – spotted a picture of Mally and Antony Langley in the local paper, as both had recently become directors of Hull KR. True to form, Mally had great plans for boosting the club’s profile.
“I went for a coffee with Mally,” says Pete, “told him my ideas, and the opportunities that a community station could bring to the area. He then met the community trust at Rovers and also the board, and they backed the idea. In late 2013 we applied for the Ofcom community radio licence being advertised at the time, on the premise that we would get greater exposure for Rovers. It would be another conduit for the club, because Mally’s vision was to turn Rovers from the pride of east Hull into the pride of East Yorkshire.”
Pete invested considerable time over the next couple of years, often working 18-hour days, into getting the station off the ground – and it was thanks to Mally’s contacts and boundless energy that they secured the Ofcom licence, as well as encouraging a host of other investors to come on board, including Antony Langley.
“Part of the application was that we had to get the great and good of Hull’s society and business to back what we were going to do, and Mally must have got his little black phone book out and just went through everybody he could possibly find. I mean, you’re talking about the guy who tried to buy the Humber Bridge! He made things happen – he was just a legend. And that was how the station started.”
Hull Kingston Radio launched on February 6, 2015, at 9am, from a small studio in the West Stand at Craven Park. Much of its original sound and aesthetics was based on the original KCFM sound – before, as Pete puts it diplomatically, Lincs FM “sanitised” it.
However, Pete was conscious that it was being seen as Rovers’ radio station – which, given the divisive nature of rugby league in Hull, wasn’t something he really wanted. Despite its base at Craven Park, it had no financial connection to the rugby club and had to stand on its own two feet from day one. Despite this, and through sheer hard work by Pete and his volunteers, the station rapidly grew from its launch, and in 2017 moved to new bigger studios further down Preston Road.
By 2020, the station had a new board and investors, and Pete realised that, for the station to go to the next level, it needed another move – as well as a brand change.
He took inspiration from a commercial station in Dublin, 98FM. It actually broadcasts on 98.1FM, but everyone knows it as 98FM – so, in that vein, Hull Kingston Radio, which broadcasts on 107.4FM, was rebranded as Hull’s 107FM in August 2022.
The station is now based in the largest and most impressive studio complex it has ever had, at the One Business Village in Emily Street, having moved in early 2021. It’s still just east of the river but far more centrally located – and the mainstay of the station, which is run almost entirely by volunteers, remains the provision of opportunities for local people. Hull’s 107FM runs numerous broadcast media training courses, most of them free or fully funded, and aimed at the most disadvantaged in society, such as the long-term unemployed, those with low self-esteem and self-confidence, and others who have experienced barriers to learning.
“I’ve seen this frequently, because I oversee and deliver some of the training, that people are coming to us at their lowest ebb,” says Pete. “The belief that they can achieve has been battered out of them. Within a matter of a few sessions, you can see the profound change in these people. We help people raise their aspirations, and help them progress either by volunteering with us or elsewhere, into employment, further education or training.”
The community training at Hull’s 107FM has become renowned throughout the area, Pete says. The station has become known for being “people enablers” – and many of its volunteers have gone on to work professionally in the broadcast industry, notably Radio Humberside – although this hasn’t been helped by the BBC’s plans to axe large swathes of its local radio offering. “Most of our volunteers have been guests on BBC Radio Humberside, and the relationship was developing quite nicely until the announcement of these changes,” says Pete. “Hopefully, when everything settles down we can pick up where we left off to help progress our volunteers.”
Pete pays a heartfelt tribute to his volunteers, whom he calls “the lifeblood of the station”. He adds: “Without them we wouldn’t be able to function properly – 95% of 107FM’s volunteers had never been near a studio or behind a mic before coming to us. It’s very much a two-way street, in that we give them a platform and opportunity, and they give us their time and considerable effort.
“Testament to that training is born out of the praise the station frequently gets – that we don’t sound like a community station, or when we say we are a volunteer-led community station, people can’t believe it. That’s down to the training and the quality of presenter we put on air.”
There is also often a misconception about how community stations are funded, Pete says – they are not the same as commercial stations, which are just “cash cows for directors and shareholders”. “Only 50% of our income can come from advertising and sponsorship. The other 50% has to come from a combination of volunteers’ time, funding, grants, etc.”
The station relies on the support of local businesses who advertise over the airwaves – and Pete is keen to highlight the quality and value of the advertising and sponsorship packages available via Hull’s 107FM – the majority of which are professionally produced by the Multi award winning Engine7, the firm run by Howard Young, whom regular readers will remember from the Autumn 2022 edition of BW.
“Howard gets the ethos of the station and what we want to do in the community,” says Pete. “In essence, we’re getting a commercial-standard radio advert made by a multi-award-winning production house. A lot of the time on community radio stations, the adverts are made in-house, and they can be a bit ropey. They don’t do anything for the business client. The whole idea of advertising is creating brand awareness and driving business to the business, not away from it. So that’s why our adverts stick out – in a good way.”
Times are tough, Pete says, but he’s confident that the station can continue to grow. “It’s the same for every business – it’s all about managing your outgoings and maximising your incomings, and delivering a product that the communities we serve are rightly proud of. The station is continually evolving – you have to be if you want to remain the most popular volunteer-led radio station in East Yorkshire. And it belongs as much to the community as it does to me and Jon Gibbins, the station’s other director – it’s the people’s station.
“In the not-too-distant future, there will be further inward investment in the technical infrastructure to enable us to engage our communities even more – from community-based outreach training, to whole live shows coming from community organisations and businesses we’ve partnered with, presented by their volunteers/employees, who we’ve trained to the high standards we expect on Hull’s 107FM, right through to going on the DAB platform. In uncertain times, one thing is for sure – 107FM will be there!”
