Most radio stations start with a signal and figure out the audience later. Radio Scarborough did it the other way around. The station was incorporated in 2012 and spent its first years streaming online only, according to Wikipedia's history of the station, building an audience in a North Yorkshire coastal town years before it ever had an FM frequency to call its own. That patience paid off on 23 September 2021, when Radio Scarborough finally launched on 107.6 FM, broadcasting from a modest 25 watt transmitter perched on Oliver's Mount, the highest point above the town.
The studio itself sits inside the YMCA on St Thomas Street, a small operational footprint for a station that now reaches not just Scarborough but Filey, Hunmanby, Robin Hood's Bay, and the caravan parks and holiday resorts scattered along that stretch of coastline. What the station lacks in transmitter power it makes up for in sheer volunteer commitment. Radio Scarborough is a not for profit company with zero paid employees, and by its own account is kept running by more than 50 volunteers, over 20 of whom present shows.
A schedule built by the people who live there
Co-directors Richard Pearson and Alan Deacon have shaped much of what the station sounds like today. Pearson, a former BBC radio and television freelancer, got involved in 2015 and helped restructure the schedule into what it is now, a mix that stretches from morning news bulletins to late night jazz sessions, all produced locally rather than piped in from elsewhere. That local-first commitment is baked into the station's own description of its mission, which is simply to entertain, inform, and connect the community it serves.
Running a station almost entirely on volunteer labor and small donations is not without friction. In February 2023, Ofcom flagged the station for falling short of the hours of original, locally produced output required by its community licence, a reminder of how demanding it is to keep a schedule full without a paid staff. Radio Scarborough kept broadcasting anyway, leaning on the same community goodwill that got it an FM licence in the first place.
For a town that spent years experiencing its own radio station only through a browser tab, having a dial position to call home changed the relationship between Radio Scarborough and the people it serves. It is still, at its core, neighbors talking to neighbors, just now with a transmitter on Oliver's Mount to carry the conversation further.