Rupert Murdoch's talkRadio argued it had very few listeners to avoid fine

Rupert Murdoch’s talkRadio attempted to avoid a substantial fine for repeated breaches of broadcasting rules by arguing it had very few listeners, very few advertisers, and would face financial pressures if had to pay a substantial financial penalty.

The regulator Ofcom ultimately rejected this argument and imposed a £75,000 fine on the radio station, pointing out that talkRadio was ultimately owned by Murdoch’s News Corp, “a global media company with substantial revenue”.

The fine was opposed after talkRadio allowed the former MP George Galloway, a presenter on the station, to breach impartiality rules while discussing Russian involvement in the Salisbury poisonings and allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party.

TalkRadio unsuccessfully argued that it should not be hit by a substantial financial penalty as very few people listened to the shows, so the damage to the public was limited. It said Galloway’s Friday night programme – which the former politician described as the “Mother of All Talk Shows” – only attracted a “niche” audience of between 8,300 and 10,800 listeners.

The Murdoch-owned speech radio station also pleaded that it could not afford a hefty fine as the regulator’s rulings against talkRadio had already caused “reputational damage”, affecting its ability to attract advertisers. It said talkRadio currently had “very limited” income from sponsors and instead relied largely on “internal sponsorship” revenue from other News UK outlets.

The station argued that a large fine would be a “huge penalty” to impose on a service with a “tiny share” of audience that had always been loss-making. This contrasts with talkRadio’s upbeat public-facing marketing claims that it is the “country’s fastest-growing station”.

Ofcom initially ruled against talkRadio in early 2019 after Galloway used his programme to cast doubt on the Russian role in the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. It later decided that Galloway had separately failed to give sufficient airtime to opposing views while discussing antisemitism in the Labour party, which he suggested were “bogus”.

Galloway, who worked for the station for several years, was ultimately sacked in a separate incident last summer after Tottenham Hotspur accused him of an antisemitic tweet.

TalkRadio’s unsuccessful plea for leniency also argued it was unfair to punish the station excessively for Galloway’s comments as the former MP’s views on the Salisbury poisoning and antisemitism in Labour did not “advance the interests of the ownership, management or executive of the station”. They also argued that a substantial fine would have an impact on freedom of speech in the UK.

However, the media regulator decided to push ahead with a substantial sanction on the basis that it was a significant failure of compliance involving repeated breaches of media regulations over many months which “had the effect of undermining public confidence in the impartiality of, and therefore trust in, broadcast news and current affairs”. Ofcom noted that the station had put in place extra compliance measures and no further breaches of the code had occurred since Galloway’s departure, but said it would order talkRadio to broadcast a statement about the breaches of the rules.

Despite pleading poverty to Ofcom, on Monday News UK’s radio division hired the BBC’s John Pienaar to host a new drivetime radio show on the forthcoming Times Radio outlet, as part of a big-money hiring splurge designed to attract BBC staff to the new station.