I have received a couple of emails with reference to Roots Around the World on Spirit FM so thought it might be easier and save you all some time if I just posted my reply.

Firstly - Spirit prides itself on being the only local station that serves West Sussex, if it's in West Sussex it's on Spirit FM. Whilst we are owned by a larger organisation, this company is called 'The Local Radio Company' and their strength in the radio market place is that they own 28 radio stations but allow them all to run as real local stations to the areas they serve.
Spirit do work from a computerised playlist - as every radio station does - but we still have room for movement locally for presenters to add their own feel to their shows. Is is simply untrue that 50% of Spirit's output is via computer in High Wycombe. We have local presnters from 6am to 7pm daily, and the evening show through until 1am is certainly not a computer in High Wycombe - this too is a real person with local news, commercials and station branding.

Roots Around the World in its current format has run it's course on the station but I can assure you that the Spirit FM will continue to give local bands and local venues a platform to publicise themselves.

The 'unsigned' feature that was a part of Roots Around the World will continue in an improved format in the New Year and will not only feature unsigned local bands but also feature a detailed gig-guide for the coming week (This will continue to be available as it always has via Podcast and on-air - these bands are unsigned so we have no PRS issue).

On top of this Spirit will continue to run our listings feature 5 times a day to highlight different events going on around the County which is free of charge.

We are unfortunately in that terrible position of not being able to please all of the people all of the time, for every 10 people that would tune in on a Sunday evening just for Roots there are 100 loyal Spirit listeners who the show didn't appeal to that would tune away during it.
I do realise that people really care about what they listen to, which is unfortunately why I had to make the decision to stop the Roots Show. For Spirit FM we simply had many more people tuning away on a Sunday than were tuning in so I've listened to the majority and done something about it.

Mark Ringwood will continue to be a friend of the station and we fully back Roots Around the World - we will still be covering the great events Mark puts on in West Sussex.

Kind regards

Sally Austin