Something more than four million euros in expenses in just three years for a municipal radio that does not reach every corner of Madrid , whose real audience cannot be measured and which has been broadcast without ministerial authorization. That is the balance that M21 Radio throws, the public broadcaster of the Madrid City Council recovered by Manuela Carmena upon arrival at the Palacio de Cibeles . The budget invested in this station in the period between September 2016 and today is, specifically, 4,327,917 euros, according to the information that EL MUNDO has had access to.

To those 4.3 million euros allocated to "Radio Carmena" - a term coined by the opposition parties during the last legislature -, we should add another 5.3 that the Consistory had budgeted by agreement until 2023. That is , 4,327,917 euros are the expenses that the City Council of Madrid has already faced between September 26, 2016 - the day the emissions were resumed - and this 2019, and an additional 5,335,375 euros are those that would have been spent if you keep the station. The total budget of M21 Radio until 2023 was therefore 9,663,292 euros in seven years.

Finally, the extra 5.3 million will not be spent, after announcing the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, last Tuesday during the municipal plenary session that the City Council will not renew the license of the station, which expires on Monday 30 of September.

Of the 4.3 million that the Manuela Carmena Government team allocated to the municipal radio, only 133,626 euros were in the last quarter of 2016, when the radio recovered its emissions from September 26. That is the lowest figure in a budget that was growing in the following years: 1,425,051, in 2017; 1,323,406, in 2018, and 1,445,837 in 2019 .

Thus, the budget allocated to a radio whose audience cannot be measured is broken down by year because the broadcast data is not recorded. The only possibility to know approximately your audience is the data of streaming listeners in 2017 that the City Council of Madrid manages. That year, the accumulated of listeners reached 167,000, which is just 457 a day, according to data held by EL MUNDO. Some figures that collapse in some daily programs like Radiophonism , with 188 listeners a month; Near your house , with 192, or Viva la Villa! , with 645.

In addition, from the current Consistory denounce that the station has been broadcasting without the authorization of the Secretary of State for Digital Advance , under the Ministry of Economy , until the change of Government, because that procedure was not carried out until the arrival of the new equipment. That deficiency has already been resolved, although the authorization expires this next Monday, September 30, and will not be renewed.

Thus, the broadcasts of M21 Radio on dial 88.6 of the FM will end this Monday. It will not be expected until the end of the year, as explained by municipal sources, because they believe that this is a "ruinous" station and that "nobody listens".

Even so, the municipal radio will not disappear completely, but rather a "remodeling" will take place. The plan with which the City Council works is to convert M21 into "a public service radio" for students of degrees related to the branch of communication and that its content is broadcast through podcasts . To this end, work is currently being done to develop "agreements with different universities so that their students can do internships", they affirm from the municipal Corporation.

However, the City Council also insists that the cessation of broadcasts will not involve immediate dismissals of municipal radio workers, except those that are directly linked to the broadcasts, whose contract "automatically terminates." The rest "will be extinguished when legally applicable," said the same sources, which ensure that the decision has already been communicated to the unions.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Madrid
  • Manuela Carmena
  • José Luis Martínez-Almeida

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