On February 13^th, UNESCO is asking radio stations around the world to showcase the beauty of sport, in all its diversity. This will be the seventh time the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have celebrated the power of radio across the world, engaging radio stations, regulatory bodies and the public, in a celebration of sport and its ability to inspire and connect communities.

UNESCO’s objectives of showcasing diversity, peace and development are laudable, but it is its ambition to: “promote media pluralism and diversity by advocating for fair access to sports broadcasting between commercial, public and community radio, to improve audience’s access to information”, that’s caught my eye.

I’ve had the pleasure of covering grassroots sport on Somer Valley FM, a community radio station based in North East Somerset, for the best part of the last ten years. My ambition was always to shine a light on the Clubs that commercial and public service broadcasters so often overlook. The more that professional sport has become a business, the greater the separation between Club and community. Yet despite sports broadcasting becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace, community radio continues to showcase those Clubs that remind us that the strength of any pyramid, sporting or otherwise, is not at its pinnacle, but in its base.

So do I believe that professional broadcasters are doing us a dis-service? If I do, I’d better cancel my Sky subscription. I’ve long wrestled with my commitment to promoting amateur sport to a professional standard. Surely this is a logical non sequitur? The aspiration to be the very thing you despise?

It is all too common for the community sector to malign the professional broadcast industry as impure and morally bankrupt. I have even witnessed leading sector advocates suggest that the BBC needs the community sector more than the community sector needs them, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

I learnt a lot during my time at Somer Valley, working with many great people, but nothing I learnt there compared to what I learnt in one afternoon with the BBC. Thanks to the excellent relationship Somer Valley had garnered with BBC Bristol, the sports team invited me to join their reporter, Ed Hadwin for the full matchday experience at Bristol City. Ed was kind enough to talk to me about the kit he used and the format of the BBC’s Saturday sports programming. I’d never listened before, mostly I’d been too busy covering Western League and Southern League matches, yet I was still convinced that my coverage was at least as good, if not better, than theirs. It quickly became apparent that not only did Ed have a technical knowledge that was far superior to my own, he was capable of multi-tasking in a way that I am still to be convinced is actually possible.

The beauty of sport is that it has the capacity to throw the form book out the window. On their day, the worse team in the league can beat the best. At my best, I may have been able to come up with something that sounded vaguely like a professional commentary, but I never had to write a match report, provide two reports to studio and lead a press conference, with a manager who was as volatile as he was embattled. In my opinion, that’s true class. The ability to produce a consistent output, week in week out. That’s what I learnt from Ed.

Going back to UNESCO’s ambition to promote media pluralism; the community sector, which is doing so much wonderful work to promote grassroots sport, has so much it can learn from professional broadcasters. World Radio Day is not an opportunity for the community sector to shame the journalists, commentators and broadcasters that produce peerless coverage of elite sport – it’s an opportunity to learn from them.

I hope other community broadcasters get the chance to benefit from the time, mentoring and training, that I was able to experience. I only spent an afternoon with Ed, but I hope you can see from this article, the profound impact it had on me, not just in terms of highlighting what I didn’t know, but fundamentality appreciating that as broadcasters, we are all in this together.

I hope that there will be some broadcasters in the community sector for whom this article will resonate, but my real hope is that those professional broadcasters who have so much to offer in terms of advice, knowledge and experience, will feel that this coming World Radio Day represents the opportunity for them to make the first move. Don’t wait to be asked!