Manchester radio producer All Out to close

RESPECTED independent radio producer All Out Productions is being closed down by its parent company Somethin’ Else.

Manchester-based All Out, which was set up 16 years ago to make the gay and lesbian show Out this Week for BBC Radio 5 Live, is expected to be wound up by the end of the year.

Somethin’ Else’s managing director Steve Ackerman told the Guardian newspaper that All Out – headed by Jo Meek, pictured below – had “excellent staff” who were “very good programme makers” but the business was being shut for financial reasons.

He said a pledge by the BBC to commission more radio material from independent producers had come too late to save the company. All Out had three full-time staff and a pool of 10 freelancers. All staff are being made redundant.

Recent productions included Doon the Watta for Radio 4 in which Nicholas Parsons revisited the Clyde where he was a shipyard apprentice in the 1940s, and Lady Plays the Blues, also for Radio 4, which told the story of unrecognised female blues musicians.

Ashley Byrne, co-founder of All OUt rival Made in Manchester, said: “Somethin’ Else has chosen to pull out of the North at a time when the area stands to benefit from the arrival of Media City UK.

“The BBC Trust has just ordered an increase in indie quota, 5Live has launched a ringfenced fund specifically to kick-start more independent radio production in the region and even the commercial sector is opening up to more indie commissioning.”