[cma-l] religious broadcasting advice

[Fari]

Hi Murray,

Re: your doubts, quite sure it's fine for a religious group to represent
themselves as long as they do not preach hate or intolerance of other
religions or groups.

Look at how many Radio Ramadan licenses are given out at the same time
each year to mark the festival.

In a way you are lucky that more than one group has approached you, as
by hosting both shows your station will be maintaining the impartiality
that is required by Ofcom to keeping your license.  Check Ofcom's
website for more details, every detail you need is there.

The way to do it is to lay down the house rules at the start, and give
them a profile of the Target Audience and say that at every turn they
have to bear them in mind, as well as talk directly to their own.  So to
avoid anything too sermon-like ask them to bend their content to your
station and gauge how flexible they are.

Resonancefm has a light-hearted Jewish show: 'The Something Jewish
Show', an Iranian language show aimed only at Iranians obviously, a
Congolese show with some French language content.

Good luck!
Fari

Murray Dawson <murray at shmu.org.uk wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
> 
> We've had a request from the local Parish church who wants to do a weekly
> radio show based on the work they do (and their faith).  We've also had a
> request from the local Mosque to do likewise.
> 
> My preference would be to have a multi-faith show that they shared, but
> that didn't go down too well.  My second choice would be a rotational slot
> shared with other faiths/beliefs. I don't want to be in a situation where
> we have to have four of five weekly faith based programmes.
> 
> What are other stations experiences in this area? It'd be interesting to
> hear others views.  Also is there any Ofcom ruling here I should be aware
> of?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Murray