[cma-l] DCMS Written answers and statements, 19 October 2010 - Local Broadcasting: Radio

Sat Oct 23 18:27:53 BST 2010

Steve and all.

An excellent e-mail from yet another great member of our brotherhood /
fraturnity 

 things are difficult. Very difficult, and with the best
will in the world I bet you that 75% of our stations have now found
themselves out of the land of make believe and into the real world !

The real world being that you can only go to Joe Barrow the Builder, Fred
Sheen the Window cleaner & Harry Clog the Cobbler with tales of ‘’support
us, don’t we do a wonderful job in the community ?!    we work with children
with disabilities, children who have been excluded from full-time education,
ex offenders, elderly people, community groups, local not-for-profit
organisations etc etc       (which we do!)         for so long, and THEN MR
REALITY does kick in :_

We get the mr reality question 

. ‘’yeh but, no but, yeh but 

 HOW
MANY LISTENERS HAVE YOU GOT ?    AND WHAT DO I GET OUT OF IT ?

When we all started it was most definitely Community 1st / Radio 2nd 

we ALL endeavour to keep it like that 

.. however in the current climate
and due to the restrictions already spoken about, some of the community
stuff may have to temporarily take the back seat ?

 or at least the
passenger seat?

Are we all experiencing this ??                 I know we are, apart from
those stations (mostly urban)    who seem to be able to attract pots of
money from Europe or National (God knows how??) (although I do have my
views)      and manage to nail about £60,000 thus far out of the Community
Radio Fund 

. We’ve had £6,000 by the way which I believe is quite
correct, providing everyone else gets £6,000.

Let me simplify this.

1)       We ALL get the SAME 

.. no matter what the amount

2)       This means we do not have to waste hours, days, months filling in
forms

3)       We don’t have to fill in any report forms either because we all use
the money to pay for our Ofcom licence, PRS / PPL / MCPS 

.. surely if
there’s any left after that Ofcom or the DCMS wouldn’t expect us to fill to
a form in?? 
. We’d maybe only have enough for a couple of Ice cream cornets
anyway !

4)       No bureaucracy 

..YIPPEEEEE 

 and we can get on with what we
are supposed to be doing 

 Community Radio

Sorry to say guys 

.. yes, it is as simple as that, yes, it is a utopia,
and it is staring us in the face. If it was a dog it would have bitten us
and we can’t see the wood for the trees.

In Openshawe 3 years ago, and then again in Leicester 2 years ago I put
forward a serious suggestion. It was certainly serious for me and appeared
to be taken serious by a few others. Unfortunately nothing has been done
about it.

This was my suggestion. Let’s take about £55,000 of the fund and give it to
the CMA. This money be used to employ 2 National sales people whose sole
jobs are to searchout and meet NATIONAL conglomerates and to raise money for
the sector 

.. ALL OF US 

.

All those Companies that we see everyday advertising on the TV and
commercial radio 

.. we would now be in a position to play em’ at their
own game and give em’ a run for their money, whilst still at the same time
plugging Joe / Fred / Harry etc 

 SLA’s could also be sought
‘nationally’

Twiggy and M&S on ALL / EVERY Community station in the country 

 that’s
one hell of an audience !

How many times have we all got in touch with our local Wykes, B&Q, M&S,
Tesco’s etc etc etc and been told ‘’you’ll have to speak to head office’’
you speak to head office who then send you from the regional office to the
national office 

. It then falls over 

 Why        ??
because we are small fry on our own, 

 but together we are a beast !
in fact, the moment we move away from the local store into the regions, it
all comes apart at the seams because of all those things we keep banging on
about        <>    Restrictions

Each station may only receive about £400 per-campaign 

.. but

. 200 Nationals would be easy to get between 2 sales people over a
12 month period 

 for the community stations 

. It would be    ‘’thank
you very much, muchas gracias, dankeshon, merci – er GAME OVER’’

For goodness sake guys 

. Let’s wake up and smell the coffee !?
it can be done, we can be a brotherhood, a real community of community
stations and it would mean that we could get on with what we do best without
faffing around begging for scraps. 

Come on Jaqui and Phil our great leaders 

 let’s get cracking.

The only restrictions we need are sensible controls on our power output (on
an individual basis) and the fact that all the monies are invested back into
our projects (not-for-profit)                   

THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS -------- WE JUST SEEM HELL BENT ON CREATING THEM.

Thanks for reading my long e-mail again 

.. I’m off to have a shave, I’ve
grown a beard in the time it’s taken me to write it !

Regards

Nick

  _____  

From: Steve Suttie [mailto:stevensuttie at aol.com] 
Sent: 22 October 2010 17:41
To: Office - ccr-fm
Cc: <trevor at felixstoweradio.co.uk>; CMA-L
Subject: Re: [cma-l] DCMS Written answers and statements, 19 October 2010 -
Local Broadcasting: Radio

Hi Nick,

Nice to see you are maintaining your trademark passion and enthusiasm for
the continued development of the sector.

We all know that the fund is inadequate, and that achieving sustainability
whilst maintaining social gain is a massive difficulty. Add to the mix poor
transmission power and lack of access to concrete listening figures to
publish... It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see how hard it is to make
community radio stations work. Indeed the only reason the sector is
surviving at all is due to the passion that you and everybody else applies
to your work!

In theory the £500,000 spread out amongst the licensed stations would work
and could be a lifeline for many stations such as yours... But lets not
forget that £500,000 was agreed by DCMS before the first round of licensing
in 2004/05. It should have increased as the shocking number of stations came
on air. But this is when the enthusiasm for CR was lost by the politicians I
believe.

After speaking to Soo Williams at OFCOM a few weeks ago, I learnt that
another 200 stations are awaiting a third round of licensing...

So my point is simple. This £500,000 is not going to provide a very useful
spread across 450 stations. Thats if a third round is announced of course.
OFCOM can't commit to a third round until they know the severity of the cuts
on their own organisation.

So its a bit more complicated than the simplistic approach that you are
suggesting. Shame! Its about time the CR sector was treated with a bit of
respect and dignity from the powers that be... After all, we've all been
working on austerity measures since long before it became the fashion!

With best regards

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

On 22 Oct 2010, at 16:02, "Office - ccr-fm" <office at ccr-fm.co.uk> wrote:

Trev and all

I ain’t arguing with anyone, I am simply standing by what I believe in. I
was the one 18 months ago who said we are wasting our time pussyfooting
around MP’s 

. Furthermore, there is no argument whatsoever against
everyone receiving the same amount.

It ain’t difficult and it’s fair.

No one has posted anything yet 

.. ?????       everyone must agree
with me !              if that’s the case, let’s get on with it.

Whack it out evenly and cancel the next round of applications.

Regards

Nick

  _____  

From: trevor at felixstoweradio.co.uk [mailto:trevor at felixstoweradio.co.uk] 
Sent: 21 October 2010 22:14
To: Office - ccr-fm; 'CMA-L'
Subject: Re: [cma-l] DCMS Written answers and statements, 19 October 2010 -
Local Broadcasting: Radio

Nick

I cannot argue with your proposition. It's easy to implement and fair.

Rural stations do not get any substantive support, that I really do know.

£500K is peanuts - but we must ask ourselves why we are so disregarded.
Every presentation about UK broadcasting fails to recognise community media.
Given that we have 600 members, 235 with FM licences, all involved with
broadcasting then we are doing something wrong. We have power, we have
influence, we also have an attitude of subservience, like poor peasants
pulling at our forelocks, cap in hand, grateful for the scraps thrown at us
by our masters.

Someone amongst us must be capable of producing a 10 minute audio/video that
we can all broadcast, and keep broadcasting (with variations) until all our
listeners understand how we are treated.

We don't have to argue amongst ourselves - we need to motivate our audience
to apply pressure upon the government. We do that by broadcasting. Sending
pleading emails or letters to MPs do nothing. 

Please agree with me. I'd do it myself but I'm trying to raise funds to keep
our little station going, and as we are all volunteers life ain't easy.

Whatever, let's keep smiling and making sure we give our audiences what they
want. We need thm all to remain on our side.

Trevor Lockwood

Felixstowe Radio

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