[cma-l] (no subject)

[Canalside's The Thread]

Dear All

I know we have been discussing coverage indirectly now for quite a while.
Folk have been coming at the discussion from various different angles and
mine has been a bit technical but at the same time a bit Political.

The FM 5km 25 watts, licensed areas, requested license areas, DAB, 100w erp
... new possibilities ... they are all relevant when put in the mix
together.

I would like if I may to prove a point. Once I have proved the point I will
leave it up for discussion. If people think it is trivial, then fine just
say so, I don't mind .... I personally do not think it is trivial, it is
very important and most definitely important to both Canalside and myself,
hence why I parrot fashion 'bang the drum about it'   (for 3-4 years)

Last night we ran a broadcast that we recorded five weeks ago with the
children of Ash Grove school. To cut a long story short it was music that
they picked but more importantly it revolved around Poetry, favourite Books,
Short Stories and children read the books and pieces out loud ... some of it
very comical indeed in more ways than one    LOL

We feel proud as I am sure you guys do that we offer this type of thing on
the airwaves of this Country. Commercial Radio do it, but they do it for a
different reason AND they only pay lips service to it. Where in one week we
will dedicate 3 hours training and 3 hours on-air ... the commercial Station
may offer about ten minutes, more to do as a publicity stunt .... I don't
require comments from any of our commercial boys on the message board as you
would be insulting everyones intelligence if you tried to convince us of
anything different.
Anyway, that aside the crux of the matter is five fold :-

1) Doing this type of broadcast (hopefully on a regular basis if funding
permits (which it doesn't))   is NO threat whatsoever to the Commercial
viability of any Commercial Station ... nor is a writers group, and arts
show, a movie show, stories by youngsters with disabilities, council
discussions, world music    etc etc etc         but we are still arguing
about this after 12 years ?     mmm ?

2) Where signals are not good, SPEECH Programmes can prove to be even more
of an issue than music based progs (for obvious reasons) interference is
audible easier as there is nothing to drown it out

3) The area that we are based in has NO disadvantaged areas as such
(Bollington), but the area (1 mile) just outside our 5km - 7km does. These
do include Wilmslow (surprisingly) Macclesfield most definitely including
the Upton / Weston / Moss Estates.
WE FOCUS OUR ATTENTION ON THESE AREAS once again for obvious reasons. The
children at these schools are poorer and outside of school hours have less
access to Books, encouragement for reading etc etc      we have done our
homework (pardon the pun)   and this is reality.

4) The reason we wanted Macclesfield on our licence in the first place is
for this VERY reason. We were not allowed to have Macclesfield on our
licence because of the local commercial Station whinging ... but they don't
do what we do, so the people of the community fall short apart from
lips-service

[are you following it thus far?]       hopefully.

5) Finally, and most importantly the Programme aired last night at 7:15pm
and ran till 8:45pm.
Between 8:45am and 2pm today we have received 16 observations (or call them
complaints)   about our signal. Most of the families live on the Moss Estate
(a deprived area locally) with a few on the Weston Estate and others
slightly out of Town heading off towards Bosley. At most, some of these
residents are 4 miles outside the broadcast radius, at the least sometimes
only half a mile tops. Two of the families are about 1000 yards outside and
listened to the broadcast with the added value of snap crackle and pop, must
have thought they were rice krispies.

I knew it was going to happen, but we still had to do the job in hand. Of
the 16, 6 families missed the broadcast completely because they couldn't
pick us up at all on FM ..... 3 tried to get us on the Internet but couldn't
find the website ???????     1 family went outside and sat in the car
listening to it as they can pick us up in the car but not in the House (we
know this though) 5 listened, but said the interference was terrible with 3
having to turn off after ten minutes and 4 families couldn't pick us up on
FM and couldn't listen to us on the internet because they DO NOT have a
computer and the kids don't have aps and phones either (whether this is lack
of finance ?  I didn't ask)

There were about 40 youngsters taking part aged between 6 - 11 ... not
everyone rang in and some out of the remaining 20 or so may have heard it or
may not but couldn't be bothered ringing up.
The Headmistress and some of the Teachers have passed comment also when we
have done this before with them (2 occasions)    we did explain that we can
be picked up on the internet, but it has clearly gone over the heads of some
people.

Hopefully I do not have to spell out where I am heading with this
discussion, if I do then that in itself proves a problem.

I would be grateful if we could discuss this by simply saying 

1) Do we think this situation is acceptable or not ??
2) plus    what can we do about it ? 
3) We have a solution, the solution could have been applied 3 years ago but
sadly the brick wall and deaf ears are in the way (hence my frustration)
please please please    I don't want lectures from people who either don't
understand or don't care

Over to you chaps           it is this type of thing which unfortunately
gives me the tendency to 'rant' as some people put it.

I'm not ranting really, I'm just basically extremely frustrated with the
system, the bureaucracy, the hypocrisy, the moving of goalposts and the
failure / inability to solve issues that are very easy to solve.

In this / our case, the solution is simple :-

1) Don't har* omt abot things that have gone on before
2) Put the whole of Macclesfield officially on our licence so that replying
with ''it's not on your licence becomes consigned to the history bin)
3) Move the transmitter 1 mile only to fix the problem ....     homework
tells us we will not interfere with or cause a problem to anyone apart from
pushing Radio Real in Wales back by about 3 miles ... they broadcast out of
Welshpool and have nothing to do with this area whatsoever.

Thoughts ?


Obviously I could have just sent an e-mail saying   ''We did a broadcast
last night chaps ... of the 40 or so families and children who took part
directly 60% couldn't hear it, 25% could but it sounded awful and the rest
????? dunno ?
I have written a long e-mail to see if I can explain myself a little better.

Nick



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