[cma-l] URGENT – Community Radio Consultation deadline Friday at 5pm

[Shane Mc Breen]

Dear fellow Community Radio Practitioner,

RE: Community Radio Consultation deadline Friday at 5pm.

Like all of you, we at Blast106 Community Radio in Belfast mourn the loss of great community radio stations across UK & Ireland through lack of finance. But how many of you are aware that Ofcom tried to close down a really successful station in Belfast last summer – Blast106? 
In June 2014 the Broadcast Licensing Committee voted to close the station despite its success and the widespread support from all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. Blast106 had support from all the political parties here (a rare event in Northern Ireland to have the party leaders, MPs, MEPs, MLAs, Lord Mayors & Councillors all come out together in support of something).  But Ofcom ignored all that and pressed ahead with trying to close the station.
However, Blast106 went to the High Court and the Judge found Ofcom to have acted unlawfully in a number of their actions and the High Court ordered Ofcom to renew the licence for the full 5 year term. We believe that this is a first and a unique situation.

It should be said that it took some courage and determination to take on Ofcom with their resources in defence of our community and our station.

The learned Judge also quashed Ofcom’s previous finding that the station had breached its licence and Ofcom were forced to change the text of one of its Broadcast Bulletins (although interestingly they have never sent an email to advise people that a Broadcast Bulletin had to be amended). Page 24 on the following link:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/enforcement/broadcast-bulletins/obb2541/obb255.pdf

Similarly, we think Blast106 is unique in that our application to make changes to our Key Commitments have been put out to public consultation. Do any of you know any other station this has happened to? Please let us know.

In any case, the consultation closes on Friday at 5pm. 
https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/blast-106/howtorespond/form

We hope that our community will have engaged with and supported our changes which resulted from our own widespread positive consultation prior to making the application to Ofcom.
As fellow Community Radio people, please feel free to respond to the consultation and show your support for a station dedicated to going the extra mile to stay on air for our community. 
https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/blast-106/howtorespond/form

Alternatively if you disagree with us, feel free to reject our proposals – that’s the nature of democracy – and we have no doubt that big commercial interests with no community connection to Northern Ireland will be responding so we feel that Community sector interests across the UK should feel free to contribute their support/opposition. We would love to have a big response either way.

In any case, it takes 1 minute to fill in the online form and have your say and we would be grateful if you would take that one minute now to respond to the online consultation. Thanks.

https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/blast-106/howtorespond/form

All you have to do is type YES if you support the station to the single question consultation, and No if you disagree.
It would also be great if you dropped us a quick email back to let us know if you voted so we can keep some track of numbers. You don’t have to tell us what way you voted.

Thanks very much from All the Volunteers at Blast106 Community Radio.


A quick summary of the key proposals:
1. Music Speech ratio of 85:15 during term time similar to other community radio stations in NI and 90:10 out of term time.
2. Increasing music variety including a minimum music database of 3,000 songs to choose from but choice will continue to be based on volunteer & community tastes.
3. Increased use of social media in debate & discussions and improving coverage of news, sports and politics including local bulletins and a minimum of 20 news bulletins per week.
4. Increasing guaranteed live output to 76 hours per week term-time and 40 hours per week out-of-term.
5. Improved provision for ethnic and minority group programming.
6. Introducing a definition of our core target community age group as 18-30 (although anyone can listen!!).
7. Removing the possibility of introducing membership fees for people to be involved, so Blast106 will always be free.
8. Defining that term-time will be the dates published by Queens University each year.

More detailed information on the proposals are contained on the Ofcom website consultation section.
Thank you for your time.


Please vote NOW!!!
https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/blast-106/howtorespond/form



Sean Og Mac Braoin
Volunteer Chairman at Blast106.