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

Fri Jan 16 11:23:42 GMT 2015

Shane et al

I'll get round to this when I get five mins .... a bit manic a the moment
and when I'm writing e-mails I get behind on other stuff.

I suggest everyone reads my/our timeline from 2004 ...... I have always
maintained that a simple idea (ie   Community Radio)  has been made
difficult by allowing folk who have got nothing to do with 'Community' to
poke their noses in and interfere. These such 'people' are only interested
in lolly £££ and nailing peoples hats on and feeding us bland white wash
garbage and celebrity ....... Community Radio ought to have been celebrated.

You may argue ''well it has''    yes !   by us   and not the ones who should
be making things easier and better for us. Instead it has been like running
round the track in Gateshead and at 15 yard intervals someone in a grey suit
comes running out and chucks a 20 foot hurdle and water jump in front of
you.

I sum it up as before ......... don't use Black and White rules implemented
by Grey suits, use Grey area rules (allowing for common sense and room for
manoeuvre) implemented by sensible reasonable people in Black and White
suits.

I don't want anyone to take this to literally and I am not saying everyone
in the DCMS or Ofcom has taken leave of their senses, as they operate under
these rules as well and their hands are tied ..... but come on, for goodness
sake, let's have a bit of down to Earth eee-by-gum laymans common sense
simple talk and a simplistic way of applying these guidelines .... not
rules, but guidelines. At the end of the day Community Radio is abound with
rookies, novices, students, people with disabilities, community minded
people who have a tendency to trip up ... their hearts are in the right
place but there are hiccups ..... as long as the mistakes are not done
deliberately or in a sinister way then the authorities need to chill out a
bit and back off.

These are my thoughts for what they are worth.

Please note .... when you have just black and white rules then the easy
option to simply say ''NO'' to every suggestion becomes so straight-forward
... and of course a 'cop-out'

Regards

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk
[mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Shane Mc Breen
Sent: 15 January 2015 20:41
To: shirleyludford at btinternet.co; The Community Media Association Discussion
List; 'Dom Chambers'; Bill Best
Subject: [cma-l] URGENT – Community Radio Consultation deadline Friday at
5pm

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/ob
b2541/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.
_______________________________________________

Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media
Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
_______________________________________________

Mailing list guidelines:
http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
_______________________________________________

To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com