[cma-l] Community Media Association response to Ofcom's Community Radio Annual Reports 2013 – Key Commitment and other licence breaches

[CMA-L]

The Community Media Association welcomes the conclusion of Ofcom's
investigation of 38 community radio stations, 15 stations having been
exonerated and removed from the original list of 53 that was announced last
November. It appears that most of Ofcom’s investigations were concerned
with technical or low offending compliance issues in the reporting.

Bill Best, Operations Manager of the Community Media Association (CMA)
advises:

"The CMA was aware from the outset that a number of community radio
stations appeared to have had difficulty with Ofcom's key commitments
self-reporting system and that some stations could not meet key commitments
that either had been too rigidly drawn up or were no longer relevant to the
stations' operations. The CMA and Ofcom are here to help all community
radio stations with regulatory compliance and we urge all stations to get
in touch with us for assistance if required. The CMA applauds Ofcom's
decision to take no further action with all but three community radio
stations that have been found to be in breach. The CMA understands that
Ofcom is considering a more streamlined and targeted approach to the
reporting process that is expected to be a more appropriate system going
forward and we welcome all improvements in this area".

Dom Chambers, Chair of the Community Media Association and station manager
of Somer Valley FM said:

"This has been an uncomfortable episode and one that I feel has attracted
unnecessary negative publicity for community radio at a time when we are
trying to meet significant funding challenges. We must all make sure
nothing like the scale of these investigations happens again. The CMA will
continue to work with Ofcom and DCMS to ensure compliance monitoring is a
more straight forward process. After all we must remember that so much work
in our sector is reliant on the good will of volunteers. Maintaining morale
is key to what community broadcasting achieves as a positive social force".

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/enforcement/broadcast-bulletins/obb282/Issue_282.pdf

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Community Media Association
-- 
http://www.commedia.org.uk/
https://twitter.com/community_media
http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation

Canstream Internet Radio & Video
http://www.canstream.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/canstream
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