[cma-l] Ofcom community radio review

[CMA-L]

Good afternoon

The Community Media Association met with Ofcom this week to discuss its
forthcoming review of how it works with the community radio sector. The
CMA, working with Ofcom, will publish a consultation to invite suggestions
as to how it can improve its service to the community radio sector.

Ofcom will make no changes to how it *currently* licenses or organises
activity for the present licensing Round. There will be an open public
consultation to inform how Round 4 might be managed.

Ofcom will shortly undertake a "pre-consultation survey" through the CMA to
gauge what issues are of most current concern to the sector and which
subject areas should be addressed in a formal consultation which, it is
expected, will be announced later in the year (*before* the London and AM
licence applications have closed) so that Ofcom is ready in 2017 with how
Round 4 might be planned.

Some of the concerns that the sector has raised with the Community Media
Association so far are:

a) power increases for stations
b) fast track licence applications based on merit
c) Ofcom's resources to service the sector
d) unlicensed broadcasters


Over the next few weeks, Ofcom will work with the CMA to refine the areas
suggested by the sector into formal questions so as to focus responses to
the formal consultation. Rather than presenting respondents with a large
text box marked "Tell us your concerns", Ofcom finds it is much more useful
to present structured questions to better focus definitive answers. The CMA
will then put the final set of questions out to the sector via a hosted
survey and we will then share with Ofcom the responses to the formal
consultation received.

Quickly addressing the issues listed above, with regard to power increases
for stations, Ofcom would much prefer stations to consider *better sites*
for their transmission equipment. Very often an increase in power would not
increase the area covered but would only serve to improve the signal in the
current service area.  It was suggested that power could be increased for
any station that asked for it but this would not be considered to be an
inefficient use of spectrum which Ofcom is mandated to manage effectively.

Ofcom is open to hear suggestions as to how licence applications could be
quickly and fairly processed other than by using the current
region-by-region basis. However, some stations will recall in Round 1 of
licensing which was open nationally, that some stations received their
licence award up to 18 months after the Round opened - hence the move to
region-by-region processing which was considered to be much fairer.

Suggestions as to how Ofcom's processes might be improved have to be
mindful of the budget and resource constraints under which Ofcom operates.
Furthermore, respondents to the consultation should be mindful that Ofcom
can only work within the existing legal framework and any proposals that
are not supported by existing legislation would not be possible to
implement for the start of Round 4 licensing.

Lastly with regards to unlicensed broadcasters, it is not Ofcom's policy to
be lenient on those broadcasters but to take appropriate action against
illegal broadcasters. Furthermore, it is not usually possible to licence
community radio on those frequencies occupied by 'pirate' stations as it is
usual for pirate stations to use frequencies that cause interference to
other licensed stations - and could therefore never be licensed to
community broadcasters.

The CMA has invited Ofcom to the Community Media Conference 2016
<http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf> to be held on Saturday 10th September at
Birmingham City University and will reply to this invitation in due course.

With best regards

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

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

*Book your tickets now for the Community Media Conference
2016: http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf <http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf>*
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