[cma-l] Community Radio Fund & the CMA

[Alex Gray, Two Lochs Radio]

Clearly a grant to Community Radio is not in any way a handout to a ‘begging bowl’. The whole justification for there being CR licences available is that such stations are expected to provide ‘social gain’ – so the government has already accepted that there is a value to society in having these stations. In which case it seems to me that in principle it would be perfectly proper for public funds to contribute to delivering that social purpose. 

 

As has already been mentioned, that was indeed proposed to the tune of £30k per station in the original 2003 recommendations for CR licensing. That didn’t happen, presumably because of a lack of political will/lobbying from the commercial companies.

 

There is another potential practical route to value this social purpose – one that has worked well for us in Scotland for the stations that were licensed prior to CR licences and their restrictions on commercial income.

 

That is to persuade the Government of the need and value to run ‘public service’ and ‘social message’ advertising on community-based stations. This avoids any need to think about or discuss ‘begging bowls’ since we are selling them a product of value in return for the income, not asking for ‘something for nothing’.

 

In Scotland the Scottish Government instructs the advertising agencies to place a small share of the overall public service advertising budget with the community-based non-profit stations such as ours, and it has been a very important income stream.

 

Of course there is a problem in this scheme in that as things stand it couldn’t be applied to stations with CR licences that limit or bar commercial airtime income, but maybe it would be easier to persuade Ofcom/DCMS that this requirement should be eased/removed in the case of official social/public service messages from Government – ie that such advertising would not count as commercial income for Ofcom purposes, or that licence conditions would be amended to permit such income.

 

Just an idea. While it’s provides nowhere near as much as the originally proposed core CR funding from Government,  It has been a substantial help for us for over 10 years in Scotland.


Alex

 

From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk [mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Canalside's The Thread
Sent: 17 May 2016 12:36
To: 'The Community Media Association Discussion List' <cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Community Radio Fund & the CMA

 

Let’s not get into the debate    re:- value of the product               our product is viewed differently by possibly every Tom, Dick and Harry on this Island. It is irrelevant owing to the very reason why Community Radio was set up….



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