[cma-l] Community Radio Fund & the CMA

Tue May 17 18:39:35 BST 2016

Phil

I suggested all of this 3 years ago ..... and rammed it home week in week
out ...... sadly, one or two of our crew decided to say that anything that
went two decibels above walking on eggshells was actually ranting. Anyway, I
have gone past that a long time ago.

Back of a fag Packet ???!   yup   you are spot on Phil. This Community Radio
idea and the way it could operate in a simple straight forward way for
everyone could all be done on the back of a fag packet. I could do it with
my eyes shut.

It's been made complicated by the Powers that be and the commercials, many
of whom pretend 'they don't mind us being here' when actually they do. So
behind closed doors they still lobby on the idea that we are some kind of
threat. We are only a threat if their Station is a mickey mouse outfit
...any other time we are no threat. We only have 25 watts !

Equal payments from whatever fund is an absolute MUST as it in itself works
within the ethos of Community Radio. I know this sounds a bit like
Communism, and the word Community sounds likes Communism, but it isn't, it
is all to do with Common sense   (common also sounding like commune)   LOL

1) Earnings are going down for Community Radio = FACT

2) The Fund pro rata is going down = FACT

3) 15 have gone belly up = FACT       more to follow    possible = FACT
if no one acts now

4) Certain restrictions are still in place = FACT

5) The handful of Engine Drivers at each Station are battle weary and tired
[but still determined nonetheless] = FACT

6) Any new initiatives or new money ... Community Radio NEVER gets included
= FACT

7) Lots and Lots of reasonable and sensible suggestions and arguments have
been put forward over the 14 years, the majority of which (well, nearly all)
have been tossed back in our face = FACT

8) All the original ideas as to why we ended up with the barmy rule book
over the years have never come to pass, they have never been proved and are
a complete falsehood and red herring = FACT

9) We (Community Radio) have never had a Plan B = FACT

Community Radio is quite a simple, beneficial, worthy, inexpensive thing to
operate ...... knocking each little silly skittle over as a team one by one
with the DCMS / Ofcom / CMA / Commercials could easily be done = FACT

Why not go full hog ---- and then 'IF' mini problems started to arise for
the commercials we tweak and go and re-instate smaller versions or
restrictions.
Once again, this is not difficult. I don't want to see any Radio Station
fall over, be them Commercial or BBC.

Put a decent fund forward ........I believe in Australia it is about not far
short of £10 Million and they've less Stations than us (I think ?)   
£50,000 Grand for each Station and our boys down the road at Silk can have a
free-for-all, they can have ALL the Advertisers.

I tell you all one more time .... the model has invented problems that don't
actually exist. And there is money available, plenty of it, it's just they
spend it on white elephants and nonsense = FACT

Oh and one final thing seeing as PPL/PRS have been mentioned again .... net
broadcasting for ALL Community Radios is nil / zero / zilch, we're all
not-for-profit, so minimum fee for everyone .... yes Phil    do it as a
block booking. Once again an easy method for all, but they choose to take
the difficult method = FACT !

Nick H Numpty Dumpty

-----Original Message-----
From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk
[mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Phil Edmonds
Sent: 17 May 2016 17:22
To: cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Community Radio Fund & the CMA

Thinking aloud here....

Every Community Radio station has the Ofcom Licence fees (which unless 
it's changed since I last looked a couple of years back, that if you 
were an analogue Commercial Radio station would be zero rated if you had 
the turnover of an average CR station) plus at least the 'minimum' 
PRS/MCPS and PPL fee.

So there's 500k in the Community Radio fund....

Maybe someone should put in an application to the Community Radio Fund 
to mass pay "everyone's" Ofcom and minimum music royalties basic costs 
(hey it might even mean that PRS can sort out the admin correctly on 
such a 'block booking'!)

Back of the fag packet calculations gets me broadly to the 500k mark 
with this.

I could be even more radical and suggest a mass submission of the same 
"spilt up the fund to all stations equally" set of applications...

Now my initial thought on this front was somewhat "tongue in cheek", but 
maybe there is a little nugget of an idea in there?

I'll duck and cover now....

Phil.
(Personal views, not necessarily those of any organisation I'm involved 
with.)

On 17/05/2016 13:24, Alex Gray, Two Lochs Radio wrote:
> 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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