<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Good afternoon</span><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">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.</span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span><div style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Ofcom will make no changes to how it <u>currently</u> licenses or organises activity for the present licensing Round. There will be an open public consultation to inform how Round 4 might be managed.</span><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">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 (<u>before</u> the London and AM licence applications have closed) so that Ofcom is ready in 2017 with how Round 4 might be planned.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">Some of the concerns that the sector has raised with the Community Media Association so far are:</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">a) power increases for stations</div></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">b) fast track licence applications based on merit</div></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">c) Ofcom's resources to service the sector</div></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8px">d) unlicensed broadcasters</div></div></blockquote><div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">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.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">Quickly addressing the issues listed above, with regard to power increases for stations, Ofcom would much prefer stations to consider <b>better sites</b> 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.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">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.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">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.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">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.</span><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">The CMA has invited Ofcom to the <a href="http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf">Community Media Conference 2016</a> to be held on Saturday 10th September at Birmingham City University and will reply to this invitation in due course.</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">With best regards</span><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Community Media Association</div><div>-- <br><a href="http://www.commedia.org.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.commedia.org.uk/</a><br><a href="http://twitter.com/community_media" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/community_media</a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation</a><br><br>Canstream Internet Radio & Video<br><a href="http://www.canstream.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.canstream.co.uk/</a><br><a href="https://twitter.com/canstream" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/canstream</a></div><div><br></div><div><b style="color:rgb(136,136,136);font-size:12.8px"><font size="4" color="#0000ff">Book your tickets now for the Community Media Conference 2016: <a href="http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/2016CMAConf</a></font></b><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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