[CMA_Radioforum] PPL letter

[Nicky Edmonds]

Hello everyone,

I've pasted below arepsnse from Ed Baxter of Resonance to the PPL letter
which I imagine you have all received by now.
It would be interesting to hear your views on this and if you think
there should be a collective response.

Best wishes
Nicky Edmonds
Community Media Association


Dear Mr Dyer,
Thanks for your letter of 28 March 2003. Resonance104.4fm wishes to
comply with any reasonable suggestion made by PPL in order to protect
and advance that body's legitimate interests. However, your suggestions
are not acceptable to me and I will be advising our Board accordingly.

I do not comprehend the basis of your suggestion that you charge us five
hundred pounds for whatever activity we may have engaged with up to the
end of 2002, details of which you have not formally requested in
anything like good time. Now my end of year accounts are sorted, and my
budgets dealt with, I have no inclination to start paying again for
matters long since past. The sum seems to me an arbitrary figure plucked
from the air, designed no doubt to pay your administrative fee but with
no knowledge of the facts of the case, nor for that matter of the
administrative costs to Resonance104.4fm.

Likewise, the request for an advance payment is redundant, given that
you state that neither party can rely on this interim arrangement as
evidence of what either party thought was an appropriate licence fee &c.
Why then should I pay it? To do so means that I accept that five hundred
pounds is the bare minimum that PPL will want, pre-empting the evidence
I might present to you. I don't think that is good practice. It is
certainly not professional.

May I suggest that PPL, in discussion with the Community Media
Association or other body that represents the interests of the Pilot
Access stations, either requests such information as will allow it in
due course to judge what is a suitable amount; or that it imposes a flat
fee that reasonably reflects the true interests of both parties and has
some clear basis in principle. What have been PPL's approach to other
Pilot Access stations.

Your current suggestions do both at once, by a sleight of hand under the
guise of convenience, and merely confounds the problem in an already
confused and clumsily addressed area.

I emphasise that we are likewise committed to work with PPL to achieve a
mutually agreeable licence. However, you have the upper hand in this,
hence my request that you reconsider your suggestions.

I would be happy to be corrected in any matter that I have raised here
and of course accept the principle that lies at the heart of your
letter.

Yours sincerely
Ed Baxter




Community Media Association
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http://www.commedia.org.uk

Telephone 0114 279 5219
Email nicky at commedia.org.uk