Post by Flash on Apr 23, 2008 0:26:20 GMT -5
What does it take to get a sensible response out of Government for community broadcasting?
A mixture of stone-walling and high hurdles is threatening the ability of Australia’s most diverse broadcasting sector to make the leap into the digital age.
Yesterday was a nail biter for community radio stations around the country because it was the deadline for signing up to joint venture companies to help run the infrastructure for digital radio.
Without signing, community radio risks being locked out of the discussions that will guide the future of digital radio. Yet signing meant making major financial commitments to companies effectively managed by the commercial radio stations, without any clarity on the potential liabilities in the future.
Around the country community radio has been scraping the bottom of the till to find the money to sign up. Some stations simply haven’t been able to pay their share, and are either locked out or else being subsidised by others.
All this is because Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has failed to respond to repeated requests to bring forward funding to help community radio stations take the steps into the digital world.
The last budget of the Howard Government committed $10.1 million over several years to help community radio make the transition to digital. The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia has requested $2.4 of this to be brought forward into this year to help with the sign up and the funding of technical infrastructure. It is a modest enough request, but by the deadline for joint venture sign-up yesterday there had been no response from Conroy.
By midnight last night, and amid great financial strain, community radio groups in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Sydney had all signed up and paid $22,000 each to the joint venture companies, conditional on receiving government funding.
But Hobart and Brisbane had shied at the jump – not surprising considering legal advice to the effect that the joint venture agreements are far from satisfactory. Hobart and Brisbane stations have asked for an extension to the deadline for sign-up, but it is unclear whether the commercial stations will grant this. After all, why would they?
The issues involved in all this are complex, but the result is a stressed and burdened community radio sector - and an uncertain future.
The process for digital radio roll-out is described here. Community radio has to satisfy a two layer process to be part of the digital radio world. First, they have to form representative companies in each capital city. This is a challenge in itself, with community stations spanning the range of interests from student media organisations such as the cash-strapped but innovative SYN to religious radio and radio for the print handicapped.
Then the representative companies have to sign up and pay their money to get a seat at the table in the joint venture companies that will run the digital radio infrastructure. These JVCs will, of course, be dominated by commercial radio. The process, conducted to punishing deadlines, has been a very high hurdle.
Even those groups that have managed to get to sign-up will get less spectrum than the commercial sector. Commercial stations get 128kbps each, while community stations get just 2/9ths of the capacity to share between them all. In Melbourne and Sydney that works out to just 512 kbps to be shared between nine community stations..
The result is the possibility of a fragmented community radio sector in the future, with some able to use digital radio, and others locked into analogue.
On the other hand, the future of the technology is uncertain. Many in the industry believe that Digital Radio will be stillborn, overtaken by wireless internet technology. Nevertheless the community sector is having to make commitments now, in order to have a seat at the table in the future.
At the same time as community radio is bending under the strain, the Government has yet to come up with a digital solution for community television, which is presently condemned to a slow fade out as more Australians take up digital televisions, and lose the ability to get the community television analogue signal.
Does Government actually want community broadcasting to survive? At the moment it seems that technology that is meant to bring more diversity is actually presenting as a threat to the most diverse, if least polished, broadcasting sector in Australia.
Senator Conroy’s office did not respond to Crikey’s questions on this issue by deadline today.
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Community Broadcaster
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 2:29:21 PM
Your comments are well made Media Researcher, and many of them I agree with. CBs MUST involve the community in their programming and decision-making to be (1) relevant (2) compliant and (3) attract public support. Pre-planning and business sense are critical to this. But without ANY seed funding, is this realistically accessible to all CBs? The ABC spend huge $ on research identifying trends and developing content to keep up with the communities demands. CB do not have access to this type of research or community consultation, nor the resourcing to do so. Sure, there are some things that can be achieved off a shoe-string with great volunteer support, but getting it right is a real stretch - particularly if you're operating in a community of 25,000 people or less (60% of CBs are outside the big cities). In such a town, attracting massive public support - say 1 in 10 people give $10 each - will still only give you $25,000 -a pretty meagre budget. Yes, CBs must do more. But it's not easy.
Media Researcher
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 2:01:58 PM
Second part - talking with the public to obtain their interest and concerns were never addressed with this new service. I would also suspect that even discussing with local government to ascertain their possible support for the station, or even proposing a station’s intent with local business to gain their financial support were never conducted prior to pursuing a license. But yet the industry faults the government for not being supportive. Well, the industry is not being supportive of the public for which it campaigned to provide as well. Unity is missing within this industry, localism, public participation and relevance are also gone, and you feel that the government should be supportive of an industry that is un-organized and non-compliant to its mandate? The community broadcasting sector needs to get more involved in the community and stop playing the same game as the commercial and public media sector. They were established to do what they do and do it very well, with the ex
Media Researcher
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 1:54:30 PM
Dear Community Broadcaster - I admire your whimper to justify community broadcaster’s strife, but public dollars can follow, it just takes proper planning and direct community involvement. Establishing a media service, may it be radio, newspaper or television requires proper pre-planning. It is not the responsibility of the government, may it be state or federal to fund businesses of any type and it should not be a primary consideration. However, it appears that from the financial problems encountered by the community broadcasting sector is largely a result of either a lack of or non-preplanning before pursuing a broadcasting license. This industry or any other business should never be established on the principle of “build it and they will come” strategy, but from the result of proper pre-planning and good business sense. For the problems encountered by the community broadcasting sector, with their lack of public focus and financial contribution, I would suspect items like talkin
A Community Broadcaster
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 1:15:05 PM
Media Researcher - while it is true to say that some community stations might provide a degree of commercialism in their content, it is a massive over simplication to assume that public tax dollars will follow community broadcasters if they uphold the principles of localism, public interest and participation. The vast majority of community stations have been doing this for years, yet the Government contribution per station has fallen significantly and steadily for the past 15 years. The reality is, the Government has not shown a real willingness to invest in community broadcasting. So, when half of all community radio stations operate on a budget of less than $70,000 pa, often with little or no paid staff, there is a constant fight just to keep the service going. If, at times, they are forced to go with slightly more commercially attractive content just to survive, who can blame them? The ABC do it, and they have an budget nearing $1 billion...
Media Researcher
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 7:51:55 AM
Just to add to my previous comment. Although community radio might provide niche programming such as, SYN (youth), religious and handicapped services, there is still the issue of commercialism existing within their services (popular music and advertisements). However, this is also prevelant within the community television sector where they too broadcast popular American and other international programs and use commercial advertisements that are disquised as sponsorship spots. What happened to Australian content, localism and the public interest? Community Broadcasters - If you operate similar to the commercial and public broadcasters, don't expect their support. It is time to refocus your direction back to providing a public service that concerns Australia, programming that is locally focused, allowance of public participation and non-reflective of commercialism. Public tax dollars will follow.
Media Researcher
Wednesday, 23 April 2008 5:26:14 AM
I have been studying this media sector since 2004 (Doctorate) and I have had trouble getting the government to answer questions. The problem is Helen Coonan had a plan and was ready to implement it, but everyone wanted a change of government. This new government is affraid of commitment, while not fully understanding what community broadcasting can provide to society and the industry, they would rather cut budgets, complicate processes and hold useless summits. Yes, the sky is falling for the community broadcasting sector, but no one is throwoing out any life-lines. Should the commercial and public media sector care either? No, they don't and don't expect them to care, along with the government.
Peter
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 11:14:19 PM
Hear hear?