Sometimes you have to tell it like it is. We promised to be open about Ofcom’s reasons for rejecting our application for a Community Radio licence. Except that we have no idea what they actually were – and there’s no evidence that the Ofcom Panel is sure either. Sounds daft? Read on.
Well, the good news was:
Good Board. Strong application, well put together. Good community support built in a short time. Good partnerships. Cost and income figures add up and stack up.*
OK. Looks like a success story. But it wasn’t. So why? Well the bad news was that we were:
A Community regeneration project with a radio station in it. Ambitious. Different. Wanted to use the station to bring several communities into a sense of being a single community of interest where Ofcom is used to a station serving only one community. And we’d never done an RSL (Restricted Service Licence – which is not a prerequisite anyway).*
* We paraphrase here for brevity
And that, Dear Readers is it – literally all the ‘evidence’ we were given to support our rejection. Straight up – does this sound to you like the profile of a failure? We think the whole thing, good news and ‘bad’ sounds more like a ticket to ride than a ‘get off the bus’. Are we deluded?
By the way, we met the two big absolute requirements – fulfilling all of the ‘social gain objectives’ and showing that we could ‘maintain the licence’.
There was of course a legislative matter that could have been a cause for rejection – an overlap area with an existing ILR – but they say they never got around to discussing that. But they’d already mentioned this legislative difficulty – and only this – in the first phone call telling us we were out. Oh and they said that if they had got round to discussing the legal position, they would have had to reject us anyway.
Your call. Can you make sense of this? We can’t.
We’re over it and, free from Ofcom’s restrictions, our current plans have more reach and more longevity. But we’re saying: ‘Get your act together. This won’t do.’ No future applicant should have this experience dealt them. We’ve not opened this up until the round of applications for Scotland and N Ireland was concluded, so that no one can say we’re just trying to get the decision overturned. We’ve written to James Purnell, Cabinet Minister responsible for Culture, Media and Sport, putting the case before him, asking for nothing except that, with our MP, Alan Reid, he explores the lessons to be learned from this and puts these to Ofcom for the future.
We’re now off to the bunker to wait for the inevitable ‘Shock and Awe response’. Send chocolate. Send hard hats. Send emails. Tell us what you think. Tell us what happened to you. And please before you make any decisions read the facts.
Our letter to James Purnell, Cabinet Minister responsible for Culture, Media and Sport
This morning we received the following by email …
“You’ve made some good points. I’ll write to James Purnell myself and let
you know his response.” – Alan Reid MP
“Good to hear from you and thanks for keeping me posted on where you’re
at with the proposal. The Council are supportive of community effort and would hope that we
could be involved in this as indicated by you.” – James McLellan, Argyll & Bute Council
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What a short-sighted view. Our rural communities need all the forward thinking they can get to keep them sustainable. A radio station would be a wonderful focal point and a medium for all ages, about us and for us. Radio Fyneside’s plans recognise the sheer geographical landmass that our area covers and that existing stations do not really reach us. We are not Oban, Kintyre or even Dunoon. Once again a large body makes a decision that treats our area as a “no man’s land”! Hello!!!!
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Pingback: radio fyneside » Blog Archive » links for 2007-07-16
Article in Radio Today UK
OFCOM TOLD TO GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER
A community radio station, angry at not being granted a licence has written to James Purnell, Cabinet Minister responsible for Culture, Media and Sport to find out why. Radio Fyneside, based on Loch Fyne in Scotland has also told Ofcom to “get its act together” when dealing with unsuccessful groups.
Read more at: http://www.radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.2200
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It’s a completely ridiculous decision. In London they say there is not enough space on FM for most applicants, while the BBC takes up a ridiculously large amount of bandwidth and digital is too expensive for small stations.
Keep trying and perhaps they will relent.
Frank
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What frustrating news. My thoughts are with the folks who I know have worked day and night on this project. I’ve read all the documents and I still don’t understand why the application was rejected and how the process could have gone wrong like this. Can Ofcom give a clearer explanation? What are the options for going ahead without them? Let’s not give up now.
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Pingback: arbu.co.uk » Blog Archive » The Mouse that Roared
It’s quite simple.
You didn’t read and understand the criteria properly.
Ofcom is concise in that a Community Radio station must be designed to serve a single carefully-defined community, as you say.
You chose to propose serving several different communities, which is outside the remit.
If you re-apply with the details changed to specify a single community, which is not limited in size or make-up, the chances are that you will be successful.
I can quote you cases where this has happened before and the Applicants now have been awarded CR licences.
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In reply to Ian Hickling:
Thanks for taking the time to comment. At the very same panel meeting in which Ofcom rejected us, the panel awarded a licence to Speysound for a similar multi-community, multi-transmitter proposal. Why then did Speysound get the licence and Radio Fyneside not?
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Pingback: radio fyneside » Blog Archive » Aberdeen gets a duff result too - and this one must be changed
Pingback: Trouble by the loch | Radiolicious
(Response to Ian Hickling)
All I can say, Ian, is that we left absolutely nothing to chance in putting any aspect of this application together. As with all applicants in the second round, we were given an Ofcom Community Radio Team mentor as a contact for advice during the preparation period. We read every single document on Ofcom’s site – their own commissioned research into audience responses to radio, their papers on the future of radio, applications submitted in Round One… We knew the Guidelines backwards and we consulted our ‘mentor’ at every turn on our interpretation of them.
From the outset the area we proposed to apply to cover was formally notified, updated and repeated. The only issue we were advised on was that, since our engineering response to the topography here required three transmitters/frequencies and no previous CR station had been licensed for more than two, we might need to accept a Plan B. We were told that the Ofcom Panel would consider the case we made.
In the talk-through phone call after the decision to reject, we were told that the engineering issue would not, in fact, have been a problem; that we would have been given the frequencies; and that the Panel had, in fact, awarded Speysound a similar setup to the one we had requested. Look at the logic, Ian. No one covers a large rural territory to serve a single community. Once again we were getting conflicting simultaneous stories. On the one hand, we were turned down because we wanted to serve several small communities. On the other hand they were evidently happy to give us three frequencies to enable us to serve several communities – if they hadn’t already turned us down for wanting to serve several communities. Think about it. We have.
During the preparation of the application, we ourselves raised, on more than one occasion, the issue of the overlap with an existing ILR and the legislation around it. We understood that this was an area where Ofcom had discretion. Now we have been told that they have no discretion and that the legal position requires a straight rejection in such circumstances. But the Panel never got round to discussing this matter, they say. Yet the only explanation offered us in the first phone call was that ‘it was the legislation’. Take your pick. It looks awfully like trying to find the right place to pin the tail on the donkey.
We have email trails to support what we’e saying on all points. But we’re not asking for explanations or inquests. This is history and we’ve moved our plans beyond on-air broadcasting. But we feel strongly that this has not been Ofcom’s finest hour and that no future CR applicant should have to deal with a process whose integrity is not evident.
You sound like an experienced radio insider, Ian. Sometimes it’s difficult from that position to see things objectively; and sometimes it is hard to see that to grow, things need to change – community radio itself included.
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Good to see such a range of thoughts on the Radio Fyneside debate. Surely the key thing here is not to labour over quite what went wrong. Suffice to say that OFCOM missed a fabulous opportunity to support a genuinely innovative project. Those charged with encouraging and supporting community radio made a gaff that does them no credit. But, as Lynda Henderson remarks in her comments in this thread yesterday:
“….we’re not asking for explanations or inquests. This is history and we’ve moved our plans beyond on-air broadcasting.”
The evident lack of integrity in the OFCOM process does nothing whatsoever to diminish the talent and potential of the team that has, for well over a year, moved heaven and earth to bring Radio Fyneside to fruition. It would be a pity if the energy and momentum developed by that team were now to be dissipated in lengthy debates dissecting an OFCOM decision that is most probably capricious.
It is probably not every day that Fyneside has brought together a group like this that so clearly has the urge to better the community that lives around the loch. A time perhaps for those who were behind the Radio Fyneside project to see how the ideas in the proposal might be realised in other ways. Internet radio, perhaps, coupled with a raft of other community development initiatives that will made Fyneside an even more outstanding spot – one that thrives locally with an eye on global horizons. The OFCOM proposal offered such a vision, but could not some of the ideals therein now be realised by other means?
We wish you all good luck. We here at hidden europe magazine have enjoyed following the Radio Fyneside story over the last year. Dipping into this website to pick up some Fyneside news has become a regular happy diversion. We’ll continue to follow what happens in the future. We have no doubt that this is a space well worth watching.
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries
editors / hidden europe magazine
http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk
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Article on AllMediaScotland today:
FYNESIDE RADIO GROUP COMES OUT FIGHTING
A steady stream of features on Argyllshire, for possible sale to radio broadcasters is how a community group has reacted to broadcasting regulators, Ofcom, saying it cannot operate a radio station …
read more here
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Comment on AllMediaScotland:
“Good to see that the Radio Fyneside team evidently hasn’t been too dented by the OFCOM decision not to award them a community radio licence. This seemed like an inspired application and it is a pity that OFCOM simply couldn’t catch the vision developed by the Radio Fyneside project. But this news story hints that the aspirations underpinning the original application might yet be realised by others means. Excellent! And, yes, surely it would be better if Scotland could control its own broadcasting regulation. The very different cultural and geographical environment in Scotland (with issues of remoteness, well articlated in the Radio Fyneside bid, which find little parallel in England) all suggest that local control over broadcasting regulation would be a positive step.”
Nicky Gardner 21/07/2007
“The sooner Scottish broadcasting – radio and television – is controlled by a governing body within Scotland the better.And so say all of us, don’t we ?”
Ninian Reid 20/07/2007
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