After recently losing its full time licence, community station Hawkesbury Radio received some good news last week: it will be able to stay on air longer, until 5 November, thanks to a new Temporary Community Broadcasting Licence (TCBL).

The incumbent station has been granted the opportunity to use the temporary licence system to prove to the ACMA that it now deserves a new licence.

It will not be all plain sailing for Hawkesbury Radio however. Now that the licence is technically vacant, it can be contested by other groups who would also like to eventually win the right to use the frequency permanently. There are two other groups that want the frequency when the ACMA eventually allocates it officially.

An ACMA spokesperson explained to radioinfo:

The ACMA allocated a temporary community broadcasting licence to Hawkesbury Radio Communications Cooperative Society on Friday 29 September 2017 to represent the general community interest in the Windsor RA1 licence area from 4 October 2017 to 5 November 2017.
 

The ACMA has asked three groups, which applied for a TCBL, to negotiate a timesharing arrangement and to advise the ACMA by 5pm Friday 20 October 2017 whether a timesharing arrangement is agreed with the other applicants. If so, they are to provide details of the terms of the agreed timesharing arrangement and any other information that may be relevant to a decision on timing conditions.

The regulator was not able to give specific details of the other groups which want to contest for the licence, but it is believed that one group is led by disaffected former members of Hawkesbury Radio and another is a broadcast group from outside the area which was previously unsuccessful for a full time licence in another area of Sydney.

According to a post on the Hawkesbury Radio facebook page, neither of the other two groups is ready to go to air at this time. “Hawkesbury Radio is delighted to announce that your Hawkesbury Radio has been granted the temporary broadcast licence from ACMA… The other applicants for the temporary broadcast licence advised ACMA that they were not able to commence broadcasting immediately.”

A radioinfo reader has posted this additional information below: “One other applicant cannot start broadcasting until 2018, but the other applicant, HAWKESBURY GOLD, will commence broadcasting on 6th November 2017.”

The full post reads: