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By any measure, there is greater awareness of community radio in the general community in 2010 than there has ever been, with many people choosing to look for alternatives to the often bland offerings of commercial radio.
This is particularly true in country areas, where significant numbers of both heritage AM stations and spinoff FM licences have been allowed to be bought by a handful of operators who then simply network the programming, resulting in virtually no local content. A similar situation has existed for many years with the ABC, with the exception of regional breakfast programmes.
Community radio provides virtually the only opportunities for truly localised, one community shows, for ethic broadcasting in a multitude of languages well beyond the mainstream nationalities covered by SBS, and for specialist music programmes embracing genres of music not even considered by the focus group/ heavily researched (to the point of repetitiveness and blandness) commercial radio networks.
Most of our community radio stations are run entirely by volunteers, with on air presenters actually paying for the opportunity to offer an alternative programme. Without this structure, with very limited or no government assistance to individual stations, community radio would not survive.
Yet, despite all the benefits that community radio potentially brings to the population at large, there is greater government funding given to the ACMA to watch over the activities of community broadcasters than there is funding to allow this sector to survive.
Once again, it seems that government policy and funding in broadcasting is being driven by young public servants who radio listening is dictated by today's top 40 and their own iPod selections.