34% of community stations are the only local program producer in their market according to research reported by McNair Ingenuity’s Matt Balogh at this week’s CBAA Conference. The latest research shows that Community Radio has 19,323 people volunteering to work in 288 fully licenced stations in the sector.
McNair Ingenuity is the company that produces the sector’s survey results, and this year it has also been commissioned to administer the community station’s census, which is completed in an online form.
Giving a preview of results that will be released later this year, Balogh revealed that community radio broadcasts an average of 37% Australian Music, 14,254 hours of community service announcements, and 34,691 hours of local content. 65% of stations now stream their programs.
“Community broadcasters are doing more with less,” said Balogh, noting that more content is being produced for less income. Sector income in the 09/10 financial year was $65.9 million, down from $69.8 million the previous year.
Talking about McNair Ingenuity’s online survey methods, Balogh commented that the reliability of telephone surveys is decreasing now that fewer households have landlines. In Australia these days, there are more people using the internet than have landline phones and the willingness to cooperate with anyone who rings your landline phone for a survey has decreased significantly. He also said younger people are far less willing to cooperate with surveys these days.
The sector snapshot also identified key issues concerning the community radio sector. Of these, the top 3 were:
1. Copyright
2. Dispute resolution
3. Coverage in other media
Following on from Balogh’s session, dispute mediator Paul Gibson addressed the second point in the top 3 list and talked about how to better solve disputes.
He advised stations to resolve conflict by interaction and communication, not avoidance.
Conflict comes from the “collision of convictions.” If it is not managed, it can result in a dispute, but conflict can also generate innovation and creativity if managed well.
See more on Twitter @radioinfo using hashtag #cbaa2011 and for more conference reports from the sector’s bloggers click here for stories and here for conference session recordings.
This continues our theory that Commercial radio in general has abdicated its responsibilities in regard to local markets. There are exceptions, like Black spot broadcaster Flow FM, but the exceptions are few and far between.
Unfortunately many Community stations are still their own worst enemy when it comes to consolidating their potential audience share in the face of this Commercial abdication.
Far too many members of Community stations view professional as commercial, and others believe the programming is all about them rather than the listener.
Thankfully for the Community sector, not all are tarred with the "amateur" brush, and many serve their community and listeners well.
Given there are 260 commercial radio stations across 105 LAPS, with the 220 regional commercial radio stations subject to legislated hours of local content monitored by the ACMA, plus metro commercial stations producing large amounts of local content, this claim is debatable.