In an ongoing campaign to stop PR companies and charities taking advantage of Community Service Announcement spots instead of paying for airtime, Lee Hubber has written to community broadcasters suggesting a tightening of station policy on CSAs.
Earlier this year Hubber, the Director of media rep company Spots & Space consulted widely about policies for the free broadcast of community service announcements and found that some stations are being taken advantage of.
He has recommended action “to discourage potential advertisers from dressing up their advertising campaign as a CSA” and to encourage them to “fund a booking on your station.”
“By the time you have received a request to broadcast a CSA, that organisation has already decided not to pay for your airtime,” he says in a letter to stations this week.
The letter contains a questionnaire aimed to make those who request CSAs think about what they are asking for, and to help station management judge whether the spot deserves free airtime. “If enough stations do this, non-eligible organisations might re-think their strategy before they have decided to ask for your donation,” he says.
The campaign encourages stations to ask those who request CSA spots to “disclose funding information.”
It also suggests that “any approach for a donation of airtime for a community service announcement be rejected if any other media organisation is paid to publish or broadcast that campaign.”
Unimpressed with Lee's comments.
Demonstrates a distinct lack of understanding of community radio and CSAs.
Many stations gladly offer community orgs/NFPs/charities free air time including interviews.
Why should this change.
This is an attempt to monetise something that should be free.
Lee Hubber actually sends CSA’s for Centrelink to me on a regular basis for at least the last 10 years. They normally have a run time around 5 minutes or more.
These are packed up on CD’s in about 12 languages, couriered to our studios, with no expense spared.
We all know he does not do this for free. How much is he making out of this?
How much is made up of the campaign spend in production and distribution costs.
This could simply be supplied electronically to save the taxpayer! (as he does with paid spots). Although I must add that we receive very little in the way of Paid Spots from him.
I for one don't need to be tutored by Mr Hubber re the difference between a CSA and a Sponsorship Announcement, likewise I believe that the vast number of Community Broadcasters have this under control.
What is the motivation behind all this?
Thanks for the article, it's always good to get coverage. Unfortunately, this article is not a great representation of our findings or our correspondence to client stations.
We did NOT find that stations “don’t have good CSA guidelines in place”.
What we DID find is that each station had a policy that suited their station and their community. Each policy was as different from the next as each station and community is different from each other. We celebrate this diversity.
We are NOT conducting an “ongoing campaign to stop charities from taking advantage of community service announcement spots instead of paying for airtime” (or community organisations and NFPs for that matter).
I do suggest two things;
1/ that stations require third party distributers of CSAs disclose the funding of the campaign so that stations can effectively judge whether the message is eligible as a CSA under their own policy.
2/ Equal treatment of community broadcasters with other media, to address the practice of advertisers paying for placement on some media and expecting free coverage on community radio.
This reflects the feedback we have received from stations that responded to a discussion paper on the subject earlier this year.
The last half of this article is excellent, the first two paragraphs are provocative and inaccurate.
Lee,
Thanks. We have modified some of the first two pars. Your comments explain your view on the rest.
Editor