The shine goes off Hawkesbury Gold: aspirant broadcaster tarnished by infighting

Aspirant Hawkesbury region broadcast group Hawkesbury Gold has been plagued by infighting this week, which spilt over into the public arena via its web and social media platforms today.

Early this morning a message was put on the Hawkesbury Gold website announcing that a range of shows had pulled the plug on their dealings with the aspirant group.

Quinny and Webby’s breakfast show will no longer be heard on the station. Nor will Graham Webb’s Golden Years program, Alan Quinn’s Saturday Night Gold show, and at least two other shows, Ron’s Oldies and Forgotten 45s.

A message in the post said: “We can no longer work with this [management] committee due to absolute incompetence.”

Soon after that message was posted the aspirant station’s facebook page was taken down

Later this afternoon, the station’s website was disabled, caused by what seems like the security certificate for the site being removed, resulting in browsers refusing to connect to the site. No audio stream was available either.

The station is due back on air tomorrow at noon under a time sharing arrangement with the other aspirant group, former licence holder Hawkesbury Radio. It is not known if Hawkesbury Gold will be able to take up its broadcast time from tomorrow until Saturday.

radioinfo sought comment from the Hawkesbury Gold committee, but at the time of publication we had received no response.

Regulator ACMA was not able to comment on the situation at the time of writing.

One of the important elements of test broadcast TCBL licences is for aspirant groups to show their capacity to broadcast and also to manage their association in an efficient manner. It is not know whether this current dispute will affect ACMA’s view on the aspirant broadcast group.

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