CBAA General Manager Kath Letch has responded to this week’s radioinfo blog topic, Is it radio or ballroom dancing?  Letch argues that democracy and community are messy, but that a few stations with troubles at the moment does not mean the whole sector is in trouble. She points out some of the the achievements of the community radio sector in her response.

Here is some of what Letch posted in our Blogger section. To read her post in full, click here to go to the blog topic and scroll down to the responses section.

Is it radio? Or should that be Radio. Maybe the old ‘looks like it, feels like it, functions like it’ test should apply – in which case it’s radio and Radio…

30% of community stations provide the only locally produced radio available in their areas and the vast majority do a pretty good job of reflecting the interests and issues of their local communities. Roughly 70% of the community broadcasting sector are stations operated and managed completely by volunteers and the other 30% have a small core staff and a large number of volunteer broadcasters.

 
Community radio services add a depth and breadth to local radio services that contributes significantly to the diversity of radio services available to the Australian community, and to local and Australian content. There are tensions and issues in stations at times as there are with most community organisations and sometimes things get messy. That’s the nature of communities because they are communities – full of different ideas, and values , and beliefs, and practices. Communities aren’t a ‘tightly run business’ … they’re a much broader and complex group of people with contesting ideas and values.

We’re fortunate to live in a thriving and messy democracy where those different ideas are debated in structures that can work through tensions and differences. Not perfect of course but that’s the context for community broadcasting licences… A couple of community stations in the news in the last 10 days with difficult issues in their community is a pretty low ratio when there are 350 licensed community radio stations.