Community Radio & Hope FM, who’s PAM?
Hope FM (http://www.hopefm.com) is a Community Christian Radio station broadcasting from Bournemouth’s YMCA. What a fantastic way of reaching the community! There is little chance of getting such a station, or even similar programming onto Singapore radio due to our Religious Harmony Bill.
The more I learn about community radio, the more I find myself drawn to it. (Maybe this is what I’ve been searching for all this time, but never realized it). My initial basic notion of radio was that it IS community, reaching all segments of the population through format radio. But increasingly the commercial bent is rendering radio bland and pointless. Surely radio can, and should, be subjected to more worthy causes, bringing meaning to living.
The concept of community radio as RSLs (Restricted Service Licences) is foreign to Singapore, of course. The closest to it is the campus station Radio Heatwave in Ngee Ann (I’m proud to say). RSL licences in the UK allow them to broadcast twice a year, two months at a time. In 2001 / 2002, there began a pilot project of 16 RSLs broadcasting full time. This Access Radio experiment was to see if not-for-profit stations were sustainable. Being considered a successful trial, OFCOM (Office of Communications which has subsumed the Radio Authority) is starting to issue permanent licences to such “community” stations. Applications have just closed and results are not expected until Summer 2005. Historically and academically, this is significant because, until now there has been no new platform for radio in the UK since commercial radio was launched in 1973.
The business model for charity-linked stations is rather complicated. But what really excites me is how the community can have such an active part in moulding the station. Hope FM draws upon volunteers and basically anyone can “apply within”. In any case commercial radio stations do not perceive community stations as a threat since the target audience is considered different. I wonder if this will change in time to come?
Had a mind-boggling session on “Internet for Broadcasting”. Last week we were given html basics, and I thought that was bad enough! This week it was a workshop on tools for compression, psycho acoustic model (PAM), runlength encoding, variable entropy coding, quatization, ASX files…HELP!
The more I learn about community radio, the more I find myself drawn to it. (Maybe this is what I’ve been searching for all this time, but never realized it). My initial basic notion of radio was that it IS community, reaching all segments of the population through format radio. But increasingly the commercial bent is rendering radio bland and pointless. Surely radio can, and should, be subjected to more worthy causes, bringing meaning to living.
The concept of community radio as RSLs (Restricted Service Licences) is foreign to Singapore, of course. The closest to it is the campus station Radio Heatwave in Ngee Ann (I’m proud to say). RSL licences in the UK allow them to broadcast twice a year, two months at a time. In 2001 / 2002, there began a pilot project of 16 RSLs broadcasting full time. This Access Radio experiment was to see if not-for-profit stations were sustainable. Being considered a successful trial, OFCOM (Office of Communications which has subsumed the Radio Authority) is starting to issue permanent licences to such “community” stations. Applications have just closed and results are not expected until Summer 2005. Historically and academically, this is significant because, until now there has been no new platform for radio in the UK since commercial radio was launched in 1973.
The business model for charity-linked stations is rather complicated. But what really excites me is how the community can have such an active part in moulding the station. Hope FM draws upon volunteers and basically anyone can “apply within”. In any case commercial radio stations do not perceive community stations as a threat since the target audience is considered different. I wonder if this will change in time to come?
Had a mind-boggling session on “Internet for Broadcasting”. Last week we were given html basics, and I thought that was bad enough! This week it was a workshop on tools for compression, psycho acoustic model (PAM), runlength encoding, variable entropy coding, quatization, ASX files…HELP!
posted by BIG! Mama @ 1:37 AM
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