Community Radio Debate in the House of Commons

On Tuesday, the 24 April 2007 the members of the House of Commons debated, “Community Radio and Television.” 147 MPs, including the Teesdale MP (Helen Goodman), had signed an early-day motion 922, which calls for additional and secure funding for community media and for space to be reserved for community media on the digital spectrum. This is the link to the Hansard record of the Adjournment Debate.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070424/halltext/70424h0001.htm

Ian Stewart the Labour MP for Eccles referred to the often quoted phrase that, “Community media is ten per cent. media and ninety per cent. Community.” He added that, “The 90 per cent. is all about engaging and empowering local people, encouraging volunteering and giving an outlet for people’s aspirations through voice, local engagement and providing innovative training and employment opportunities.” He later said, “Community media is a curious beast—it is both media and community. The media part is the one that is instantly recognisable, like the tip of an iceberg, but most would say that the community impacts are far more significant.”

I would certainly agree with those sentiments and very much look forward to meeting members of the Teesdale Community at our events on the 9th, 14th and 16th of May.

For the people…by the people of Teesdale

At Radio Teesdale we have a continuous open door policy to welcome new members. We are literally looking for volunteers to help in every single aspect of the running of the radio station. In every respect our operations are for the people of Teesdale…by the people of Teesdale. In the next few weeks we are holding three events where people who have an interest in what we are doing and feel they may be able to contribute in some way (however small) can come and have an informal chat to our existing members. All events start at 7.00pm and finish at 8.00pm. Feel free to drop in at any time during the hour.

Wednesday 9th May - Staindrop Scarth Hall, Staindrop
http://www.teesdalehalls.co.uk/staindrop-village-hall.asp

Monday 14th May - Parish Hall, Barnard Castle
http://www.teesdalehalls.co.uk/parish-village-hall.asp

Wednesday 16th May - Middleton in Teesdale Village Hall
http://www.teesdalehalls.co.uk/middleton-village-hall.asp
I hope to see you there.

Send us your pictures

We are planning on compiling sets of photographs of our members showing them at their normal place of work and in front of Teesdale landmarks (High Force, Village Greens, Barnard Castle Market Cross, Bowes Museum, etc). They will be used as part of the marketing campaign to tell all Teesdale residents that the station really does belong to the people of Teesdale – by the people and for the people of Teesdale! If you can supply us with suitable photos of yourself or your Radio Teesdale colleagues then we would be delighted to receive them. All prints will be scanned and returned.

Listener pictures are welcome too!

Recruitment Campaign - Marketing Meeting

Plans are starting to take shape for the launch of Radio Teesdale live broadcasting from both our transmitter in Barnard Castle and our main transmitter in the Upper Dale. We hope to be in a position to “Go Live” during the summer. A fundamental requirement for this to happen is that we need to greatly increase our active membership in every single area of our operations.

To give our “Recruitment Campaign” a kick start we are planning on holding meetings at various locations in the community over the next month. We hope to have the first of these within a few weeks. To get things moving we are having a Marketing Meeting at 3.00pm at Enterprise House on Friday the 20th April (tomorrow!). Everyone is welcome – the more the merrier.

I appreciate this is short notice – if you would like to get involved in supporting the campaign but can not make the meeting then just drop me a line, give me a ring or pop into the office and let me know.

Get Your Act Together

Two fascinating programmes were broadcast on Channel 4 and E4 on Tuesday 17th April. They were part of the series “Get Your Act Together with Harvey Goldsmith” where Harvey and various experts offer advise and guidance on how to improve a faltering set up. The programme featured the BigL Commercial radio station (on Medium Wave, Internet and Sky).

The expert opinion was that the station had poor listener awareness, lacked listener focus, did not follow sound advice, was being “presenter” rather than “management” led, had misdirected marketing campaigns, and didn’t sort out their web streaming (I still couldn’t get it this morning!) and at the same time was loosing £50k a month. These are, of course, all things that all radio stations, including community radio stations, need to take great care over.

We wish BiGL all the best in their future plans. If you missed the TV shows and would like to see them they are still on my Sky + box so let me know before Mrs D replaces them with an episode of Coronation Street!!

Everyone welcome to drop in for a cuppa!

Gary Burgham is making very good progress with the Media Literacy project we are undertaking with the CMA. I described the project in my blog on the 5th April. There are links to details about the Media Literacy project on our “Info Links” page. We are planning to focus our “dedicated media literacy programme” around the very important issues of how the media can support people suffering from Depression. If you would like to become involved in this very interesting initiative then simply contact myself or Gary.

We have agreed our key commitments with Ofcom as part of the issuing of our full time Community License. It is very much based on the promises we made at the time of completing our application license. In the next few weeks I will be developing an Action Plan that helps us make sure we hit and maintain all of our objectives and targets.

Don’t forget, I’m now in the office at Enterprise most days. I’m delighted to say that as I’ve been here during the week 4 new and former members have popped in to sign up for active involvement in our work – welcome on board Stuart, Wendy, Linda and Martin. So if you are passing by, then call in for a cuppa. We now have a ready supply of milk in the fridge…..it’s the bottle marked “RT 105.5”…..well, we can’t miss every opportunity to promote our frequency!!

What a week!

Only four days into the role of Station Manager as a full time position, and what a week it has been! We have now received our “Licence for the Transmission of Community Radio Broadcasting Services” from Ofcom. It commenced on the 29th March 2007 and runs for five years until 28th March 2012.

The studio has been reorganised. This was very much facilitated by the kind donation of computer equipment racks from BBC Radio Cleveland. Over the next few weeks we will be designing and setting up the studio with a view to creating a solid foundation for live broadcasting later this year. If you are aware of any community groups that would be interested in a tour of the studio then we would be pleased to make the necessary arrangements – members of and visitors to the Teesdale community are always welcome to drop in.

Priorities over the next few weeks include creating material for our Limited Service Broadcast, preparing funding applications, membership recruitment and arranging our next training course.

Have a good Easter.
Peter.

Media Literacy Project

Radio Teesdale has just been selected as one of the community radio stations to be part of the Community Media Associations' (CMA) initiative to improve media literacy. What is media literacy I hear you ask? Well, it’s defined as, “The ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” Our part of the project is, by the 31 May, to produce:

1. Three Public Service Announcemnts. Typically these are about 20 or 30 seconds long. Radio Teesdale will broadcast these PSA's. They will also be uploaded onto a specific Media Literacy CMA sub-site and made available to download and re-broadcast by other Community Radio stations.

2. A dedicated Media Literacy programme (min 20 minute length). Again this will be broadcast on Radio Teesdale and made available to other Community Radio stations through the CMA Media Literacy sub-site.

3. A Media Literacy awareness raising workshop will take place aimed at volunteers at Radio Teesdale. The workshop will be coordinated by the CMA and delivered according to the format provided by the CMA.

Our Info Links page has links to information and resources on the CMA and Ofcom web sites. Two community radio station have already undertaken pilot projects and their material is on the CMA web site.

If you are interested in getting involved in a small group that will deliver this project then please let me know.