The future of community radio stations is under threat with the Commission of Audit recommending that the federally funded Community Broadcasting Program be scrapped in the upcoming budget.
The recommendation could have dire consequences for the sector which relies on the funding to broadcast digitally.
The current phase of the Digital Radio Project is funded until mid-2016. The project, worth more than $5 million, has assisted city-based community broadcasters transition to digital broadcast.
Community Broadcasting Association of Australia president Adrian Basso said he would be surprised if the federal government included this recommendation in its forthcoming budget, which will be handed down next week.
“I’m hopeful that the government will reject these recommendations,” he said. “For the past 40 years we’ve had bipartisan support so this would be a complete 360 of the support we’ve had.”
Mr Basso said if the Community Broadcasting Program is abolished the sector would “lose digital radio altogether”.
“The digital radio framework was a Howard initiative so [the Coalition] would be turning its back on that. I don’t expect they would, I put this down to the Commission of Audit not really understanding who we are and what we do.”
The funding is “crucial” to community broadcaster 3CR, which programs a range of shows for its diverse and growing audience. It is one of 360 community stations in Australia.
“It represents about 30 per cent of our funding,” station manager Marian McKeown said.
“We’re not expecting tax payers to fully fund the station, we’ve always raised the majority of our funding ourselves.
“But we and the community expect that the government will support us to run certain programs including indigenous and community language programming, and a whole lot of other projects that give a voice to others in the community.”
3RRR station manager Dave Houchin said cutting the funding would be a “slow death” for community radio.
“The most obvious way [these cuts] will affect 3RRR is in terms of digital radio services,” he said.
“Digital radio is considered to be the future of radio in Australia and we feel 3RRR and others in the sector need to be part of that.”
