RadioExpert, together with hosts Media Commun Occitanie and NGO's from around Europe, conducted a new project through the EU Erasmus+ Youth programme.

“REC Europe” seminar brought together social workers, trainers and activists to present their work and experiences within their communities and explored together the different forms, aspects and realities of new forms of art education.

This seminar combined theoretical and practical elements on sound for participation and social inclusion, attaching special value to group work. Theoretical inputs alternated with practical sessions in different areas of sound education, such as sound/music activities, connected with our different national uses of the methods.

The process created occasions for discussing the use of art as a methodology for participation and inclusion. Art education methods provide learning opportunities for personal and social competences, and are important tools for continued use in youth work.

You can listen to a podcast from the project here.

The Community Media Association of the United Kingdom is calling on its members, their friends and family, and the wider public to ask for more support and recognition for community radio from prospective MPs.

The announcement comes ahead of the deadline for all prospective candidates to submit their nomination for the upcoming General Election.

The CMA highlights three possible initiatives that will benefit current and aspiring community radio stations:

1. To call for a substantial increase in the Community Radio Fund to better meet the needs of current community radio stations and to support the new digital community radio stations to be licensed from next year.

2. To support a commitment from central and local Government to recognise that community radio is a low-cost and effective medium for reaching underserved communities and to direct a proportion of government advertising to community radio stations.

3. To commit to supporting a call to DCMS and Ofcom that community radio continues to be licensed on FM spectrum in parallel with the future rollout of licences on the new Small Scale DAB platform.

The appeal, published on Radio Today, notes that The Community Radio Fund, established by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and administered by Ofcom, has remained static at £400,000 for many years whilst the number of potential beneficiaries has grown significantly to nearly 300 stations.

Ofcom’s 2019 Communications Market Report shows that average income for community radio stations has fallen for another consecutive year to circa £49,000.

The CMA says Community Radio reaches underserved communities and should therefore be considered as a platform to carry local and national public service announcements.

The USA regulator FCC is one step closer to a rule change that threatens to de-fund community media and technology, by undermining a long-established principle that cable and internet companies owe rent to municipalities for use of the public right-of-way.

Sabrina Roach, board member of the Alliance for Community Media Foundation, joins the Radio Survivor podcast to discuss what’s at stake. The future of public access, educational and government TV channels and community media technology centers hangs in the balance.

The EU project "Europa On-Air" recently visited the Czech Republic for its 4th and final event - a weeklong series of cross-cultural experiences and broadcast journalism trainings for high school and university students; hosted by RadioExpert.

Participants from Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and France produced interviews and reportage for programs on themes such as culture, technology, and gender.

The programs were then broadcast live via internet Radio R at Masaryk University in Brno, and via radio streams based in participants' home countries.

When Cyclone "Fani" recently devastated parts of Bangladesh, community radio was there to help. The community radios of Bangladesh stayed on the air during and after the storm, serving their communities with important news and information.

The community radio stations delivered critical information shared through radio broadcasting and mobile phones with the radio listeners club, who are representing their communities. They also broadcasted Public Service announcements and recorded interviews with local government representatives and disaster management committees.

For more info, contact Bazlur Rahman at Bangladesh Radio Network.

Dr. Nico Carpentier from the Media Studies Department at Charles University in Prague recently hosted a seminar on community media.

RadioExpert director Henry Loeser presented his exploration into the future of community broadcasting, and its potential for contributing to the future of local journalism.

Can community broadcasters effectively transisiton to online forms? And what are the keys for success and sustainability for community media in the digital age? You can see the answers to these and other questions in the full seminar video here.

The Native Public Media 2019 summit will be held on the homelands of the Gila River Indian Community at the Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino in Chandler, Arizona.

This year’s theme, Native Voices • Native Media • Native Truths, speaks to the critical role those broadcasters and media makers have in creating and sustaining a robust Native media ecosystem that connects Tribal nations and citizens.

The Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations (AMPERS) advises the state government on grants to the community radio stations that make up its membership. Of the 18 AMPERS stations in Minnesota, four are affiliated with Native American communities, six are licensed to colleges and all but one receives programming grants from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Current reports that perhaps no station has done as much with the funding distributed through AMPERS as KFAI, one of four AMPERS members in the Twin Cities area. The scrappy FM outlet’s mission is serving “people ignored or misrepresented by mainstream media … while fostering the values of democracy and social justice.” Last year KFAI feature stories won a half-dozen awards from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists. “For a tiny community radio station competing against Minnesota Public Radio and other folks, we felt really good about winning six times,” said Todd Melby, managing editor.

Radio WTIP in the resort town of Grand Marais serves Cook County, the largest county in Minnesota with the smallest population. The AMPERS member station sits on the northern shore of Lake Superior, about 40 miles southwest of the Canadian border. In recent years it has become the primary media outlet for what is known as the Arrowhead Region of Minnesota, according to Matthew Brown, station manager. This has meant covering the county commission, the city council and local township boards as well as reporting on local weather in great detail, power outages and road closings.

“We really try to be as local as we can be,” said Brown.

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2020 aims to cut all funding for the TV Public Broadcasting Service and the National Public Radio network, along with the National Endowment for the Arts. The budget would also eiminate any federal funding to local community radios across the USA.

Patricia Harrison, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which disperses the federal funds to hundredes of TV and radio stations, stated: "The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media's role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions - all for Americans in both rural and urban communities,"

The money is distributed through grants and every organization from the smallest, rural public radio station to the largest public television station can apply for grants to the CPB. According to the CPB, by law, 95% of the federal appropriation of the CPB is provided as grants to local television and radio stations.

Transitions Online reports that the Polish political party "True Europe Movement’" (RPE), says it aims to “rebuild Christian thought” in Europe. Journalists have dubbed it “Tadeusz Rydzyk’s party” – though the priest - owner and chief of Radio Maryja - denies any association with it.

His Polish media empire includes Radio Maryja, the TV Trwam station and the Nasz Dziennik daily newspaper. In addition, Radio Maryja has broadcast affiliates across Europe. These platforms, popular among conservative voters, regularly promote right-wing politicians and have been accused of amplifying homophobic and sexist perspectives.

According to Transitions Online, women's rights activists protested “hate speech emanating from” Radio Maryja – and “the way it gets involved in political and social matters.”

Agata Maciejewska from the Dziewuchy Dziewuchom Foundation, a Polish women’s rights organization, said that her group has been tracking “an increased activity of far-right tendencies in Poland and Europe.” She described it as “no secret that an ever-close integration of ultra-Catholic and nationalist organizations is taking place” and said “the increased intensity of preparations for the European Parliament elections” is “a tactical move.”

Native American communities in the USA support nearly 60 radio stations and 4 or more television stations, filling broadcast and Internet airwaves with information and data critical to the nation building efforts of Tribes and to the decision making of their citizens.

Founded in 2004, Native Public Media (NPM) provides services that encourage the expansion and strengthening of Native media through platforms that are community-based, local, and democratic. NPM, as a national center, provides leadership, centralized resources, and strategic and coordinated approaches to successfully strengthen the Native Broadcast System. 

There’s only one community radio station in Lake County, California: KPFZ.  The station is run almost entirely by volunteers, and in recent years, the station has taken on a whole new role in the community: reporting on fires.

Whenever there’s a fire, KPFZ goes to a live call-in format. Hosts of the station’s various programs come in to take turns on the air. In addition to trying to answer callers’ questions and broadcasting observations of what people are seeing, the hosts also relay information from officials, like local county supervisors and Cal Fire.

Like in much of rural America, local media has taken a financial hit since the rise of the internet. During the fires “people had no other resource,” Cawn said. “They discovered KPFZ on the radio, and they were so grateful that there was someplace that was providing timely updates.”

After fires, community members have been asking for the radio station’s address to send in donations. The station isn’t asking for it, but people wanted to send money because they knew the operation was being run on a tiny budget. “Our last thought is making money,” Weiss said. “It’s making radio. That’s first and foremost.”

(courtesy of KQED)

The USA radio business has seen unprecedented consolidation of ownership, with several large corporations owning thousands of local radio stations. Now there's discussions about further opening ownership limits, but even commercial operators question this direction. Mike Buxser, a former market manager was quoted in Radio Today: “Since consolidation, companies accumulated as many stations as they could in markets far and wide. Then began the cutbacks in personnel, radio-stations-in-a-box operating with little or no local programming/content".

“If holding a license for a radio station truly means serving the local public interest, then make every owner accountable for owning up to the terms of each station’s license before there is any discussion of increasing ownership limits. Anyone who’s been around the business knows it’s possible to have compelling formats, embrace and serve their local community, and make money. Consolidation has hurt the business. Allowing more is laughable.”

Things are not looking good for the future of Pacifica Radio.

Spark News reports that the recent Pacifica Foundation board meeting saw the same old acrimonious debate on disconnected politics, the expected departure of the interim director, and the immediate resignation of the board secretary - and the board still has no apparent plan to repay a $3 million loan taken to stave off bankruptcy.

Conceived to be "democratic", the Pacifica structure and its board members are both dysfunctional and toxic. A generation ago, Pacifica was a shining light in the civil media sphere, but those halcyon days are long gone. Interim director Tom Livingston recently brought some fiscal and managerial sanity to the organization, but with his imminent departure the future looks bleak.

More than 200 participants from 20 countries are registered for the conference of community radios in the Asia/Pacific region..