Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications

Community Broadcasting: Discussion

12:05 pm

Mr. Declan Gibbons:

Community radio is also about depth. Speech ratios of 40% to 70%, an average of 100 active presenters and producers per station and unique schedule structures facilitate specialist programming and proper coverage of topics from environment to history, farming to food, punk to jazz and youth affairs to migrant communities. They are not just touched on in short packages but covered in whole programmes.

What is important is that community radio is regulated. It is subject to explicit and unique community radio specific restrictions on social benefit, schedules, speech-to-music ratio, ownership and control, and advertising. These preserve the community radio ethos while all the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland standards and codes that apply to other broadcasters are applicable to community radio also.