Federal funding cuts to community radio “disappointing” – CBAA

The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA)’s General Manager Jon Bisset labelled an announcement by the Federal Government to scrap $2.5 million worth of funding ear-marked for community broadcasting as “disappointing”.

The money was promised in May this year to help community broadcasters, groups, and councils in regional and remote Australia switch to the Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) service at the end of 2013.

Community broadcasting was to get $150,000 of this, in order to upgrade radio transmission equipment to retransmit the VAST service and create opportunities to access a range of new and digital-only radio services.

Earlier this week, The Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) announced this funding was cut.

The CBAA’s Jon Bisset said the decision is luckily only likely to have minimal impact on the sector as most stations had already upgraded their equipment to meet the services.

He added, “The CBAA is working with the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF) to reduce the financial impact on the sector and will soon meet with the Minister for Communication’s office to reiterate the value of community broadcasting.”

The CBAA represents over 270 members.