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by KIM BLACK
This page was
last updated on Friday, 11 October 2002 02:23:04 PM
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back to Radio History
A LOCAL radio station owner says he will run a 'Pirate' station rather than pay $5000 a day in fines in the wake of a complaint made to a nation's peak broadcasting body against his station.
Station FM88 Springwood, run by 43 volunteers, has been told it is in breach of its narrow broadcasting license and that it must change program formatting before 5pm tomorrow.
The Australian Broadcasting. Authority has received a complaint that the station is operating in breach of conditions under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.
The complainant, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, alleged that the station provides a broad rather than narrow service and transmits outside a 1Okm area.
Complaint
Association general manager Michael Thompson yesterday confirmed the association had acted on a compliant from a member, a Logan based community radio station, taking it to the ABA.
An Australian Broadcasting Authority investigation has determined FM88 Springwood did not meet the defined criteria of a narrow broadcaster but provided a commercial station-style format.
An authority spokesman said the station was in breach of its license by providing programs of broad appeal and the station bad until tomorrow to make program changes.
"If the station owner by them does not make the changes, we will give him a period of time in which to remedy the breach before handing the matter to the Department of Public Prosecutions," said the spokesman.
Station owner Jeffrey Shaw yesterday defended his station's right to transmit, saying pulling the plug on the ,operation would leave 43 volunteers at in the cold.
Mr Shaw said be believed he had addressed a problem Identified by in ABA by limiting his transmission from four waits to one wait and be believed he was acting within his license.
He said the threat of paying $5000 a day in fives would force the station to stop broadcasting under the FM band and transmit via an audio stream linked to a web site.
"I ant not going to take $5000 a day knocks on the bead," he said.
"It just means I will have to become a pirate radio station whereby we will be broadcasting from a web site and have a radio station when we don't have a radio station."
Mr Shaw said technology would allow listeners within the next week to tap into a web site to bear the station's programs.
He said closing the station would have 'catastrophic consequences' given it had provided a training ground for 60 budding station announcers since going on air two years ago.
"Logan City, Queensland's third largest city with the highest youth unemployment rate in the country, has 18 youngsters ranging from 33 to 20 years getting hands-on experience at Radio FM88," he said.
"A station such as this receives no Federal State or council founding, yet draws on the wealth of experience of its elderly workers (up to 70 years of age)".
MR Shaw said the complaint was the last straw in a run of bad luck for the station which in its first year of operations had all equipment stolen.
On two occasions, highway signs stating 'Tune to FM 88 have been pinched during peak tourist periods.