CRFC calls for outcomes-based community radio funding

The Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) told the CRTC Wednedsday that it could help meet the needs of the suffering community and campus radio sector with an “outcomes-based" approach to funding—in which the control of funding distribution is taken out of the hands of private donors. The need for a national strategy to fund and support the community and campus radio sector in Canada was the theme when the CRFC presented its case on the third day of hearing in the CRTC’s review of the sector. The CRFC got off the ground in 2008 when it received a donation of $1.4 million from Astral Media Radio, to be spent on development programs within the sector over seven years. Earlier this year Astral Media donated another $300,000 to the fund. Community radio stations from across the country told the commission this week that, so far, the fund has supported two project-based programs: The Radio Talent Development Program and the Youth Internship Program—which are focused on training. Some say the programs, initiated by private radio donors, are too specific to fulfill all of the needs of community and campus radio. Stephanie Kepman, station manager of the University of Ottawa’s CHUO, argued on the first day of the hearings that administrative and equipment costs take up most of a station’s budget—costs which the fund does not address. Ian Pringle, a member of the CRFC’s board of directors, told the commission Wednesday that an outcomes-based funding model would be adopted by the CRFC if it could receive funding from private radio without project-specific conditions attached. “The purpose of looking at outcomes based funding, as opposed to project based funding, is that we would like to emphasize that any funds that are contributed by the CRFC to the sector should result in outcomes that are clearly defined,” Pringle told the commission. “We look at it as what those inputs would produce in the end, and to try to hold stations accountable to those eventual outcomes.” But Melissa Kaestner, the executive director of the CRFC, said the fund is not quite ready to take an outcomes-based, or objectives-based approach to funding the sector. “This idea of objectives is something very new,” she said before the commission. Kaestner added that the CRFC needs to secure further funding--free of conditions tying it to specific projects--before it can start to evaluate where the money should go. The new process would allow the CRFC—representing community stations—to determine who receives the funding based on a station’s objectives. “The first thing we would do as a fund would be to enter into consultations. If you were to write us a cheque right now, we wouldn’t be spending it. We would undergo a development process ,” Kaestner said. Kaestner went on to say that it would take the CRFC six to 12 months to put any funding into action. In its written statement to the Commission, the CRFC said that “the difference between what the sector is receiving and what we need, is $20.4 million.” To close that gap, the CRFC proposed that the CRTC make the fund a recipient of the mandatory Canadian content development contributions (CCD) private broadcasters already make to groups like the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR). Currently, private broadcasters pay 60 per cent of their fixed annual CCD contributions to FACTOR and another artistic development organization called MUSIACTION. The payments are based on the private stations’ total revenues. The remaining 40 per cent of capital is set aside for CCD contributions that can be distributed to local initiatives that have qualified for the funding. In its written submission, the CRFC asked that it receive no less than 20 per cent of revenues set aside for CCD contributions. If the CFRC received all the mandatory CCD contributions it had requested the fund would get an additional $4.4 million a year. Commercial radio maintains that, due to 14 straight months of decreasing revenues, they cannot afford mandatory contributions. They continue to be open to voluntary contributions to the fund, however.

CRFC calls for outcomes-based community radio funding

Broadcast | January 20, 2010

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