Australian Community Broadcasting Snapshot
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Growing national audience reach & regional, rural & remote presence:
- 27% of Australians aged 15+ (4.5 million) listen to community radio in a typical week.1
- An estimated monthly national radio audience reach of more than 9.5 million (57% of Australians aged 15+) and national television audience reach of 3.7 million.2
- 82% of long-term licensed community radio and television services are located in regional, rural and remote areas.3
- Over 165,000 Australians financially support free-to-air community radio services as subscribers, members or donors.4
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Volunteer driven:
- over 23,000 volunteer broadcasters5 and 1000 support staff Contributing an estimated $342 million per annum in the value of volunteer work hours6
- 20% of volunteers are under 26 years of age7
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Training focused:
- over 8,000 people receive training each year - 7,5608 people at community radio stations and an estimated 500 people receive training at community television stations.
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Contributing over $420m. per annum to the Australian economy:
- with a turnover of over $85m.9 and the economic value of its volunteer effort estimated at $342m. per annum the community broadcasting sector makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy.
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Largest independent media sector:
- 526 licensed independent community owned and operated broadcasting services in total.
- 34910 long-term licensed community radio stations broadcasting over 46,000 program hours per week of which just over 77% is locally produced, 15 percent sourced from other Australian sources (principally other community stations via the Community Radio Network satellite), 6% from other sources and just 3% sourced from international satellite services. Music accounts for 73% of program content with the remainder being spoken word. 36% of music broadcast is Australian music.
- 3 long-term licensed metropolitan community television services producing 166 hours per week of locally produced programming. On average each week they broadcast 61 hours of news and current affairs, 37.5 hours of religious programming, 33 hours of ethnic programming, 30.5 hours of youth programming, 27.5 hours of arts programming, 19 hours of educational programming, 17 hours of sports programming, 7 hours of programming for people with a disability, 6.5 hours of Indigenous programming and 2.5 hours of GLBTI programming.
- 78 remote Indigenous community television services broadcasting locally produced programs and the NITV service. A further 68 remote Indigenous communities and three remote area towns with significant indigenous populations (Alice Springs, Mt. Isa and Bourke) have been equipped to retransmit the NITV service under narrowcast licences.
- 96 aspirant community radio organisations11 operating with temporary community broadcasting licences and 3 aspirant community television stations operating with trial licences.
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Most diverse media sector:
- 131 radio stations (including 6 dedicated Ethnic stations) producing 2,027 hours of Ethnic community broadcasting each week. Over 3,000 volunteer broadcasters from 111 distinct cultural groups broadcasting in 84 languages.
- 109 radio stations (including 20 dedicated Indigenous community radio stations) producing 1,392 hours of Indigenous programming each week together with 78 Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) operating in remote Indigenous communities.
- 33 radio stations (including 15 dedicated RPH stations services with over 1800 volunteers) produce 1,594 hours per week of programming for people with a print disability;
- 198 stations (including 35 full-time Religious radio stations) broadcasting 3,704 hours of religious programs per week.
- Stations with a focus on Youth, Senior Citizens, Arts, Fine Music, Australian music and other specialist interests.
- 3 satellite-based program distribution services - General, Indigenous and RPH
- 2 national news services - Indigenous (NINS) and General (NRN)
- Community Television services in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, and Lismore and within 78 remote Indigenous communities.
For more information on community broadcasting refer to www.cbonline.org.au
Updated 19 February 2010
1 'Community Radio National Listener Survey' McNair Ingenuity Research, Sydney, July 2008.
2 'Community Radio National Listener Survey' McNair Ingenuity Research, Sydney, July 2008 for radio and OzTam Community Television cumulative audience reach 8am -12 midnight, August 2006 for television.
3 Based on ACMA's LIC-031 - Community Radio Broadcasting Licences as at 29/10/2009 and LIC 032 Community Television Broadcasting Licences as at 15/10/2009.where metro location includes Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra.
4 Community Broadcasting Database - Survey of the community radio sector 2007-08, CBAA, Sydney, November 2009 (Full Report) at pp.17-19 shows that in that year there were 117,748 current subscribers or members and 47,869 donors. The condensed Public Release version of this report is published at www.cbonline.org.au
5 Over 19,858 volunteers at long-term licensed community radio stations (CBD survey 2007-08 at p.13) and an estimated 3,000 temporary community radio station and community television volunteers.
6 This estimate is based on median weekly earnings of $1,000 for full-time workers as outlined in the Australian Bureau of Statistics Ausstats data series 6310.0 published in August 2008. An hourly rate of $28.57 for an average of ten hours per week per volunteer (as established by Meadows, Forde and Foxwell in their study Culture, commitment community - the Australian community radio sector, Griffith University, Brisbane, 2002.), for 23,000 volunteers, yields a figure of $341,697,200 per annum. Use of the median measure produces a conservative estimate given that the mean average full-time earnings per week as given in the same study was $1,163.
7 Community Broadcasting Database - Survey of the community radio sector 2007-08, (Full Report) CBAA, Sydney, November 2009 at p.15.
8 Ibid at p.28.
9 Based on $69.8m. radio sector annual income (CBD Survey 2007-08 at p.32) plus $5m annual turnover from the community television sector and over $10m. for the CBF and community broadcasting sector peak organisations.
10 Source: ACMA LIC 031 published 29/10/2009 at www.acma.gov.au
11 Source: ACMA LIC 027 published 15/12/2009 at www.acma.gov.au
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