Aspirant Hawkesbury region broadcast group Hawkesbury Gold has been plagued by infighting this week, which spilt over into the public arena via its web and social media platforms today.
Early this morning a message was put on the Hawkesbury Gold website announcing that a range of shows had pulled the plug on their dealings with the aspirant group.
Quinny and Webby’s breakfast show will no longer be heard on the station. Nor will Graham Webb’s Golden Years program, Alan Quinn’s Saturday Night Gold show, and at least two other shows, Ron’s Oldies and Forgotten 45s.
Later this afternoon, the station's website was disabled, caused by what seems like the security certificate for the site being removed, resulting in browsers refusing to connect to the site. No audio stream was available either.
The station is due back on air tomorrow at noon under a time sharing arrangement with the other aspirant group, former licence holder Hawkesbury Radio. It is not known if Hawkesbury Gold will be able to take up its broadcast time from tomorrow until Saturday.
radioinfo sought comment from the Hawkesbury Gold committee, but at the time of publication we had received no response.
Regulator ACMA was not able to comment on the situation at the time of writing.
One of the important elements of test broadcast TCBL licences is for aspirant groups to show their capacity to broadcast and also to manage their association in an efficient manner. It is not know whether this current dispute will affect ACMA’s view on the aspirant broadcast group.
Let's just hope the ACMA takes notice of this and revokes the licence. This station has had lots of dead air plus they pre-record everything. Not community radio as far as I'm concerned.
The truth of the matter is that ONE disgruntled person (ex-Committee member) has resigned and left Hawkesbury Gold. He had attempted to bring on board a range of his friends as presenters from outside the Hawkesbury region, some from interstate.
That person was also the subject of a caution issued to Hawkesbury Gold by ACMA last week, due to his inappropriate on-air comments about another local community radio broadcaster. The offender was not prepared to comply with a number of our policies, and chose to leave the station of his own free will.
Hawkesbury Gold has faced a significant challenge getting started due to the fact we were given only short notice between receiving a Temporary Community Broadcast Licence and the start date for transmission. However we succeeded in getting from zero (with no equipment or presenters) to broadcasting in just 5 weeks. A further set back was experienced when our transmitter suffered a lightning strike during local storms 10 days ago, resulting in us having to use a borrowed transmitter. New transmission equipment has since been purchased and installed, and is now operational.