Common Cause radio logo
Cause Commune radio “the voice of possibilities” has launched a crowdfunding campaign via HelloAsso, because it is threatened with a cash flow shortage. This radio operates without employees, only with volunteers, but it has operating costs (a little less than 50,000 euros in 2022).
In danger of default
Its budget is essentially based on an operating subsidy via the Radio Expression Support Fund (FSER). However, explains his campaign:
“For 10 years, the amounts available via the FSER have not changed while following the deployment of digital radio (DAB) new entrants are mechanically eligible.
In addition to the fact that our costs are increasing while the amounts allocated are logically decreasing, there is also the understaffing of instructor staff assigned to processing files (two for 1,700 radio stations in 2022). So many elements which seriously endanger radio stations like ours: on an equivalent filing date in 2022 and 2023, the planned period for processing our file has slipped by a month and a half compared to last year.
At the end of the 4th quarter of 2023, Radio Cause Commune will still not know how much it will have been allocated for its operations for the 2022 financial year. Pending notification and payment of our subsidy, our cash flow is exhausted and we are no longer safe from a payment default in the coming weeks and therefore from a cut-off of the antenna.
Hence this campaign, which will end in 34 days. This crowdfunding has so far collected nearly 12,000 euros out of a target of 13,000 euros, donated by 146 contributors.
For a culture of the commons
Radio Cause Commune “the voice of possibilities” obtained in 2017, by decision of the Superior Audiovisual Council, a frequency on the FM band (93.1) in Île-de-France (then in DAB+). The radio also broadcasts its programs on its website (cause-commune.fm) and its mobile application. [parenthèse: “Cause commune”, c’est aussi le titre d’un livre très recommandé, en 2005, du regretté Philippe Aigrain]
Defining itself as “associative and citizen radio”, it “aims to work in favor of a culture of the commons (which should be for everyone: knowledge, material resources, know-how, knowing how to live together). The challenge? Highlight ideas and experiences ignored or ridiculed by the mass media, when they appear to us as so many alternatives likely to make our listeners think about ways to remedy the multiple crisis we are going through. Until – why not – make them envisage and produce more desirable futures.”
An ambition that Olivier Grieco, founder of Cause commune, sets out in an interview with L’Humanité.
Since 2018, April has been producing the program “Libre à vous!”, first monthly, then weekly since January 2019, broadcast on Radio Cause Commune.
In addition to its podcasts to listen to it again, the show benefits from transcriptions, with all the advantages that this represents – apart from the fact that we generally read faster than we listen, a written text allows a search by key words (readers and readers of this blog will also find here and there links to these very useful transcriptions, like here and here).
The website for these transcriptions, Free to Read, explains its purpose:
“Free to read!” is the site of the Transcriptions de l’April group, which has set itself the mission of transforming videos and audio files concerning free software and digital freedoms in general, into text with the addition of an illustration and the addition of links to certain sites deemed relevant.
These texts are then made accessible to people with disabilities and, when deemed necessary, certain details such as gestures or facial expressions of the speakers are indicated in the text. These transcriptions are identified then indexed in search engines, it is then possible to find the exact words of the speakers or even to use them by faithfully citing the source.
Accessibility, indexing, reuse are the key words of the Transcriptions group.”
For further details on the situation, threads on Twitter (or X) and Mastodon.
Read also
“LoL – Free Software, a serious matter”, semi-free and transcribed documentary – January 8, 2023
The gendarmerie and free software, for the back-to-school broadcast of “Libre à vous!” -September 1, 2019
April is 20 years old, and all its teeth to defend free software – February 12, 2017