13/05/05
Dear LINC Members
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New Board Positions
At our first meeting at the beginning of April the Board voted in the various positions within the board. The results were as follows;
Chairperson : Lucy Cameron
Secretary: Cindy Wescombe
Treasurer: Michael Murray
Public Officer: Ian Slade
With Jamie Grant as ordinary member.
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IMPORTANT NEWS
The ABA (Australian Broadcasting Authority) have been reviewing LINC in depth over the last few weeks and we have had to provide them with a lot of information. Because LINC had not been broadcasting for over a year and several times during its trial licence had not fulfilled its obligations by not broadcasting for periods at a time. The ABA are not convinced that the venture will be successful and it appears that they may not be keen to either extend our Trial license or provide us with a 5 year license.
The ABA have also assured us that we DO NOT have a license to broadcast regionally and are not likely to in the future. Apparently in 2003 there was a review of the footprint (Coverage Area) and LINC management were asked for submissions for this review. The ABA did not receive a submission from LINC and therefore reduced our coverage area to take in LISMORE only. This was news to all of us on the Board, especially since we now have Michael Murray on the Board representing the Byron area and the Byron-based School of Audio Engineering (SAE). At the time of writing we are unsure whether we are able to get back the broadcast rights to Byron and the North Coast. The ABA have been firm in saying we can only broadcast to Lismore. We will be investigating this further.
In response to this news we have been trying to shore up financial support and Local LISMORE support and have had meetings with TAFE in Lismore and are progressing with future talks about possible partnerships with them.
We have also approached several large local businesses about becoming stations sponsors.
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SUPPORT
We also need Letters of Support from any Businesses and Community Groups to support the concept of LINC and ask that you, as members, ask people for letters. These will be sent to the ABA. These can be emailed to linctv@nrg.com.au or posted to LINC TV, PO Box 554, Lismore NSW 2480.
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BOARD HAPPENINGS
Although the future is uncertain as far as the ABA are concerned, the board remain active and have continued organising the operations of LINC with a particular focus on our transfer to a Company Limited by Guarantee. As you may or may not know we need to be a Company Limited by Guarantee to apply for our 5-year license. This process has been a rather lengthy and involved process and our solicitors and the board have been working towards the transfer.
To proceed, we first needed to prepare financial statements for the past 7 years, which had not been previously lodged with the Dept of Fair Trading from 1998 - 2004. This was a rather large task but has now been completed thanks to Lucy. We will need to present these to the members to accept at our next meeting.
A special resolution of the members of LINC TV is required to change the legal status of LINC TV from an incorporated association to a company limited by guarantee. Under Article 41 of LINC TV's constitution, a special resolution is required to: alter, rescind or add to the statement of objective or the Constitution itself.
We are awaiting from our solicitors a draft of our new Constitution under the Company Limited by Guarantee, this will replace our old Constitution as required by the conversion. Once we have received this draft we will be mailing all members a copy of the amendments to our Constitution. Once this mail out has been completed, by law we have to allow 21 days for you to view this and then the special resolution must be passed by the members at a Special General Meeting. We will be calling the SGM as soon as we receive the draft constitution.
The registration of the new company will cost approximately $1,750.00, plus GST. We are in great need of FUNDRAISING ideas or sponsorship to help us come up with the money to proceed. We need all of our members to be involved with trying to think of ways to bring some money together. If we do not get this money we can not proceed which means we will not even be able to apply for our 5 year license and as a result be off air permanently.
We are in the process of getting our trial license extended past the deadline we originally had of the 30th June to give us time to convert to a company limited by guarantee (a long process) and then to apply for the 5 year license. It is totally to the ABA's discretion as to whether they will or will not do this.
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Broadcasting
We have resumed broadcasting evenings and at present are repeating broadcasts from 2003. This is because at present we are severely lacking broadcast material and request again that anything you want broadcast be brought in so we can have continuous broadcasts. These can be dropped into the LINC or NRG office 70 Molesworth Street Lismore.
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Volunteers
At the moment the Board has taken on responsibility for Broadcasting, however we feel that we need to ask the members to become involved to take tapes/DVD's to the transmitter to play. As a Board we have much to do with legals and paperwork so it would be great if we could get several volunteers to go up to the transmitter, play and put together broadcast tapes. Please email linctv@nrg.com.au if you feel you would like to do this.
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Equipment Sale
We have some excess production equipment we are going to be selling off. If anyone is interested in having a look and making an offer on this please call Lucy on 0421 202 337.
This has been a rather large newsletter but we felt that we needed to let the members know what has been taking place in the past couple of months. We will be in touch again very soon with notice regarding the Special General meeting.
Best Regards
Cindy Wescombe
Secretary
LINC TV 2005
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