either way, it really didn’t gel with the rest of the schedule
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I am aware of at least one station that is lacking in active board members, which I’m sure could put it in breach of its broadcasting licence.
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Some photos from the Technorama Roadshow Perth.
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The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) has congratulated local radio champion Keith Conlon OAM on being awarded the Key to the City of Adelaide.
Keith was the station manager at Australia’s first community broadcaster 5UV, now known as Radio Adelaide.
He has remained steadfast in his support for the sector.
For more than 50 years, Keith has been at the forefront of the local community, whether it be teaching, broadcasting or championing Adelaide’s parklands and heritage.
https://radiotoday.com.au/keith-conlon-honoured-with-key-to-the-city-of-adelaide/
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Troubles at fBi:
The article doesn’t really mention the elephant in the room: radio is now basically irrelevant to their target audience.
I wonder how 3PBS and 3RRR are going? 3PBS in particular is older skewing, so may still attract a decent audience.
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Must admit apart from a few shows I listen to, including the supreme leader aboves 
show, I’m pretty much living on Spotify these days. So if radio is loosing us diehards then there is an issue thats not going to go away. I’m not suprised that alot of community stations are starting to go under, FBi I would have thought would have been different, but I guess even the mighty has fallen now.
Audio entertainment won’t go away but linear radio certainly will, apart from emergency broadcasting. That’s why it’s essential to provide a podcast like experience and is why I’ve pushed Listen Again. But I guess even that requires people to visit the website. People want content force fed these days and of course curated. I’ve actually removed all my Liked Songs from Spotify because I found listening to that too boring; I want to be challenged musically.
I’m experimenting with some ‘meme like’ content on my Instagram which also includes a short aircheck from my show. The last one actually got some decent engagement so where there’s a Will, there’s a way I guess 
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That’s certainly a valid point, but what astounds me in this or any age is how a community radio station can afford to employ 20 staff, now reduced down to ten.
Many small localised community radio stations are lucky to have one permanent paid staff member.
I couldn’t tell you how many employees are on part or full time salaries for stations like 2MBS, Hope FM, 2SER, 3PBS or 3RRR etc, but 20 salary paid folk for FBi sounds bloated for any community radio station, add to those salary costs; property rental, electricity, radio licence fees & transmission costs etc, it would appear to me that requesting so much funding from membership or donations outside of limited sponsorship on what may be a salary bloated community radio station maybe asking a bit much.
If sacking of half of their staff came as a shock, then perhaps there’s been some issues with former management communication or just former management? I’m not surprised…
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Perhaps the Government and/or sector needs to rethink Community Radio station management for metro-wide licences?
Such as, getting in each captial city, each metro-wide Community Station to merge administrations, so run as one one group, in the one building. Let’s use the name (as an example) CAR FM/AM - Community Access Radio.
The building would have multiple studios, and there would be different streams - some stay on traditional AM/FM, others DAB+ or Internet only.
Stream 1 is Talk (3CR blended with SYN)
Stream 2 is First Nations (3KND)
Stream 3 is Multicultural (3ZZZ)
Stream 4 is Australian Music (3RRR/3PBS/3CR)
Stream 5 is Rock/Blues/Country
Stream 6 is Youth/Dance
And so on.
If it turns out to be a success, then bring the administration of Sub-Metros under that umbrella, but retain their frequencies and studios.
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This is sad to see. I had wondered earlier in the year why they had sudden staff turnover (again), so this explains it.
It’s always good to look at the ACNC reports to see what’s been happening. https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/e4e21029-d872-ea11-a811-000d3ad1ce4e/documents/
In 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, they had a $276,037 deficit. Theoretically about $500k cash on hand at that time, but that won’t go very far. About $570k salaries per year.
The 20 staff figure would include a lot of part-timers and casuals. Their annual report helpfully lists their team: Annual Report 2024 – Google Drive
They certainly don’t have the biggest staff team in community radio, but it’s probably more than I would’ve expected.
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I think you’ve described the ABC 
There are some examples of multi-station administration in the community radio sector. It tends to be between like-minded stations instead of geographically grouped stations of different types.
- RPH stations have some coordination managed by CBAA
- There’s a couple of groups of Christian stations that have joined forces and work together
- In WA there’s a trial program where one tech is employed to work across a group of otherwise unaffiliated stations
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Time to ask Richard Branson again?
They still need specifically $1M too
It really is back to the future… This was 2009
Maybe now it should be “Ask Elon”?
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Something else I’m wondering is what exactly separates a community from a commercial station.
I think the distinction between ads and “Sponsorship announcements” has always been dodgy. but I mean on JOY the other day I heard a Coles ad - a straight up ad for COLES - and they just added the words “Joy Sponsor” at the end really quickly the same way you’d say “Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra.”
like come on. when I listen to 3PBS it’s mostly ‘announcements’ for ‘sponsors’ who are clearly local small businesses keeping a community initiative afloat, so i’m sympathetic to the fact they are basically ads. but is Coles a sponsor of a community organisation, really? can that really be said to be the same thing as Gravity Espresso sponsoring PBS, or are Coles in reality a major corporation paying a de facto commercial station JOY to advertise?
The Light is similar to me as well… owned by a quite large and quite profitable firm Positive Media from what I can tell. ironically the format sounds almost identical to JOY apart from the actual words they’re saying (not that LGBT Christians don’t exist, but thats another conversation). I feel like JOY and The Light are strangely twins of each other in that they feel pseudo-commercial and play a very slick range of very commercial music. and I similarly feel like they’re just straight up playing ads and just chucking in the word “sponsor” really quickly. I don’t know. It just feels a bit nebulous to me. Wondering what you think
I think what community radio is doing is fine aa long as they are different enough from commercial radio in terms of music and content, which I think they mostly do.
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You frequently hear commercials for Harvey Norman and Domain, for example, on various community stations, followed by the “station sponsor” tag.
Been going on for years.
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Logan 101 was broadcasting from their sponsor Harvey Norman this weekend. Have heard other community stations doing similar broadcasts.
this is nothing new, been happening for ages. Not just from Coles but other organisations and businesses. I don’t listen to Joy very often but IIRC the Victorian Government have been playing ads on Joy with the same “Joy sponsor” tag.
why wouldn’t they be? Coles (and others, etc.) would probably sponsor lots of community organisations. It’s good PR and possibly a tax write-off too.
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I mean they support a few community organisation and charity, much like Woolies and IGA.
https://www.coles.com.au/about/our-partners/community/partnerships
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From 3RRR’s Wikipedia:
“Due to the reaction from subscribers, in the late 1990s 3RRR cancelled sponsorship deals signed with Ford and music venue The Mercury Lounge (due to its location in Melbourne’s Crown Casino). No such “corporate” sponsorship of this type has been considered since.”
The majority of the sponsors on 3RRR and 3PBS are usually live music events and venues, and community organisations.
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Yes for sure. And this seems like the spirit of the law
Whereas I think Coles or Harvey Norman being a sponsor is the letter of the law. It just feels like an abuse of a community licence to me
Especially with The Light who apparently also “partner” with Channel Nine and play a full simulcast of their news every night at 6. A whole hour!