It’s great when they mentor or add to the station (Denis Scanlan in Geelong an example) but not when they try and direct the station in a commercial way, or try and live out their dreams there.
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Starter FM would look to do something like this with a focus on youth oriented and Australia music/programming during the day and specialist programing after 6pm.
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What is StarterFM currently doing? Just automation and prerecorded shows?
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We are currently building up the studio, so while that happens we have our presenters prerecord their shows off site and then send them in to be scheduled, we also network a few shows from around Australia and International.
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What playout system do you use?
Playit Live for playout and Stereo-Tool for processing with a couple of tricks to make thing run nicely.
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A great program in my opinion - do you find it to be stable enough these days? I haven’t been using it much recently, but from memory it used to just pause playout randomly when I used it.
So do I. Many (most) community stations do this: 6-6 consistent music format that (usually) fills a niche which isn’t available in their licence area.
AFAIK yes. Even though I’m involved with community radio, I haven’t looked in-depth about the cans and can’ts. So long as they don’t start turning down people who want to do a specialty program I don’t see why it would be a serious problem. You could definitely argue that the format-adherent hours also count as community program if they fill a niche not available in the area.
And a way to make sure the station makes money - that’s really the sad truth. Most community stations aren’t sustainable without a decent amount of sponsors, no matter how much the stations members may protest this. Thankfully, most stations don’t go to commercial and find a nice balance to keep everyone happy and maintain that consistent sound but without every decision being about how much money it can make, but as mentioned here already it only takes one ex-commercial programmer to unbalance this.
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I am glad that I’m allowed free reign with my playlists, but I still consider the audience and mostly play songs that sound ‘good’ on the air. You don’t want the listener to be too alienated, especially during daylight hours. I agree that some community stations are indistinguishable from commercial stations at times.
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I agree, the only criticism over SWR FM’s playlist is that it run very close to the commercial playlist Eg. WSFM/smooth/2CH/C91.3 it would have been better in my opinion to run a format completely apart from what commercial radio play, like how Eastside Radio focuses on Jazz or 2SER on Australian Music.
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SWR’s online stream sounds a lot better than most commercial streams I have listened too , for example better than 2CA, 2UE , and 2CH. I don’t really understand why a community station equipment is better than commercial stations. I think Commercial Radio from this angle could be a bit too relaxed. If a community radio station can “afford” a good sounding stream so should all commerical stations. In the 80s commercial radio stations use pride themselves on great sounding audio even on the AM band 
.
Agree SWR format is quite commercial during the day. My view the mix of music is better. You can hear Nova/2Day FM/2UE/Triple M/Smooth/WS FM/C91.3 all in the one station. Not as much variety as Sumo FM on spotify.
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96.5 in Brisbane is a prime example. they play the occasional contempory Christian song (last time i listened it was 2:1 mainstream to Christian - should be the other way around) and have a bible verse at the end of each news service.
they charge $900 for the radio school (or did when i looked into it for a colleague’s son)
It’s a quasi commercial service who honestly do not meet the needs of christians in brisbane.
if i ran the station i’d do the following:
1 - dump all non Christian music
2 - Dump the news simulcast (it way out of format)
3 - Dump inspire digital (it’s programmed out of sydney) and put the FM service on DAB (at the moment it;s not)
4 - Bring in a worship music show daily. there are 2 options for this - you could do it in the old 7 news slot for drive or do a late night one at 10:00pm.
either way big changes need to be made, especilly now it’s easy to get other services via streaming. if you don’t meet the needs of your market it’s easy to stream something else
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Christian stations are often the worse. Light FM in Melbourne plays mostly contemporary music and simulcasts Nine News too, with all the religious content on weekends or overnight
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I wish they would be more like RadioU or Boost Radio in the US where they lean heavily into the Christian music scene and make an alternative station sound great, or even if they were to be more like Rhema Newcastle.
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Do we really need religious stations though? Not trying to be controversial but I don’t see how a Christian format really qualifies for a community licence. They’ve got enough money for a proper commercial licence - preferably on AM.
But I actually don’t have a problem with community stations sounding commercial because the number of commercial FM licences in cities like Brisbane is ridiculously low. Four commercial FM stations for 2.5 million people? It’s a joke.
Community stations provide vitally needed mainstream content in places like Brisbane. For instance 99.7 is becoming my go to station if I only have access to FM.
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they don’t.
I did 3 years as a breakfast producer on 96.5 (which makes the fall of the station more annoying for me) and i was aware of the financial status of the station. 96.5 is not owned by any churches or particular religious organization. It’s an independent organization and at times was struggling to make ends meet.
short of vision that has a national footprint there is not much money in religious broadcasting.
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Going by the online programming guide, SWR FM seems to have a decent enough balance between a listenable music format during daytime hours and more alternative programming during off-peak timeslots.
Is SWR’s “70s to Now” music format too close to what commercial radio is running? That’s an interesting question. If we still had Vega 95.3 running their “40 Years of Music” format I’d probably agree, but as things stand now I don’t think any Sydney commercial music radio stations (including fringe ones like The Edge and C91.3) do a massively wide variety of music from the 70s until now - most if not all of them stick to specific niches. If SWR’s peak listening period music format was a serious threat to the viability of Sydney commercial stations, they probably would’ve complained to ACMA well before now.
As per @NDY I think for as long as SWR aren’t turning down people who want to do a specialty program, having a coherent music format during peak listening periods which fills a niche not available in the area shouldn’t be a major issue - especially if (as I suspect) it’s these hours of radio which help the station make money.
Also consider that SWR FM is filling the void for a western Sydney focused service, which has been abandoned by both WS FM and 96.1. You can’t really blame them for picking up the slack; the real failure was allowing 96.1 to pretty much abandon western Sydney entirely.
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I was meaning churches in general have enough money for commercial licences, I wasn’t referring to 96.5 directly. Tap the Hillsong parishioners.
I think if SWR stayed as they are now in terms of music they could be the C91.3 for western Sydney (Blacktown to Penrith), but I should not wish for that… It would be probably sold and become just another 96.1 for another network.