Rosemary Skelly
Station Manager, Bay FM
Written by Ashley Debenham on 2008-10-19
What do you see happening in the next five years in the radio industry?
The biggest change that will happen in the radio industry will be the continued roll out of digital broadcasting and the Internet. As we are a community-based station, currently we are not looking at the live feeds option, however this will be a bigger issue for the commercial networks. Currently, it will only be in the major metropolitan centres that the uptake of digital broadcasting will be most prevalent. Also, ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) will need to look at ways of dealing with FM band spectrum issues. Currently, there is very little spectrum left and it is almost at a point of saturation with ACMA taking control of some existing community radio stations to give bandwidth to the ABC.
What are the biggest challenges you and Bay FM face as members of the Brisbane media community?
Currently the biggest issue facing us is ensuring we remain a community radio station rather than a quasi-commercial station. Therefore we want to keep the current formatting of about 80% music and 20% spoken word, as this has been a successful format in the past. ACMA has put measures into place that require community stations to have the greatest possible participation and involvement from the stations’ local community. Therefore we have sixty-five different radio presenters who volunteer their time to come in to the station. This is extremely different to a commercial station that has limited presenters and consequently is a big challenge for us to organise. As well as this, ACMA only allows community stations to have five minutes per hour of sponsorship.
What are the most important/valuable skills that graduates can bring to the radio industry?
I think ultimately it’s having some previous training to complement their knowledge learnt from university. We often get uni students coming into the station for work experience and they use it as a training ground of sorts. We try to give them the skills of how to prepare a program and then put it to air. As well as this, most commercial stations use fairly sophisticated digital recording and presenting equipment, and therefore the graduates would need the basic IT skills to allow them to use this equipment. I think along with their knowledge from their studies, it is the practical experience and the industry knowledge of what “being a presenter” is that are the most important skills for graduates to have.
How would you rate the performance of Brisbane-based media organisations in comparison to other national and international media hubs?
I’m not too sure how Brisbane-based media organisations compare to other national hubs. However, I can say that Brisbane or South-east Queensland is experiencing some major growth especially in the radio industry. To illustrate my point, the example of B105’s dominance of the FM band in the late 1990’s is no longer the case with a much more evenly spread market and no station completing dominating. These days people are spoilt for choice, which is probably a good thing. Where our station fits into this is that we have a niche in the market whereby we focus specifically on the local community. Overall, I think that Brisbane media organisations are indeed growing and performing well, however I’m not sure exactly how this growth compares to other media hubs in Australia.
How has new media such as the Internet and mobile communications revolutionised your workplace?
For our workplace, mobile communications do not have much impact on us, however, the Internet and the digital equipment we now have at our station has revolutionised our workplace. For example, we have introduced a new software program called Wavecart and while not overly difficult to use it has meant we have had to train each of our sixty-five volunteers in how to use it.
Also our station currently downloads a lot of mp3 files that come from our sponsors and other community organisations. This is something we couldn’t do previously and makes things easier for us. Finally, we are currently in the process of re-building the website and are looking to have some form of audio streaming or podcasts of Interviews and the like. So the Internet is fast becoming another medium for us to reach our listeners and for them to interact with our station.
As a not for profit, community radio station do you think the government and other funding bodies are doing their part to make BayFM sustainable?
I have been here for fifteen years and during this time and still today most of the money that we receive is small amounts from the Gaming Community Benefit scheme run by the State Government. There is some money available through the Community Broadcasting Foundation, however the pool is extremely small when compared to the number of organisations who wish to access it. So therefore we also rely heavily on contributions made by our sponsors. The issue here is that ACMA restricts the amount of advertising we can play to 5min per hour. So we have a catch 22 situation, limited government funding and then government restricts our most effective way of raising funds through other means (our advertising).
How do you compete with commercial radio stations such as Nova, Triple M, and B105 etc?
They are much more powerful in terms of resources and tools at their disposals. So therefore we try to make use of the niche we have created to overcome this. People wish to listen to community stations because we are local and because they hear what is happening in their own communities. We have much more localised news and information about community events. That is what our listeners like. The fact they are not being swamped with advertising is also another factor. Our practices are to try and build a relationship with the community. That’s how we train our presenters who come to the station. We stress that you have a personal listener or listeners out there as opposed to a commercial broadcaster who is out there fighting for the ratings.