Gerry Pyne on the Reform Vision for 4CCR

Sorry Ross for the delayed response to your invitation for my comment on the reform plan for 4CCR. I’ve put quite a bit of thought into this and I keep coming back to the same conclusion. The essence of what makes a community station stand out above the average is its primary focus on community involvement.

There are other factors that contribute to its efficient administration, fund raising capabilities, technical well-being and unique programming approach but I would have to say that these will all follow if the foundation is set in stone at the very beginning and the foundation of a good community radio station is its volunteer / community base participation level.

If you examine some of the successful stations (eg 3RRR Melbourne) they uphold this principle strongly and do not waver from its focus for anything. Many stations today mistakenly think that the answer to finical stability is the adoption of a “poor man’s” commercial format because that will bring lots of listeners…. In all of the years I have been involved in this game I have never seen a single station succeed at this miss-guided path.

Those that have been successful base their success upon community participation rather than listeners in mass. Commercial stations do a good job at meeting the community’s needs for their type of service so we should leave that to the well-established experts in that field.

Every community has a rich variety of highly talented people and many of these have unique musical and life experiences that would be of great interest to the community. Our challenge is to give these people an organisation that carry’s respect, high regard, efficient and well balanced management and an open door. We need to be attractive to all people within the community.

Too many stations degrade themselves through ignorant and self-interested management consisting of individuals that have little to offer themselves but rather “need” the station to serve their own personal needs. So begins the spiral.

People who have something to offer usually don’t “need” a community station to fulfil their personal needs and consequently, any participation by such people brings their rich source of life experience forward for others to share. People like this can’t be bothered with stations like 4CCR and shy away from any interest – they have their own lives!

If we have a station that is attractive to ALL members of the community everything else follows. If you want a station that plays a rich variety of well-presented programs, you need to attract the right type of person, not just those that have needs themselves. This is the only way a station can “give” to its community and therefore attract listeners.

The proposed structure. One key element that seems to be missing is a Forum that actively encourages community participation – a forum that is beyond the standard requirement for open membership. If I may draw on the experience of 3CCC’s early success, here are some of the key elements that made it a success.

Board of DirectorsThe make-up of this was always a reflection on the extent to which the station had successfully dove-tailed into the community. We had, as members, an accountant, a solicitor, a university lecturer, technical experts and people with political backgrounds (Including Rosemary McKenzie – Wife of Victorian Premier John Brumby) as well as ordinary members of the community. There was no deliberate drive to have these people as directors, but it does reflect the fact that the station was able to attract this level of interest from a variety of levels within the community and the station truly benefited from their combined talents.

Committee structure – 3CCC had a strong volunteer structure that really worked well. The volunteers had their own “committee” that consisted of volunteers chairperson and volunteers vice chair and these people were elected at the annual general volunteer’s meeting. This volunteers structure was not part of the station’s constitution and the station was run by a properly constituted Board of Directors, but the volunteer’s chairperson held an ex-officio position on this Board.

Volunteers meetings were held monthly and all members of the public were invited to attend. These were often very well attended and sometimes even a little rowdy but it was a great way for people to “have a say” and the volunteers chairperson would carry any recommendations from the volunteers to the Board in his / her monthly report at the next Board meeting. The Board would hold a separate monthly meeting but on a different night to the volunteers’ meetings. Again, any one could attend a Board meeting but these were conducted in strict accordance with standing orders so non-members were there as observers only.

Above all though, there was a genuine sense of open management and if someone had a grievance, they were given a genuine chance to air this. As Manager, I always made a conscience effort to take the direction given from the station’s Directors and volunteers and this sometimes meant that I had to travel in a different path to that I would have personally preferred, but it was never “my” station.

I think that every station has the potential to achieve great things and we need to be very careful not to fall into the trap of seeking as many listener’s as possible – rather, we should be concentrating on seeking as wide a representation from the community as possible. This way everything else will follow.

Kind regards,
Gerry Pyne
Broadsoft Systems Pty. Ltd.