Edge Radio is Hobart’s only youth station, broadcasting on 99.3FM and streaming on edgeradio.org.au. The station, based on the University of Tasmania campus, is now 22 years old.

Edge Radio’s core target audience is 15-30, but is also a service for “youth of all ages.” Its strategic pillars are: Inclusion, Independence, Local, Dynamic and Youthful.

The station sources its volunteers from the university campus and the wider Hobart community. It has two part time staff members.

Steve Ahern took a tour of the station and spoke to Station Manager Corey Stephen and President Taylor Lidstone during the CBAA Conference.

We were founded in 2003, so we’re at 22 years now. We’ve actually got our radiothon fundraiser radiothon coming up, which we’re doing for 22 hours for 22 years of edge.

It’s 2003 when we started. And you’re a youth radio station, but at 22, you’re getting a bit old!

I was say we’re nearly getting too old to be youth station. No, there’s a few more years yet.

We are the only youth focused radio station in Tasmania.

Tell me about how you sit in the radio market here in Hobart.

We’ve got Hobart FM. There’s Ultra, which is the Christian radio station, and there’s Tyga.

Tell me about your audience what do you know about them?

They’re music lovers, we do a lot of music programming especially Tasmanian music programming. Lots of young people of course, though there are lots of older people as well .  I think probably our largest group currently would be  30 to 45 year old. I’m estimating, but it feels like a safe bet with just random bits of knowledge I have in my head.

I always think of Edge as a place to provide expression for young people, so that can be basically whatever you mean it to be. It does also sometimes mean though that you have a very chaotic mix of things on Edge, but I like that. Also tutorage as well because a big part of us is that we go out into the community, we go out to schools and we train them in the mystic art of radio. Radio and also podcasting is the other one podcasting. We also have quite a big disability focus here as well and I know that there’s plenty of people who either volunteer in office or are presenters that come in or do their work here um with their support worker. We’ve got Express Radio which is actually a collaborative effort between Edge Radio and Mosaic Disability Support Service. They actually bring in some of the people accessing Mosaic Disability Support to do a show as two different groups, one on a Monday, one on a Friday.

You mentioned podcast training. Is there a big interest in podcasting?

Not yet. We’re not getting a lot of uptake yet, but we know that the research shows that young people in particular are more podcast listeners than they are um radio listeners. And so to remain a relevant youth station, we need to move with the times as well. So, it’s a a thing we’re really looking into. We’ve been looking into a little bit, but it’s going to be like pushed a lot more hardcore uh as we move forward.

Now, you’re on the campus here of the University of Tasmania. Does that mean you get a lot of students walking in and volunteering and wanting to bring up their skills?

Well, yeah. In particular,we get a lot of media students especially those who are interested in radio as their like primary media format. But we get people from all walks like we got like we are a youth station and but we do also have older people who present as well. We got people all the way up to retirees and and not just uni students. We also get high school students in as well. We do work placements in particular with high school. Yeah. Especially last year we had a ton. Yeah. What a good service though for high school students cuz it’s always hard to find work placement.

When I started out I say how long ago was that? It was before me. So 11 years ago or something like that. Yikes. Yeah. Um were your youth then? Yeah, I was a youth then. Are you a youth now at heart? Um when I started out like 11 years ago, um everything was on campus. So I would have my um classes in this building even and walk past Edge and be like, hm, I I like radio. Let’s get into that sort of thing. And now I joined postco joined the edge crew postco. So, I’ve never I was never a uni student to be fair, but um we’ve there’s so few people on campus now. Yeah. Let alone in this little kind of back corridor we’re in um where we’ve been put. So um you know that kind of like organic or like passive um volunteer um bringing inness whatever the word is there um is is not there or at least not nearly as much.

Taylor in the Edge Radio studio Hobart

You were talking about your radio journey Taylor. You started as a student walking by and you loved it. What kind of programs have you done and how come you ended up being president of the station?

I started out just walking by this this office and knocked on the door and just said  is there anything for me to do? And they said, “No, but we’ll find something for you to do. That’s how it goes.” Yeah, exactly. Nothing’s changed.

I then started a K-pop radio show which ran for eight years or something like that. didn’t realize you did it for so long. Yeah, it was a really long time. This is your time, too. Yeah. And um yes, then from that I’ve uh joined up with the fellow that used to be my uni lecturer uh who was also on the board as well. Um and we talk we do media mothership and talk about all different things in media and AI and stuff like that.

Any other insights you can tell me about Edge Radio?

Just recently, like a week or two ago, it was announced by the Tasmanian state government um that they are cutting the discount of funding for a ton of TA courses, TAFE courses. Most of them were in the creative arts including music. We have a big music focus here. So I think we need to acknowledge the role that the arts play in society as a whole and that that we need to encourage that more. We already know that the arts run on you know duct tape and hope as a budget. It makes me worried for the state of the Tasmanian music scene and by extension us. It’s going to have a profound impact on uh the community and by extension us as a station as well. And I think we really need to point it out when it happens.

Edge Radio Production Studio

More CBAA Conference reports here.