At the Community Broadcasting conference on the Gold Coast last month, CBAA General Manager Barry Melville reported happily on the good financial situation of the organisation; the hard work of CBAA staff on various special projects; and the success of community radio’s political lobbying campaign.
He began with audio grabs of politicians speaking on many community radio stations. This is what Melville said:
Voices from the world of federal politics as heard on local community stations! After 30 years of representing the interests of community broadcasters, we can now claim that we are well and truly on the political radar screen.
In 2004 the CBAA conducted a highly effective grassroots lobbying campaign which encouraged stations to engage with their local candidates and built support for better funding for community broadcasting across the political spectrum.
We targeted 80 politicians in select marginal seats across the country and met with 65 of them where possible in stations with the support of local stations. In addition we met with 9 Ministers and Shadow Ministers in Canberra and ensured that at the very least all MPs and Senators across the political spectrum received submissions about the funding needs of community broadcasting radio and television, specialised and diverse, large/small, metropolitan, regional, rural, remote, indigenous, ethnic and general. Our funding submission was discussed in all party rooms and in launching the national listener survey we engaged the services of the PR and lobbying specialists Jackson, Wells, Morris to secure the attention of party leaders and effect policy commitment to our sector.
More than a third of our member stations contributed to the effort with on-air and behind the scenes support and we also drove the message further in the mainstream media in print, on television and over the radio. By election eve every major party had made varying levels of positive commitment to further support for community broadcasting.
The main outcome has been a firm Government commitment to contributing an additional $8.2m to support the sector’s needs in the areas of access to transmission facilities and the provision of training, particularly to enhance the management capacity of stations in rural and regional Australia.
Thanks to the CBF for its support of the campaign and could I also express the CBAA’s appreciation for the cooperation and support of the other sector bodies AICA, RPHA, NEMBC and ACB in our higher-level lobbying efforts. Enormous gratitude to all the people on the ground in the stations that mobilised in the campaign and drove our message home. Praise, gratitude and thanks are due to the staff that supported the effort – the whole team did a great job but particular credit for our success must go to Joanna McCarthy our Membership and Development Manager and our campaign coordinator Bruno Brayovic.
To each and everyone of you 300 delegates and exhibitors at our 32nd national conference – welcome. In 2004 I passed the 3 year threshold as General Manager and what a year it was!
Over and above the flurry of lobbying activity, 2004 was the busiest and most productive year for the CBAA – certainly in the seven and a half years that I’ve been involved. Our project management of the McNair national listener survey was an important undertaking that didn’t just come out of the blue it came about after a couple of years of planning, negotiation and development.
Further roll-out and development of the DDN project continued apace. Of the 176 stations taking ComRadSat there now 155 that have the DDN system in place and can take advantage of online program selection and automatic digital storage. Thanks to the tireless efforts of David Sice community stations in Melbourne have been able to participate in the digital radio trials of the Eureka 147 platform that are being conducted by Broadcast Australia. We are fortunate to have secured the opportunity to participate in the benchmarking study of listeners to the trial services. We are also negotiating with Commercial Radio Australia and have secured their support for our station’s participation in Sydney trials and next year, the prospect of some regional trials.
The community radio network, ComRadSat has grown throughout the year both in the number of subscribers and in terms of revenue derived from syndicating overnight programs and sponsorship income. Overnight Express – a CBAA in-house production has made a big impact in regional Australia and has provided a window into the road transport industry. But it is the many specialist music, talks and diverse programs from stations around the country that underscore the success of ComRadSat. Heartfelt thanks to all the stations that contribute and to Jim, Kiki, Shuk-Wah and the rest of the team.
Despite very limited funding and resources, the CBAA has continued to place a high priority on delivery of nationally accredited training. In our third year as a RTO we undertook many training partnerships and delivered W certificates across the scope of our registration but most particularly in the Cert II to Cert IV range. We have secured NSW government support for further resource development of self-paced learning resources and we got through our first ATQF audit with flying colours. Nicola Joseph as our part-time National Training Manager has put in a remarkable effort and has delivered real success.
2004 has seen further integration of the CBF funded projects CBOnline and Amrap. The CBOnline project has delivered the second annual data collection exercise and the community broadcasting database is coming into its own as a rich source of information about the sector and a valuable tool for understanding our nature and diversity. For example we now know that 35% of rural and regional stations are either the only broadcasters in their area or the only ones providing local programming and across the board and 74% of what we put to air is produced locally.
This is the sort of information that we can use to sell ourselves to listeners, government and sponsors. But the figures can help us do an even better job. For instance, by cross-referencing database and listener survey results, we find that while we have 7 million listeners, only just over 113,000 are subscribers or members of stations – this is a conversion rate of only 1.6%! Other significant developments for CBOnline were the use of the website as a hub for the audience survey results and election lobbying campaign. In the next couple of months, a new academic e-journal hosted on the website will encourage scholarship and research into community-based media. Mia Lauze has done an amazing job as Content Manager for the project and she is fortunate to have the skilled support of Nicholas Boyakovsky.
The Australian Music Airplay project under the resourceful management of Paul Mason has completed its fourth year of operations and has attracted an additional level of funding support for its new multiple platform initiative. Amrap is much much more than just a distribution network for music CDs, it provides sophisticated online services providing music and information and has in recent years become an incubator for exciting new program content through the highly successful music correspondent initiatives. The latest round of funded music correspondents are busily producing short feature programs that cover jazz, electronic, rock, folk, Christian, country and indigenous music. Thanks to Paul, Jane Costessi and Nicole Craig for their wonderful efforts.
The sector coordination and membership support role of the CBAA secretariat are at the core of this association’s existence. Stations support, expert advice and information is what we deliver to members. Our means to deliver information and advice have been greatly enhanced in recent years by the efforts of our Communications Manager Cameron Woods. We have many things to thank Cam for but a couple of his most notable successes are the CBX magazine and the dynamic and useful web interface that the CBAA website provides.
Information tools for stations and membership services continue to be a major focus of activity. But our support and advisory role would be so much more difficult with the trojan support of Troy – i.e. Troy Kick-a-Goal Garner. While we were carrying the extra load and Bruno was lining up politicians we were also assisted for six months by the cool calm Ben Fletcher on reception. Also on a short-term basis Danny Chifley like his namesake helped us keep the light burning on the hill.
Policy development and liaison with the government and the regulators has continued as major area of responsibility and 2004 saw the fruit of earlier years efforts in the significant areas of permanent licensing for community TV and a registered code of practice for the TV sector.
The CBAA is in good finally shape after a few rocky years. Our revenue from grants, new programming initiatives and membership is up on previous years and we have been successful in keeping spending within budget. There’s an Annual report in your satchel and opportunity to discuss our finances on Sunday if people are so inclined. We are very fortunate to have secured the services of Steve McDermott our talented Finance and Administration Manager who joined us some 15 months ago. I’m sure that our President, Paul Terdich and his fellow National Committee members are as appreciative as I am of our strong position in terms of budget management, accounting standards and financial reporting.
Let me draw your attention for a moment to the CBAA’s strategic priorities which I have summarised at page 30 of the Annual Report.
More than ever before the CBAA has channelled its efforts into valuing the sector, i.e. increasing the profile of community broadcasting to improve the government and broader community’s awareness and understanding of the value and significance of the sector’s contribution to the quality of Australian life.
After ascertaining through Griffith University’s research two years ago that we are an aging sector in terms of volunteers staff and audiences the CBAA has maintained empowerment of youth as a key priority. This is the third year that our conference has featured a youth stream and we continue to support the National Youth Media Network or NYMN. The academic stream emerges into its fourth year and the two landmark events are the launch of the peer-refereed e-journal entitled 3CMedia and the joint venture with Griffith Uni into a further two year phase of qualitative research into community media audiences. This year we feature a dedicated technical stream – a kinda sparkies love-in – in which we can all partake and the community television stream. The professional development seminar yesterday was also a first and highlighted our need to strategise solutions and develop training to address conflict resolution.
Lastly I would like you to join with me in congratulating the CBAA’s conference team, in particular our new Marketing and Sponsorship Coordinator Elaine Dexter. This is already proving to be one of our best conferences ever and the quality of the planning and organisation has been impeccable. On behalf of the CBAA and its members thanks very much to our Conference sponsors and exhibitors and to our project partners Intermedia, Deutsche Welle, McNair Ingenuity, Jackson Wells Morris, Display Data, Noggin, Broadcast Australia, Charles Sturt University, Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University, I&G Media and the Media Factory. Thanks for the support of our members and our affiliates and supporters.